BY REP. TERRY ENGLAND
(R-Auburn)The House convened this week on Tuesday, February 26th, for the 23rd day of our 40 day legislative session. On the floor, we adopted legislation addressing our continued transportation funding problems, education and local school boards and an adoption tax credit.
Georgia is a large state with many transportation needs in both our urban and rural areas. This week, the House adopted House Bill 1019 authorizing the creation of the Georgia Transportation Infrastructure Bank. The bank will provide low interest loans to communities across Georgia for transportation projects providing viable funding options to move ahead with local projects.
Several education bills were considered this week that will impact both local education and the HOPE scholarship. Unfortunately sometimes, educating our children means doing more than providing schools. It can also mean ensuring ‘bad apples’ aren’t teaching in the classroom. This week we adopted House Bill 250 enabling the Professional Practices Commission to investigate complaints against educators involving illegal substances and sexual offenses. We also adopted House Bill 1091 redefining residency guidelines for students applying to our state universities and for the HOPE scholarship.
With more children every year entering our foster system, I believe it is important that we do everything we can to support those families that give them a permanent loving home.
This week, I supported the adoption of House Bill 1159 providing a state income tax credit for families who adopt foster children. I hope that this measure will encourage more of our Georgians to open their hearts and provide these children with a permanent home.
This week the House Natural Resources Committee favorably reported a bill I introduced. House Bill 1281 was also favorably considered in the committee requiring local governments wishing to enact water use restrictions beyond state guidelines to go through Environmental Protection Department and it allows for a jurisdiction that may have plenty of water resources during a drought to relax their watering restrictions if they can show their resources are adequate to EPD. The EPD will be required to respond within three business days with a ruling based on scientific evidence and information gathered during the resource identification phase of the Statewide Comprehensive Water Plan. The bill will also protect swimming pools from being closed and possibly becoming health hazards during the summer. The bill will still make sure that human use and agricultural use are first and second respectfully before other uses. This bill is critical to local communities, the State and the Nation as far as the implications to the Green Industry. The Green Industry since mid – summer 2007 has lost over $3 billion in sales and laid off over 35,000 employees in Georgia alone. This does not count the impact to growers outside of the state. There are currently over 800 different jurisdictions in the State that can have different rules in regard to outdoor watering. We are simply trying to make these rules a little more uniform for property owners that are using water system water to sustain their landscape and save an industry $8 billion industry from going under. HB 1281 will be on the Floor of the House Tuesday for a vote.
I will continue to keep you up to date on our actions as the legislative session progresses. Should you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me at my Capitol office. As always, thank you for the chance to represent you at our State Capitol. God Bless to all.
Representative Terry England represents most of Barrow County in the House of Representatives.
During the Session he may be contacted at:
501 Coverdell Legislative Office Building
Atlanta, GA 30334
Office: 404-656-0183
Email: terry.england@house.ga.gov
