Therein lies the problem with SB 177.

It is overly broad in nature and risks labeling innocuous, well-meaning organizations as agents of hostile principles or foreign supported political organizations.

When we legislate in here, we must be mindful that bills are written with precision.

This bill is not.

Legislation that keeps foreign money out of local elections.

Gets debated in the House today.

Good evening and welcome to Lawmakers.

On day 32 of the Georgia legislative session.

I'm Donna Lowry in Atlanta on the show.

A look at the Ashley Spence Act, which would require DNA samples from people arrested for certain serious violent felonies.

Supporters say it could help solve crimes faster.

But what about privacy and due process?

We'll ask the bill's author.

Also, if you are unfamiliar with ketamine clinics, we'll learn more about them and about the bill that was passed in the House.

Plus, we look at several pieces of legislation to help infants and new mothers.

First, our correspondent Sarah Kallis gives us an update of the day at the Capitol.

Hi, Donna.

Today, Lawmakers remembered a somber anniversary and debated money bills in the House.

Members took up SB 177, which would require employees of some governments to register with the State Ethics Commission if they are involved in politics and report their political contributions.

Affected governments include North Korea, China, Russia and Iran.

This bill regulates political activity, not business activity, and that distinction is important.

This bill applies to political activity connected to governments that are designated as foreign adversaries by the United States.

Secretary of Commerce.

If a person or entity is acting on behalf or as an agent of a hostile foreign principal and engaging in political activity in Georgia, such as lobbying government officials or attempting to influence public policy, public policy, they must register with the State Ethics Commission and disclose that relationship.

Some Democrats raised concerns that the bill could have unintended economic consequences.

When a company's legal team looks at a law like this and sees the mandatory registration, public disclosure requirements and the risk of major penalties simply for engaging in policy discussions.

Some of those companies are going to think twice about relocating to Georgia.

And said that foreign governments aren't the biggest threat to politics.

The real one.

I'm not against stopping foreign influence, nor am I suggesting that foreign influence in our elections is not an issue.

It is.

But this is not the fundamental issue that Georgians are concerned with right now.

Threats to our democracy aren't coming from foreign governments or spies.

It's coming from here.

Inside this nation.

They're coming from the Epstein class, the billionaires and their friends, the huge corporations who are rewriting our laws while they buy up all of our housing.

Republicans shot back that the bill promotes transparency and shouldn't be controversial.

Do you want to know if the Republic of Iran is putting money in your campaign?

I know every one of my colleagues do.

Maybe my colleagues on the left do not want that.

You don't want to know where the money is coming from.

Or maybe it's worse.

Maybe you do know where the money is coming from and you don't want light shed on it.

That, I hope, is not the case.

I don't believe it is, but it is very hard for me to understand where the arguments are coming from, when the only thing we're doing is requiring anybody that has any financial interest from a foreign adversary to register.

SB 177 passed 98-65 along party lines, and Senate Bill 160 would allow some drivers with suspended licenses to get back on the roads.

This bill today is about behavior change, intelligent speed assistance devices, or devices that prevent an operator from exceeding a preset speed creates a pathway for a person with a suspended license due to a reckless stunt driving conviction.

To apply for a limited driving permit by having an Isa placed on their vehicle.

The bill passed one 30-26 and the House unanimously passed a bill to establish a special license plate honoring the Girl Scouts of Georgia.

The Senate took up two resolutions and five House bills, among them HB 535, which increases the penalties for trafficking.

Fentanyl.

It makes it very clear if you possess four or more grams of fentanyl, you're going to be dealt with severely.

2.5 years, minimum to ten years maximum, and the penalties go on up to 35 years, depending on the amount of the substance or fentanyl mixed with other substances that you have.

Two proposed amendments by Democrats reduce the penalties for having 4 grams of any drug laced with fentanyl, without the intent to distribute, and removed the trafficking clause.

This bill enhances a sentencing scheme for criminalizing simple possession.

Now, you might say 4 grams is a lot, though, Senator.

4 grams is, you know, if you've got that amount of drugs, then we might think you're trying to traffic.

Let me tell you what 4 grams is.

4 grams is 80% of the mass of a nickel.

The coin, a nickel has 5 grams.

That is the weight.

Imagine a nickel in your hand, but 80% of that.

That's how much of a drug mixture you have to have to be liable for trafficking under the Georgia code.

And that's without any intent.

But the bill sponsor offered a Third Amendment that changed the bill's language to incorporate those recommendations, causing Democrats to withdraw their amendments and help pass the bill unanimously.

It also brought a rare response from Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones.

If you'll just listen a little bit and be willing to hear the other side's opinion, whether that other side is in your party or not doesn't matter.

But if you'll just listen and talk through things and some of these things can get worked out without without having to posture so much.

So I do appreciate each one of the senators illustrating that today used to be something that was very common around this chamber.

This become uncommon, but it still does happen from time to time.

HB 1,000 will provide a one time tax rebate to state income taxpayers who paid in 2020 4-20 25.

This benefits Georgians by giving back $250 for individual filers, 375 for heads of household and 500 for those married, and filing filing jointly.

This is a good tax refund, giving Georgians back their money.

It also passed unanimously.

Today is also the fifth anniversary of the Atlanta spa shootings.

The deadly shooting in March 2021 killed eight people at Atlanta area spas, and six of those killed were Asian women.

The Asian American and Pacific Islander Caucus held a memorial.

These were lives that were taken from us too soon.

Those we lost were people who were deeply loved and needed, and whose stories embodied a vibrant picture of the America.

Those of us who grew up in the immigrant community know well.

On St.

Patrick's Day tomorrow, lawmakers will hold committee meetings only in gavel back in for legislative day 33 on Wednesday.

That's my Capitol report.

Donna.

Thanks, Sara.

We're going to look at bills that answer a couple of questions.

Should law enforcement collect DNA samples from individuals arrested for certain serious violent felonies?

And should Georgia regulate ketamine clinics to explore those issues and more?

Joining us is Republican Senator Rick Williams of Milledgeville, the chairman of the Senate Retirement Committee, the vice chair of the ethics committee, the secretary of both the Public Safety and Regulated Industries and Utilities committees.

Also with us is Republican Representative Sharon Cooper of Marietta.

She chairs the publicity, community, Health Community Committee, and she's also on judicial non-civil and a special committee on health care.

These are very busy.

Lawmakers.

Welcome.

Welcome back.

This is the first time this session you both have been here, so I appreciate this.

So Chairman Williams, right now DNA is in Georgia is typically collected after someone is convicted of a felony.

Your bill, SB 29 would allow DNA collection when someone is arrested for a serious felony.

So tell us what is behind your wanting to even do this.

Thank you very much, and thank you for having me on here tonight.

It all started about ten years ago with my neighbor.

Gentleman by the name of Todd Crosby, who was a crime scene specialist for the GBI.

We were talking about people not being identified when they find a body that's been decomposed and abandoned.

They couldn't figure out who they were.

And then he got to talking about and I heard a word called Codis.

Well, what is Codis?

Well, Codis is the national database for DNA.

This is where all of the states send DNA, and it's stored in a database.

So it can be there to match or run, like the national fingerprint database.

So, yes, in Georgia now they only take DNA when someone is convicted and when they're going to prison.

This my bill would be taking DNA when someone is arrested and accused of committing one of the seven deadly sins.

And so it's not something that would be done all the time.

But if they're exonerated or found not guilty, then their DNA can is expunged from the Codis.

So that's built into it also.

So that's what that is.

And you know, you.

Brought props for us.

I'm sorry.

You brought some props.

I did to show us.

I brought some props.

And, you know, one of the questions has been, how much is this going to cost?

Well, the DNA kit, $1.44 plus postage.

So what's in it?

So this would be perhaps what a DNA kit would look like.

First you would have the swab.

And we were all familiar with these swabs during COVID that these things stuck to the back of our brains.

But this is very simple.

It just goes in the mouth, just a simple swab.

Then it would go into the Ziploc bag and sealed up on the zip lock bag would be the offender's name.

Last.

Their Social Security number, their date, and which sheriff's office or arresting agency actually did the swab.

And then it would go into a mailer.

This is something that would be furnished by the state of Georgia.

Postage paid and very simple.

And, you know, they talked about, well, we've got to be trained on this.

Well, here it is.

It's just done.

And that is just a sample of what it could be.

So you, because it applies to the arrest stage.

Talk about that a little bit before someone is convicted.

There are people who worry about due process and also whether or not their DNA gets out there.

If the charges are dropped.

Well, first of all, this DNA is not like ancestry.

It's not like family tree DNA.

This is not like 23 Andme.

This doesn't tell if you're a male or female.

If you have blue eyes or anything like that.

What this does, and you can see at Ashley Spence, who is the director of this, you can see the numbers down at the bottom of her card.

That is her DNA profile.

And so it doesn't tell anything personal about her at all, but it just is a DNA profile that matches and is particular to that one person.

So tell us who Ashley Spence is.

Ashley Spence is the director of DNA Justice Project.

And that's who you have named the bill after.

That is correct.

This lady came she was raped as a young college student.

And because of the DNA test and a rape kit, seven years later, the this person committed burglary and was arrested for burglary.

Well, he could have been breaking in to perhaps rape another victim.

But what he did, he was arrested for burglary.

And in California, and they took his DNA, sent it to Codis, and it matched.

Not only did it match her, he was a serial rapist.

He's now serving 135 years in prison.

So the stories go on just like the Tara Louise Baker cold case in Athens.

Right in this.

DNA solved that crime.

But not only does DNA help prove guilt, it can prove innocence.

There was a double homicide in Effingham County of a couple killed in a church.

And a man went to prison and spent 25 years in prison.

And he was convicted of that double homicide.

The cold case unit that the House and the Senate passed just a few years ago.

Go went back and started looking at that cold case, and they found some hairs in the lady's hinges of her glasses.

Those hairs didn't match the DNA of the man in prison, but it matched the other suspect.

So it exonerated him.

It exonerated him after 25 years in prison.

That's amazing.

Where is your bill right now?

It's in rolls in the house.

I was just in the house.

Rules passed out of Senate.

Passed out of the Senate.

It's gone to the House.

It passed out of committee in the House.

Now it's waiting to go to the floor in the House.

Okay.

21 people were on death row before DNA proved their innocence.

Over 375 people as of 2020 have been exonerated through DNA evidence.

Okay.

Robert Dubois served 37 years for murder.

He did not commit.

I can tell you're very passionate about it.

We're going to.

We're going to keep up with this.

Thank you.

And thank you for coming on and talking about that.

I want to get to your legislation too.

Let's start with the bill to place tighter regulations on ketamine clinics.

And for people who don't understand what they are, explain that first.

Well, they are clinics with basically very little guidelines around them.

And ketamine is a very, very serious and dangerous drug.

In fact, it's one of the right date drugs that's being used on date rapes.

It sort of goes along with the senators talking about it.

It's used like it should be as an anesthesia.

It puts you to sleep.

And even the anesthesiologist, when they use it, always go and tell the recovery room nurses that they've used it.

It's so dangerous.

Well, now it's become popular.

And one of the stars of cheers died from it.

And the more you use it, Matthew Perry, the more you use it, the more addictive it is.

And all of a sudden, it's become a popular drug out in the community.

And some clinics are starting sort of like these medical spas, and you don't know what people are giving you.

Who's giving it to you?

Are they qualified or are there side effects?

They are giving ketamine IV it goes straight to your heart.

And right now there are no regulations on the amount that's given, how long you can be there, and you need to stay until you drive.

So it's not a matter of trying to do away with them.

There really isn't any proven proof yet that they help with PTSD.

It may help.

There's some indication, but it needs going to use it that if you use it, you normally use it with therapy right away.

So it needs to be regulated.

And you ended up with bipartisan support for your bill.

And yet the first time it didn't pass.

Well, that's not unusual.

Sometimes you have to go back and thing change things a little bit over about a, a bill.

It was mainly over who could own them.

And you know, we have a lot of people in the legislature sometimes that are entrepreneurs and it's not like an ice cream shop that you can, you know, invest in an ice cream shop and an out of state investor can come in, like with the housing problem that we're having of out-of-state big conglomerates.

This is a medical drug, a dangerous medical drug, and it needs to stay in the medical realm of how we do things with it.

So it passed out of the house.

And so what's next?

Where is it now?

It's over in the Senate.

Okay.

There's still time.

It's in the Senate health, right?

There's plenty of time for it to move.

And we have an agreement with everybody on it going forward.

And so I think you'll see it moving through the Senate pretty rapidly.

Okay.

Unfortunately, I know you had more to talk about.

We've run out of time.

You're always really great guests.

So thank you so much.

And we'll keep up with both your bills.

Okay, great.

Thank you very much.

Coming up, legislation to help mothers and babies, including making stillbirth a qualifying event for parental leave for state employees and creating an infant wellness hotline.

Two House members have lots to talk about on those topics, and we'll have that when we return.

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It's not a country thing or a city thing, but it is a. Get the crew together thing.

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Welcome back to Lawmakers.

I'm Donna Lowry, our guest for the next segment.

Have bills involving mothers and babies.

First Democratic Representative Park Cannon of Atlanta.

Among her House committees are ethics, insurance and Urban Affairs and Arts and Entertainment, and Democratic Representative Eric Gisler of Watkinsville.

His committee assignments include Defense and Veterans Affairs, health and Intragovernmental coordination.

Welcome to Lawmakers again.

This is your first time.

It is.

Yeah.

Because you've you've been in office.

How long?

About 3.5 months.

No.

You're still new.

Well, we're going to start with you, Representative Cannon.

You have a 36 page bill called the Georgia Maternal Health Momnibus bill.

And before you tell us all about it, kind of explain what HB 925 what led you to do this?

Well, as we all know, Georgia is working to correct the issues related to maternal mortality, but there's still other issues that we have to address maternal morbidity, which is a near miss.

If you almost passed away or the resources that your child is able to access, or perhaps the education that the providers need to have so they provide better care.

So 925 touches, all of that.

So what would the bill do?

Because you're talking about a lot of different things.

Yes, we went section by section to address a few different things.

One of them is to create a pilot program so that there can be telemedicine in rural counties that do not have providers, and that would be great because we have not yet even defined what a maternal care desert is in Georgia.

We're trying to define that as a county that does not have a hospital with an OB, and that's a lot of hospitals.

In fact, we're realizing that those families not only need telemedicine, but those providers need a little bit of implicit bias training because there are assumptions that they might have made and might need addressed before they actually see somebody who is almost at morbidity when they go to deliver.

And lastly, and this is what I love, is we recognize the providers that have been excluded from the perinatal workforce, doulas and mental health therapists and lactation consultants.

And we pull together a commission that lets those individuals speak more to the state.

And they're in some of these communities that are the deserts you mentioned.

Okay.

All right.

We'll keep up with that one.

Representative Gissler, you have a bill dealing with women and babies in a different way.

And this is it's kind of sad.

It's a sad aspect of childbirth, but a stillborn baby.

And explain the reason behind this bill for you.

Sure.

It's a House bill.

14 22.

Shortly after I was sworn in, a constituent reached out to me and she had gone through a couple a few very difficult pregnancies.

And in one of them, she actually had a stillbirth and she's actually a teacher.

So she works for the state of Georgia on the state health benefit plan.

And when she had the stillbirth, she was not initially given time off to recover from that because the baby didn't survive.

So it wasn't considered a birth.

So my bill would add language to add stillbirth specifically as a qualified life event to allow for family leave.

Yeah.

What kind of reaction are you getting?

Mostly good.

Really.

There's another representative Republican representative on the on the floor that I spoke to about it.

She had a similar bill.

And it was establishing a three week maternal maternal leave time.

And so I approached her about it because it really probably made sense to put that stillbirth qualification in her bill and she liked the language.

She was open to it, but her bill had already made it through committee and she didn't want to admit it, amend it, and have to go back through it again because it was pretty close to Crossover Day.

Her bill did pass out of the House over into the Senate, and I did talk to her a little bit about seeing if we could get it amended in the Senate, but she told me today, it doesn't look like the Senate's going to pick it up.

So it's something you're going to continue to fight for though.

Absolutely.

It sounds like it.

So let's stay with the baby topic and, and parental leave.

I'm sorry, you have you want the state to create a wellness hotline.

HB 795.

So tell us what that is all about for infants.

Certainly.

So any new parent knows how troubling it is when you don't see great signs with your baby.

You think that they're laughing and joking and then are they choking?

And so for those moments, parents are holding that in their own.

They don't have anyone to go to.

And so what we would like to create is an infant resource hotline.

And it's particular to a constituent in our district.

This is baby Carey.

Baby Carey passed away in 2023, very shortly after being born.

And Sudden Infant death syndrome doesn't yet have a really good research basis under it, but it's the understanding that a baby goes to sleep and remains asleep.

And when that happened to this family, unfortunately, EMS was not able to help and did not even know how to do newborn CPR.

So we want a resource where even that EMS could have called, or those parents could have called in.

So a hotline with a number that is easy for everybody to remember, that kind of thing.

We're ready for whatever number Georgia wants to have and whatever community needs.

Okay, we're going to switch a little bit more.

You have HB 13 82, and you want to ensure that Georgia college students receive credit for military service.

So any particular reason for this bill?

Sure.

It was another constituent issue.

Somebody reached out to me who had spent some time in the military and, you know, trained on all types of different things and held different roles in the military.

And the American Council on Education actually set standards and guidelines for how to translate military service into college credit.

And when I dug into it, I learned that the technical college system of Georgia, Tcsg actually has a pretty robust program in place to follow those standards.

But the USG system doesn't.

They do it by policy, but they're not required to by law.

So the bill originally just brought USG under those same standards legally.

The university system of Georgia.

Yes.

And so we reached out to, to the university system and they were actually willing to work with us.

They actually said, we don't feel like we need to do this because we have the Ace guidelines to fall back on, but we would like to do is build a database of all the, all the credits that they have awarded people coming out of the military.

Okay.

So that would provide a public place where people could go and see, oh, you know, the University of Georgia has awarded this type of credit for this type of service.

And, you know, maybe Georgia Tech or, you know, another university in the state has awarded another thing.

So you're feeling pretty good about this bill too.

Well, I thought so.

Yeah, that one actually did get.

A hearing for crossover.

You did.

Didn't get a vote.

Okay.

But come back again next year.

I know you will.

I want to get to something real quick with you.

You are not running again.

Tell us why.

Well, Donna, it's been ten years.

I have been doing this work in my 20s as the youngest legislator ever.

Now I'm in my 30s.

I just kind of want to be a young woman in the world.

And I won't go too far, because there's a lot of progressive politics that still need to be pushed.

Yeah.

And so you're, you're, you're still going to be around and talking about the kinds of things you are very passionate about.

Well, listen, there are members like Representative able, Mable Thomas, Renita, Shanon, other members who have gone on to continue their political work.

And I'm looking forward to doing that too.

Yeah.

And then how was your first few months?

You're feeling pretty good.

I must have liked it pretty well.

I signed up to do it again.

Okay.

Well, I will see you running and all the best to you.

Thanks so much.

Well, that does it for Lawmakers today.

Tomorrow is a day for hearings on bills that passed in one chamber, and the other chamber will take a look at them.

We will.

We will return on Wednesday.

So have a good night.