HB one is a Democratic bill called the Pediatric Safe Storage Act.

That's what we rushed to this House.

That's what we brought a desire to protect our students, a desire to protect young people from making a tragic mistake that harms them or others.

That's what Democrats brought you.

This is SB one.

SB one, the Senate's first priority is a problem that does not exist.

Passions still run high in the waning days of the 2025 session, as SB one, which bans transgender athletes from female sports, finally gets debated in the House.

Good evening and welcome to Lawmakers.

I'm Donna Lowry in Atlanta.

It's day 38 of the Georgia legislative session.

Things are heating up on the last week at the Capitol, and the longer days are already underway.

They just wrapped up in both chambers.

Tonight we dive into some election bills we expect debated in the coming days.

We'll also take a closer look at proposed legislation aimed at supporting older adults in assisted living and personal care homes, as well as the caregivers who help them.

And if you're like many of us, you probably have a few monthly subscriptions for music or entertainment that you might not think about much.

We'll discuss legislation that could make it much easier to cancel those subscriptions when you want to.

And if your driver's license is on your phone, you may be wondering where and when you can use it.

We'll hear from two legislators who are pushing to expand those options.

But first, we turn to our busy Capitol correspondent, Sarah Kallis, for a look at what happened today under the Gold Dome.

Hi, Donna.

Both chambers took up dozens of bills on the first day of the last week of the session.

The Senate took on 27 House bills on the rules calendar.

Most notable HB 268, which increases school safety.

Before the bills presentation, Senator Bill Cowsert read the names of Apalachee High School shooting victims and asked for a moment of silence.

Senators asked for a moment of silence.

The bill sets up a variety of new elementary and secondary school safeguards and protocols, including school mapping for first responders.

Transferring a student's academic and legal records among schools and law enforcement within a required period.

And creating a statewide Emergency Alert System, a database of student misconduct proposed in the House's original version, was removed because of parents concerns.

Parents kept coming and being heard saying, I don't think I want my child to be persecuted for life because they do something stupid in the eighth grade and they say, man, I'd like to blow this building up.

That ain't good to say, but that doesn't mean they're going to do it.

And if the school faculty didn't think it was significant enough for a serious enough to give them disciplinary action and create a record, why should we have this shadow database, so to speak, on misconduct of students.

Democrats wanted to add language that would take children with certain cognitive limitations into consideration.

But that amendment failed.

The bill was passed 45-9 After years of effort, 33 black legislators elected in 18 68 during reconstruction and then expelled some of the first African American legislators elected in the U.S. Will finally be recognized at the Capitol.

House Bill 303 will place Memorial on Capitol grounds, honoring the men.

Simply honoring their sacrifice that they made back then when they went up against all odds.

Also today.

Mr. President, I move the Senate, insist on its substitute to House Bill 68.

The Senate insisted on their version of the fiscal year 2026 budget, after the House rejected the Senate's changes.

A conference committee with the House was then agreed upon to hammer out their differences to finalize the budget by Friday.

In the House, members unanimously passed Senate Bill 93, or the Georgia Early Literacy Act.

The bill would create new guidelines for teaching reading to young students by banning the three cueing system.

This ensures Georgia teachers are being trained in alignment with our science of reading standards.

It works to strengthen our efforts to end the reliance on the three cueing practice.

And it supports our teachers by making sure they are ready to teach reading to our children on day one in the classroom.

After lunch, the house took up one of the most contentious bills of the session.

Senate Bill one SB one would ban transgender girls from participating in girls sports and require changing rooms to be separated by sex assigned at birth.

Democrats were quick to oppose the bill.

This is a manufactured crisis designed not to solve a real problem, but to create division and fear.

The NCAA has changed its policy on transgender athletes.

The IOC has rules in place that deal with transgender athletes.

The Georgia High School Association has rules that deal with transgender athletes.

I question why we must double down and triple down.

They have not asked us for this.

But Republicans say it protects the integrity of female sports.

This legislation does not target individuals.

It targets inequities.

It safeguards the decades of progress made in women's athletics by reaffirming the state's interest in promoting equal opportunity.

And.

Preventing unfair advantages.

The bill also respects privacy by ensuring that shared facilities used during competitions, such as locker rooms, restrooms and sleeping quarters are designated and used according to biological sex while still offering reasonable accommodations for all students.

It prohibits males from competing in female sports, thereby protecting the competitive balance and fiscal safety that women's sports depend upon.

The bill passed 100 to 64 and was immediately transmitted to the Senate.

The House took up another controversial school related bill, SB 82.

The bill would create financial incentives for local school boards to approve petitions for new charter schools, and penalize school systems that repeatedly deny charter school proposals that have been approved by the state Charter School Commission.

Supporters say SB 82 expands options for students.

What this bill does is simply it's a very modest proposal to encourage local school boards to provide more public school options to students.

But opponents say that the bill is taxing on local education systems.

Not only does it usurp their elected responsibilities, but it pressures them to approve charter school applications and lays the groundwork for increased privatization of all of our public schools.

The bill passed 100 and 7-62 in a mostly party line vote.

Committees will meet tomorrow, but the House and Senate floor sessions will be back on Wednesday.

That's my Capitol report.

Donna.

Thanks, Sara.

Two state senators join us now to talk about election bills, legislation to help older adults and caregivers, and more.

Republican Senator Randy Robertson of Catala is the Senate majority whip.

The former law enforcement officer chairs the Public safety committee and is the secretary of Government Oversight.

And Democratic Senator Jason Estevez of Atlanta.

His committees include ethics, finance, Children and Families, agriculture, and Consumer Affairs.

Welcome to Lawmakers, gentlemen.

Thank you for joining us from the Capitol.

I know you guys just wrapped up in the Senate not too long ago.

Thank you Donna.

Thank you sir.

Thank you so much for having us.

It's been it's been a long day.

A long day.

So we're going to get right to it.

Chairman Robertson, you have a couple of election bills, and let's start with SB 175, which would prohibit the use of ranked choice voting in elections.

Explain how it would work.

Well, ranked choice voting has shown itself around the country to be a confusing and, problematic process.

And I think we solved a lot of the issues in Georgia with SB 202.

And we've shown ourselves to be able to have a turnout that does better than most places around the country and has been very effective and very efficient.

We our voter lines are moving swiftly.

The confusion has been moved to a minimum, and we still have individuals on both sides of the aisle attempting to find confusion in our elections.

And there's been a move around the country.

There's a move here in Georgia to bring ranked choice voting in here, which I think will undo a lot of the good things that SB 202 has done and the things that we continue to do in our ethics committee here in the Georgia State Senate.

Well, Senator Estevez, you voted against this.

Against it.

Tell us why.

I did.

I believe that ranked choice voting should be an option that our municipalities should be able to use, particularly in an effort to save money.

Elections in Georgia, cost taxpayers, especially local taxpayers, a lot of a lot of money.

And we should be ensuring that our municipalities and our counties have options available to them that could potentially save money.

And ranked choice voting has been shown to be successful across the country, and I don't see a need to hamstring our local folks.

Okay.

I want to stick with elections for a little moment and talk about a House bill you've both seen in the Senate Ethics Committee.

HB 397, which would allow for sweeping changes to Georgia's elections, deals with everything from paper ballots to getting rid of the system that allows states to share voter information, known as Eric.

So let's start with you, Chairman Robertson.

Tell us your feelings on that bill.

Well, it's a very multi-layered piece of legislation.

I think we started a couple of meetings ago to try to dissect it and pull it apart.

While I find a lot of it intriguing and positive, I do think we have a little more work to do to make sure that, again, that we're keeping the field clear and transparent for our voters as they go out and there are good changes we can make.

But we have to understand we cannot undo the good things we did with SB 202.

Yeah, you voted to pass it out of the Ethics Committee.

Senator Estevez, you voted against it.

Tell us why.

I did, and, Donna, I'll let you know that.

I'm very glad that the authors of the bill removed a provision in one of the drafts that would have limited counties across the state to one early voting location.

That scared me to death.

Thinking about whether it's Muskogee County, whether it's thinking about Fulton County.

It would have made early voting in our elections a mess.

And we've gone a long way to make early voting easy for voters, and I would hate to make that much harder by some of the language that had been originally included.

Now, the current draft of the bill still has its issues, which is why I voted against it.

The main issue that I have is if we're trying to keep clean voting rolls, then we need to make sure that we have a safe way to exchange data with other states.

And right now, the only organization that does that is Eric.

And I'm concerned that by requiring the Secretary of State to remove the state of Georgia from that organization, we would be relying on one on one bilateral agreements with 50 states across the country.

And I have some cybersecurity concerns.

I have privacy concerns with that.

And I think that we should be using taxpayer money efficiently and as effectively as possible.

And there's a perfectly good organization that's helped us with keeping track of voters.

I'm not sure why we would want to all of a sudden make a change because of conspiracy theories and opinions of folks on on what the purpose of Eric is.

Well, that's certainly one bill we'll be watching this week.

Senator Estevez, I want to change gears a little bit.

You have three bills dealing with older adults and assisted living and personal care homes and and their caregivers.

So SB 186-87-1808 I understand this topic is personal for you, but what would the the legislation do?

Yeah.

So I'm a caregiver of a mom with Alzheimer's.

She's unfortunately in late stage Alzheimer's.

And my wife and I have had to navigate providing care for her.

And I've seen how challenging the senior care system is in this state.

And, Donna, we have more seniors in this state than we do young people than we do babies.

So we need to make sure that we're doing all that we can to ensure that our seniors are able to grow old with dignity, respect and love.

And that means ensuring that they have a roof over their heads and making sure that they're receiving the care that they need.

So the bills that I've introduced, one would expand Medicaid to ensure that we're not forcing our seniors to go broke before they receive support.

Right now, seniors essentially have to go to a nursing home before they receive state support.

They could be perfectly fine at home or in a personal care home or in a assisted living facility with lower levels of care that would save them heartache, but it would also save taxpayer dollars.

I also introduced a bill to significantly increase the caregiver tax credit.

Right now, that tax credit is $150.

And for all you caregivers out there, you know that that's a drop in the bucket.

Based on what we spend to care for our loved ones.

And then the last bill that I introduced related to this topic is a bill that would create a agency on aging.

We have agencies dedicated to our children, to our families, to public safety, to mental health.

There's a group that's just as important as all those.

And those are our seniors.

So we should be ensuring that our seniors have our focus in this building.

Focus in our budget and ensuring that there's an agency head and a department focused on this topic, I think would help coordinate care and ensure that our seniors are receiving the care they deserve.

Okay.

Well, we'll keep watch on that one.

I know that didn't pass out this year, but you'll keep it going.

Chairman Robertson, I want to get back with you about.

Another continue.

Okay.

I want another bill that passed out of the Senate along party lines.

Would keep inmates from receiving sex change care.

Can you tell us about it?

Briefly.

Yeah.

Just briefly.

What it would do is basically anybody that's, that that identifies as transgender, they would be treated in prison just the way they are now.

When they were to go inside, if there was any particular therapies or things like that that they are on, as long as it was not therapy related to transitioning, they would still be able to receive those.

While in the Georgia Department of Corrections.

But those who go in there hoping to fully transition while they are in there would not be able to do that, because this bill would prohibit state tax dollars from being used to help individuals transition from male to female or female to male according to their definition, while being incarcerated in the Georgia Department of Corrections.

All right.

Well, thank you, Senator Estevez.

I'll just mention that you voted against it.

I apologize, we don't have time to get into that.

But I do want that on record.

I want to thank you both for joining me after a long, busy day at the Capitol.

I really appreciate this.

Donna, thank you always for supporting us.

We appreciate you.

Thanks for having us.

All right.

Thank you.

Well, coming up, when was the last time you checked your monthly charges for a Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Prime or new subscriptions?

Do they fall under hidden costs in your budget?

And it's hard to get rid of them.

Two House members are looking to make it easier to get out of those contracts.

Stick around and hear what they have to say.

You're watching Lawmakers on GPB.

Georgia Farm Bureau, a grassroots organization dedicated to preserving Georgia agriculture.

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I'm a queen.

I don't fear anyone.

This is a woman people wanted to follow.

You are an important part of our work.

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Saddle my horse immediately.

She's a female trailblazer.

We did it by acknowledging our own worth.

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This is something that's actually altering the course of history.

You're charged with keeping these stories alive.

I. Alectra Lawmakers.

I'm Donna Lowry.

If you're like many people these days, you pay for subscriptions.

You don't even think about.

A study by a research firm out of Chicago found 72% of respondents set their monthly subscriptions on auto pay.

74% of subscribers admit it's easy to forget recurring monthly charges, and 42% have forgotten about a recurring monthly subscription, which they are still paying for but are no longer using.

Then there's this list that might seem familiar.

Here are the types of forgotten monthly subscriptions.

Mobile phone, internet, TV, and movie streaming services.

Amazon Prime.

Music streaming.

Gaming and news subscriptions, and of course, other subscriptions.

And I'm sure a lot of us see ourselves on those lists and recognize it's hard sometimes to cancel them.

That's one of the things we'll talk about with our guests.

Republican Representative Houston Gaines of Athens.

He's vice chair of House appropriations and some of his other committee assignments include ethics, Governmental affairs, and insurance.

And Republican Representative Carter Barrett of Cumming.

He's vice chair of education and also on the House Appropriations Committee, as well as serving as secretary on both the banks and Banking and Code revision committees.

Welcome to Lawmakers.

Busy men who have been at the Capitol all day.

So thank you so much for being on the show.

Thank you Donna.

Thank you Donna.

Well, you both have served as lead sponsors on bills dealing with online subscription.

So, Representative Gaines, you led HB 528 last year and it became law on New Year's Day of this year.

So tell us what that does.

And then we'll talk about this year.

Sure.

Well, as you mentioned, the onset.

You know, the the number of consumers who have issues when they go to renew a subscription.

It's a it's a challenge for many folks because they want to cancel their subscription, but it almost becomes impossible to cancel.

A lot of times you get signed up for something, and there's no way to get out of what you just subscribed to.

And so that bill we passed last year, a consumer friendly bill that allows and ensures that if someone subscribes to something online, that to be able to cancel it online, they would have to be forced to come in in person or even we heard of stories where someone was having to send a letter by mail, even though they signed up for the subscription online.

So it's a consumer friendly bill.

And this year, Representative Carter Barrett has got an outstanding bill to add to that work we did last year and looking forward to his bill getting over the finish line as well as we try to continue to help consumers facing this issue.

Okay.

Representative Barrett, so you have 529.

Tell us what that would do.

Well, Donna, I'm standing on the shoulders of giants.

And Vice Chairman Gaines over here.

And he built a really nice foundational bill to on which I could work off of, you know, someone said to me, where did the idea come from, this bill?

I said, oh, it came because, well, in just the last two months alone, I've gotten six renewal notices and I've missed about half of the emails.

And I've and I had subscriptions going up dramatically.

And, you know, a $52 subscription becomes 275 and next year it will become 480.

And I just thought, this is this is just, just almost surreal.

And I thought, what can we do differently to maybe an ounce of prevention kind of a thing?

What can we do just to avoid the problem at all?

And I thought whenever I go buy a subscription, let's say for a year for a newspaper or an online Sirius satellite radio or something like that, what if I could just make the thing terminate at the end of that period?

Typically what they'll do is take my credit card and they'll say, okay, great, you're setting you up.

And for your convenience, we're going to go ahead and put you on an automatic renewal.

And and it's no problem at all.

You'll just I mean, you can cancel them easily.

It's no problem.

And and then but now the onus is on me to go put that on my calendar a year from now and to pay attention.

And they'll send me an email and I might see it.

I might not, because we all get 500 emails a week, it seems like, or more.

And and if you don't catch those things, sometimes they'll just automatically renew, sometimes at a dramatically higher price.

In other cases, sometimes those people will come back and say, oh, well, you missed your your renewal.

We'll go ahead and credit you back.

And in fact, we've got an offer for you and we'll do it at a much lower price today.

Others will say, okay, you can cancel, but your subscription is good through March of next year.

You're not getting your $100 back.

And so everyone sort of has a different iteration of this.

And these are mostly wonderful companies.

We just love to use all of their services and products.

But but I thought, what can we do differently?

I thought, what if we just set it up so that at the end of your term, your subscription is over?

So if a company wants to offer me an automatic renewal, that's great, but they should also offer me the ability to have the thing terminated at the end of the term.

Because when I bought that newspaper subscription for a year, I meant a year, so that at the end of the year, if they provide a great service and a reasonable price, I'm going to renew it anyway.

When I get my car and I want to go to the beach and that radio doesn't turn on, I say, you know what?

I need to go renew that subscription.

So that's kind of the premise.

That's how we got started on this.

And so what your bill would do is it would make the subscription end and people would have to renew it.

If they choose to do so.

So a company can offer me an automatic renewal if they want.

And they but they also need to offer me the option to have it terminated at the end.

It's going to shift the onus from me having to keep track of it to putting the onus back on them so that they can come back and resell me if I choose to have it terminate.

This bill is supported by the Georgia Council on Aging.

You know, I had someone say to me gee, the private equity funds don't like this bill because they kind of like that, that whole get it and forget it mentality for these subscriptions.

But I thought, well, there's almost 11 million Georgians, I think, who will.

And and that's why the Georgia Council on Aging supports this bill.

As I took this through committee in the House and the Agriculture and Consumer Affairs Committee, the chairman of that committee said this is one of the better bills we've had this year.

And the fact is, it passed out of that committee unanimously.

Then it passed the House with a vote of 160 9-2 Where is it now?

It's over in the Senate.

I think it needs a little.

It's in the Senate.

We had a hearing on it, and it's going to take a little refining.

In fact, the Senator Estevez and I met the other day, and I met with Senator Dole's all this week, and it's going to take some refining.

I think we'll probably have it be one of the first bills up next session, probably.

I don't see it going anywhere this year.

I think it will be a two year bill.

Okay.

Well, we'll keep an eye on it certainly, because some of us relate to it very much so.

Representative Gaines, I want to get to your bill on about driver's licenses in the electronic format.

Some people have them on their phones, but this will expand it to where you can use them.

Who can look at them, talk about HB 296.

Sure.

Sure.

It is another pro consumer bill.

Over 450,000 Georgians have the mobile driver's license and encouraged Georgians to to get it on on your Apple Wallet or Android wallet.

And it's where if you go through actually now through TSA security, you can use your mobile driver's license.

But if you're pulled over by law enforcement officer in Georgia, you cannot.

And so what this bill would do would be ensure if you're pulled over by a law enforcement officer, you'd be able to show your mobile driver's license.

They would be able to scan it at your vehicle so they don't have to take your phone back to their car.

They could scan it, tap to touch technology as they are now, but this does give two years for law enforcement to give the technology that they would need in order to scan that mobile driver's license.

But again, other pro consumer bill that allows drivers when they're out and about, if they forget their wallet, they don't have their physical I.D., they'd be able to present their mobile driver's license.

And again over 450,000 Georgians already have their mobile driver's license.

This just ensures that if they interact with law enforcement officer, they can present it.

And again, right now, if you go through TSA security at the airport, you can use your mobile license.

So we're just ensuring that opportunity expand the use of mobile driver's license.

And you said it's something that we may not see for a couple of years.

It'll take a while for it to to be able to be something we can do in Georgia.

So the bill as it's written, would any agency that already has a technology which a lot of agencies already do, they would accept it today.

But for some agencies, they need a little more time to get that technology.

By 2027, they would have to accept it, but you would start seeing by July 1 of this year.

Many agencies go going ahead and accepting mobile driver's licenses.

But I don't want to tell drivers don't don't worry about bringing your I.D.

If you happen to get pulled over by an agency that doesn't have that technology, they would still have two years to get fully ready.

And that bill is in the Senate.

Where is it in the Senate?

It's sitting in Senate rules that we expect to vote either on Wednesday or Friday.

And I believe we're going to get that bill done this year.

Okay.

We'll keep up with it.

We don't have a lot of time, Representative Barrett, but you have an education bill that would speed up the process for IEP or Individualized education programs for special needs students.

Can you talk about it really quickly?

Yeah.

The Georgia Special Needs Scholarship program, it allows students with disabilities the ability to receive a state funded scholarship to go to a private school that can better meet their needs.

They're more than 6,300 students that take part in this program.

It's been out there since 2007.

This bill just makes a very good program, a little more efficient, a little more family friendly.

Okay.

I want to thank you both for your your bills that deal with consumers and families.

I appreciate that.

Thanks for being on the show after a long day.

So that does it for Lawmakers today after a long day.

We don't have a show.

Tomorrow.

The legislature will spend the day working on committees to get as much done as possible before signing day.

On Friday, our show returns to the chamber when they return to the chambers on Wednesday, and we'll see you then.