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Representative Ron Forster |
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Final days Under the Gold Dome2006 General AssemblyMarch 26, 2006 -- Ringgold, GA – We are in the midst of concluding the final days of the 2006 Georgia General Assembly session. We have completed 37 days and we fully expect to finish this session by Thursday of this coming week. There are two remaining issues that will guide the timeline of this session but they are important. The first is the conference committee report on the Fiscal Year 2007 budget bill and the other is the eminent domain legislation. During this weeks work we reviewed, debated, defeated or passed approximately 90 pieces of legislation. The biggest bill of the week was the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act or as we all know it as “the immigration bill.” Senate Bill 529 provides for the comprehensive regulation of persons in this state who are not lawfully present in the United States. It requires all employers in the state to participate in a federal work authorization program, makes it a crime to traffic a person for purposes of sexual servitude, and requires anyone over the age of 18 to show proof of lawful presence in the U.S. before receiving any state assistance. The bill would also disallow employers from claiming expenses for employing individuals without valid taxpayer identification, as well as, several other measures. This is easily our toughest effort to get the growing problem of illegal aliens from not just working here, but in the era of terrorism, this is now a safety and security issue for all of us. This bill was voted mainly along party lines, passing 123-51. We agreed to the changes that the Senate implemented in House Bill 1032 and now the Governor will have the opportunity to approve legislation that allows days off from school for children whose parent returns from deployment overseas with the military. This bill is designed to allow students up to 5 excused days for the family to reunite and is especially important with so many of our active duty and National Guard forces returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan. In an effort to help businesses, we have restructured lien laws for contractors for the work done in any easement or public right of way. S.B. 530 will allow the contractors to collect from the responsible parties and basically codifies an earlier court ruling governing this issue. It passed unanimously. In an effort to expand training for some of our “first responders”, we unanimously adopted S.B. 581, a bill that would authorize our Georgia Public Safety Training Center to begin classes for training emergency medical personnel. In an effort to better track monies paid out in local projects and grants, we will now require local governments to file with the state auditor, a grant certification telling of the expenditures of spent or unspent state funds. This “good government” bill, S.B. 202, passed unanimously. On the education front, we passed several issues. We overwhelmingly agreed to allow local boards of education to offer state funded high school classes in the History and Literature of the Old Testament Era and the History and Literature of the New Testament Era. S.B. 79 passed 151-7. We also agreed to extend and expand remedial education to include grades 6 through 8. S.B. 515 passed unanimously. I believe we all need to be informed about how our elected officials are representing us. I am getting an inside view that I want to share with everyone. Representative Ron Forster is serving his third two year term in the Georgia House of Representatives. He Chairs the Interstate Cooperation committee and also serves on the Public Utilities & Telecommunication, Appropriations and Insurance committees. In 2004 the American Legislative Exchange Council named him legislator of the year. His email address is ron.forster@house.ga.gov and he has a website at www.gasrd3.org. #### For More Information Contact:
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