Housing, healthcare, public safety: Here's what Savannah area lawmakers are prioritizing in 2024

Now that the new year is underway, state lawmakers are turning their attention to the 2024 legislative session, which started Monday.

With the 2023 special redistricting session in recent memory and 2024 elections looming, the legislative session has the potential to be deeply divided along partisan lines. However, each member of Chatham County’s delegation has emphasized their commitment to teamwork and compromise with their fellow legislators on both sides of the aisle.

The 2024 legislative session is also the second in a two-year series, meaning that bills that stalled during the 2023 session have another chance to pass this year. 

Here’s what Chatham County legislators have in mind:

Senate District 1: Ben Watson

As a practicing physician and the chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee, health reform is one of the key issues for the Republican senator. Current Certificate of Need laws require new healthcare facilities to prove a need for new facilities to the Department of Community Health, making it harder to establish new healthcare centers.

“I think that everybody is on the page that that needs to be either done away with or at least modified significantly, because it is monopolistic and anti-competitive,” Watson said. “These nonprofit hospitals that do not pay any property tax are stifling growth in the health industry.”

Watson, who has been serving in the Georgia senate since 2014 and represents Bryan, Liberty, and Chatham counties, also considers tort reform and school safety to be among his top priorities.

Senate District 2: Derek Mallow

First elected to the Georgia House in 2020 and the state Senate in 2022, Mallow is a relative newcomer to the Chatham delegation. During his first term as a senator, he championed issues like expanding access to affordable housing and public transit. This legislative session, he is hoping to focus on Medicaid expansion, the 911 and EMS system, and funding the Childcare and Parent Services (CAPS) program. The senator, who serves as the executive director and CEO of East Savannah United, is also hoping to introduce legislation to mandate that businesses accept cash payments from customers.

“I think that is payment discrimination for people, especially our seniors who are the most vulnerable to be hacked and to have their accounts wiped," Mallow said. “Cash is still legal currency and legal tender in the U.S. We should accept cash as a method of payment.”

Senate District 4: Billy Hickman

Raising Georgia’s literacy rates continues to be an issue of great importance to Hickman, who serves as the Higher Education Committee chairman and is married to an educator. In 2024, Hickman has a slate of education-themed reforms on his priority list, saying he hopes to expand lottery-funded Pre-K programs, provide more funding for schools working to implement the Georgia Early Literacy Act, and pass legislation to make it easier for retired teachers to reenter the field, particularly in rural areas.

House District 161: Bill Hitchens

With Savannah’s rapid growth over the last several years, transportation is a key issue for Hitchens, whose district covers Pooler, Port Wentworth, Rincon and south Effingham County, as well as State Route 21.

“Transportation is always an issue and it's hard for the state and local governments to keep up with the volume of growth,” Hitchens said. “Sometimes I think we have more cars than we have space to put them on our roads.”

Hitchens, a veteran and retired Georgia State Patrol trooper who was first elected in 2013, also said that he will be focusing on certificate of need reform in 2024.

House District 162: Carl Gilliard

Transportation continues to be a key issue for Gilliard, who has long been a proponent of establishing a high-speed rail between Atlanta and Savannah, a project that received an $8 million grant from Congress in 2022. Gilliard is also hoping to expand renters’ protections by requiring landlords to provide 60 days notice before ending a lease, and is seeking greater funding for mental health facilities.

“There are a lot of people that are incarcerated that don’t belong in jail, they really need to get the help they need,” he said. “If we want to break the recidivism of crowded jails and prisons, not only in Georgia but in Savannah, we really need to look at getting some additional facilities.”

House District 163: Anne Allen Westbrook

Another relative newcomer to the Chatham County delegation, the 2023 legislative session was Westbrook’s first term in the state House. An attorney who represents the city of Savannah, she is planning to focus on expanding access to affordable housing, pursuing new gun safety reforms, and reducing rates of maternal mortality.

“Maternal mortality, particularly for Black women continues to be a huge, huge issue,” Westbrook, who serves on the House Democratic Caucus committee on maternal mortality, said. “We have one of the highest rates of Black maternal mortality in the country and it's not getting better. So I think that making sure that people have access to care, have health insurance, are healthy when they embark on pregnancy so that they can stay healthy through pregnancy and birth is really important.”

More: Georgia House hearing on maternal mortality calls for solutions to healthcare deserts

House District 164: Ron Stephens

Tax issues are top of mind for the dean of Chatham County’s delegation. In 2024, he is focused on returning money from the state’s budget surplus back to taxpayers, as well as protecting tax credits for the film industry, which he says is a major driver of tourism in the state.

“We need to protect that,” he said. “That's an economic engine that will keep our state going for a very long time. In those areas, I’m in more of a defensive posture to make sure that we don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg, if you will.”

He is also hoping to secure more funding to redevelop the riverwalk around the new Savannah Convention Center

“It'll be difficult, to say the least, but we are going to ask as a delegation to help shore up the bank from caving in there in front of the Trade Center and to make sure that it is a place that people can visit over the next few decades,” Stephens said.

More: Savannah Convention Center asking for $15 million from state for riverwalk updates

House District 165: Edna Jackson

Savannah’s former mayor is prioritizing funding for HBCUs, expanding mental health treatment, and improving living facilities for senior citizens during the upcoming session.

“When you talk about mental health, you also have to talk about those individuals that are homeless,” she said, noting that while Savannah has worked to implement tiny houses, mental healthcare was also a key resource for helping unhoused individuals. “We need to make sure that they're getting the kind of professionalism and doctors that are willing to work with them.”

In light of the upcoming elections, she also stressed the need to improve voter access in Georgia.

“It's always going to be a continuous battle about the voting rights of people,” she said.  “We need to make sure that everybody has the right to vote. We need to make sure that our system can handle what we are doing. I am pro-machine, I am not for going back to the hand ballots because that is very time consuming, and I do think the machines have worked in the state of Georgia.”

House District 166: Jesse Petrea

A proud representative of coastal Georgia’s Chatham and Bryan counties, Petrea has a wide range of maritime-related issues on his priority list in 2024. The first item on his agenda is to create a penalty for those who abandon ships in Georgia’s public waters, an issue he says costs the state anywhere from $35,000 to 45,000 per vessel. He also aims to clarify some language in an oyster farming bill he helped pass in 2019, to clarify regulations for oyster mariculture workers.

“Oyster mariculture is a new industry that I helped create, and I want to follow it to make sure that we make it as perfect as possible," Petrea said. "Soon folks are going to be eating Georgia farm-raised oysters all over the country, if all goes well.”

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Georgia legislature: Chatham County reps share their priorities