Local lawmakers preview state legislative session

Nov. 17—District 54 state Sen. Chuck Payne, R-Dalton, and District 6 state Rep. Jason Ridley, R-Chatsworth, spoke at a special League of Women Voters of the Dalton Area presentation on Tuesday.

"We've got to go back in on Nov. 28 because we've got to do redistricting on, I think, the five House seats and two Senate seats and one congressional district," Ridley said. "It's going to be a lot of fun, it's a lot of sitting around and staring at each other until the Senate gets done ... but I think it's going to probably be a little more contentious now."

Ridley referenced a special session spurred by a United States District Court ruling earlier this year. In October, Judge Steve C. Jones determined that several boundaries in Georgia violated the Voting Rights Act; the state legislature has until Dec. 8 to redraw those boundaries.

In the last legislative session, Ridley said about 2,000 bills were proposed — with less than 400 actually passing.

"There's 1,612 still out there," he said, "so anything could happen next year."

When he started off as a state lawmaker, Ridley said Georgia's annual budget came in at $21 billion. He said it has since grown to nearly $33 billion.

Georgia concluded the 2022 budget year with an overall surplus of $5.3 billion. With 2024 on the horizon, the state's total rainy day funds eclipse $10 billion.

Ridley said he certainly has some preferences where that additional revenue is allocated.

"I don't know if y'all went down 411, but if you haven't, please do — and please get in the right-hand lane and enjoy the ride," he said. "Back in 1966, they put two huge galvanized piles under there ... over time, those things have started caving in."

Ridley estimated the costs of repairing that particular infrastructure to likely run in the $50 million to $60 million range.

"That's one that we're kind of looking at and a lot of that money is set aside for that," he said of the state's cash reserves. "For stuff like that, where you've got to have it and you don't have to wait on the federal government to approve it, because that is a federal highway."

When it comes to mental health access in Georgia, Ridley said the state is saddled with a lack of facilities.

"I have sheriff's offices call me all the time," he said. "We're working toward that ... this year we've started, actually, a program to get psychologists and psychiatrists back in Georgia."

Payne said he was a big "fighter" for mental health reform legislation passed by Georgia lawmakers in the last session.

"It was the framework and this is what my hope is and to continue to push for," he said. "Mental health reform is criminal justice reform."

He reflected on the 1990s, when the collective social mentality was, in his words, "lock them all up and throw away the key."

He brought up mandatory sentences as one consequence — something he believes took power out of judges' hands.

"That was an errored way," Payne said. "I'm going to keep praising our accountability courts ... I'm always going to be a proponent of restorative justice and all those things, and the big component of that is mental health."

Simply put, Payne contended there are some people in Georgia's jails who should not be behind bars.

"They're mentally unstable, they're not criminal," he continued. "But getting to that point where we get enough mental health hospitals ... we've still got to get back to where we have something, treatment services in place on the local level, the ground level, that we can treat these folks that have mental health issues and concerns."

That segued into comments about Georgia's "certificate of need" (CON) processes for hospitals.

Ridley said he's heard one proposal that would seek to create the equivalent of "a carbon tax credit" for rural hospitals with high volumes of uninsured patients.

He also said he was concerned about the sway medical centers outside of the state may have on determining what kinds of services are offered within Georgia's healthcare facilities.

"If you want to hear something crazy, the Dalton hospital, they wanted to do heart surgery," he said.

"It took a year and I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and then a judge decided if they could do it or not."

Payne said the CON requirements are in place because there's certainly a finite number of physicians skilled in things like open heart and brain surgery.

"We don't have enough of those people in our workforce to supply the need we have right now," he said — adding that the problem is also applicable to the number of trained mental health workers in Georgia.

Payne recounted his role in the formation of the Georgia Commission on Civics Education.

"The truth of the matter is, after an election where I got 30,000 emails — literally 30,000 emails, now they weren't all from Georgia because the focus was so much on Georgia in 2020 — but I got 30,000 emails and it scared me to death that people said 'Throw the law out the window and give us our king,'" he said. "To me, the rule of law matters ... the law is our king in this nation and we've somehow forgotten that."

Payne said he's never been a "partisan hack" — and strives to never become one.

"The bills that I have put forth have been a local bill for the city of Dalton," he said. "As asked by the City Council for the city wards, the election wards — they're redrawing their maps, they have to approve that through us."

Another bill he supported, Payne said, expedited tribunal hearings for suspended public school students.

"They just can't drag that out," he said. "That was a bill just to try to speed that process up."

In the last legislative session, Payne was appointed chairman of the Senate's Committee on Science and Technology.

Over the summer, he said lawmakers took a deep dive into the possible ramifications of artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

"It's almost like a sci-fi movie, we think computers are going to be running us," he said. "It's got a purpose to serve in our society, but we just need to make sure that we're doing it wisely."

Circling back to the topic of criminal justice reform, Payne said he wants to avoid circumstances that may create "generational" issues.

Rather than "destroy families," he said he wants to keep them together.

"My goal is that we're not locking up breadwinners, the mother or the father of that nuclear family," he said. "You take away the breadwinner, what have you done to the children?"

As a legislator, Payne said he wants to serve as a "voice of reason" underneath the Gold Dome in Atlanta.

"Freedom is a command of responsibility to all of us as citizens," he said. "We're in this boat together and we've got to take care of one another ... hope will always compel our action, but want never will."

Payne said that requires lawmakers and constituents alike to put their "turf wars" behind them. "And start just sitting down and having adult conversations about how we can help one another through certain areas," he concluded.