Election years tend to make lawmakers skittish about controversial issue, since their positions could provide ammunition for their opponents later in the year. But when the Gold Dome opens for business Monday, pressing matters about water, taxes, traffic and Grady Memorial Hospital, among other things, may force representatives and senators to make hard choices.

Issues of particular interest to lawyers that could come up this session include changes to the state's beleaguered indigent defense system, the state's open government laws and a law that gives broad malpractice immunity to emergency room doctors.

Add to that mix intra-party bickering between Republican legislators and Gov. Sonny Perdue, including widespread trepidation about House Speaker Glenn Richardson's proposed tax reform, and this year's session could prove memorable.

Top of the list is how to share Georgia's dwindling water supply. With a persistent drought, water levels have plunged at Lake Lanier and Allatoona Lake, while the state's lawyers are battling counterparts from Alabama and Florida over the management of those reservoirs by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

“To me, water is the most important thing we'll do [this year], since we're running out of it,” said Republican Sen. Seth Harp, a family law attorney in Columbus and a longtime member of the Sierra Club.

Due to earlier legislation that set up a formal process for studying the state's water resources, the Legislature must pass within the first two weeks of this year's session a law on how to manage Georgia's rivers and streams.

A factor guiding the water discussion is the fear by many people in South Georgia that metro Atlanta wants to use the statewide water-management plan to seize the plentiful water supply in the southern part of the state and pipe it north to the fast-growing Atlanta suburbs.

“Water is a very important issue to me, and to my district,” said Rep. Roger B. Lane, R-Darien, an attorney who sits on the House Natural Resources and Environment Committee.

Dealing with the drought will also comprise some of the discussion on managing water. Richardson and Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle have said they'll back legislation to provide funding for and speed up the process of building new reservoirs. Environmentalists generally oppose building new dams, while some other groups wonder if land in north Georgia, where new reservoirs would probably be built, has gotten too expensive for the state or local governments to afford.

Richardson will be leading the charge on another high-profile matter this year, comprehensive tax reform. Richardson traveled the state extensively this fall promoting his GREAT Plan, which stands for Georgia's Repeal of Every Ad Valorem Tax. The details of his plan have changed several times over the past months, and it's expected to evolve more as the Legislature picks up the measure.

Lane, the Republican from Darien, said he expects the House to approve Richardson's version of the tax bill early in the session. The bill would then go to the Senate, where its prospects are murky.

“I think Glenn's plan will be dead on arrival,” Harp said. “A lot of people are just saying that dog won't hunt, because it's fiscally unsound.”

The problem, said Harp, is that to make up for the revenue lost from ad valorem taxes, Richardson's plan calls for expanded sales taxes.

Harp said his constituents are concerned about less local control of tax revenue. An expanded sales tax could cause people who live in cities on the state border—Columbus is on the Alabama state line, for example—to cross over into neighboring states to make many of their purchases.

The issue of losing retail sales to neighboring states isn't limited to Columbus. Several other metropolitan areas are located on the Georgia state border—Augusta and Savannah are within a few miles of South Carolina, Valdosta is next to Florida and outer areas of Chattanooga, Tenn., are in Northwest Georgia.

Richardson's tax plan could also be aggressively opposed by city and county governments and school boards. Although the latest incarnation of Richardson's plan would allow cities and counties to retain property taxes, it would abolish school property taxes—the primary method of financing public schools. Revenue for schools would instead be raised through the sales tax and funneled through the state Department of Revenue before reaching local school districts.

Richardson has made “substantial” changes to his tax-reform proposal to ensure that schools continue to receive their current level of funding, said Rep. Edward Lindsey, R-Atlanta.

“The speaker has taken into account a lot of people's concerns, including mine,” said Lindsey, who sits on the House Education Committee. “There is a lot of interest statewide in shifting away from the dependence on property taxes when it comes to funding education, and to broaden the method of funding education.”

The current version of Richardson's legislation would allow local school districts to continue to set their own millage rates, Lindsey said.

Several other bills related to taxes have also been introduced, including two nearly identical measures sponsored by Lindsey and by Senate President Pro Tempore Eric Johnson, R-Savannah, to freeze increases in property assessments.

Legislators will also likely be asked to vote on a measure to increase state funding for Grady Memorial Hospital. Richardson and other legislative leaders have said they want to assist Grady with its financial troubles, because it's the only hospital in metro Atlanta that provides the highest level of emergency-room health care services. Grady's board is scheduled to vote soon on a proposal to create a new private, nonprofit organization to manage the hospital.

State lawmakers also may be asked to vote on a number of various measures to improve transportation funding. Lindsey said his priority in the area of transportation is pushing a bill introduced by Rep. Chuck Martin, R-Alpharetta, which would allow adjacent city or county governments to form new authorities for the purpose of assessing new sales taxes to fund transportation improvements.

It's a near certainty that legislators will take some action on funding of the state's system for providing legal representation to indigent criminal defendants. Some legislators have been squabbling for weeks with DeKalb Superior Court Senior Judge Hilton M. Fuller Jr. over the funding of the defense of accused Fulton County Courthouse shooter Brian G. Nichols. The trial has been delayed indefinitely because of funding issues.

Rep. Jill Chambers, R-Atlanta, said this fall that she plans to introduce legislation to rewrite the Open Records Act and Open Meetings Act to make it easier to understand, to increase penalties for violations and to eliminate redundant exemptions to the two laws that are scattered throughout the Georgia Code. Chambers has said she expects to introduce her legislation early in the session.

The Georgia First Amendment Foundation, which promotes enforcement of the Open Records Act and Open Meetings Act, has said it opposes Chambers' efforts out of fear that Chambers or other Republican legislative leaders might use a rewritten law to implement new exemptions to the sunshine laws. The Georgia Code currently contains more than 200 exemptions to the Open Meetings Act and Open Records Act.

Attorneys who work in the area of residential real estate closings will support legislation to require all mortgage lenders to fund mortgage closings with wire transfers, prohibiting the use of checks to fund closings. The planned rewrite of the so-called “good funds” law comes a few months after several Atlanta law firms were stuck with bounced checks after HomeBanc Mortgage Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection.

Two priorities of the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association are improving consumers' lot in the area of uninsured motorist insurance coverage, and repealing a law that gives emergency-room physicians broad immunity from malpractice suits, said Rogers & Goldberg partner Brian D. “Buck” Rogers.

When the Legislature and Perdue approved sweeping changes to the state's tort laws, which included a $350,000 cap on pain and suffering damages in medical-malpractice suits, they also approved language that grants near immunity to ER doctors from such suits. A bipartisan group of legislators has tried for two years to remove the ER-immunity provisions, and they plan to try again this year.

The legislators and trial lawyers want to strike language that says malpractice plaintiffs must prove with clear and convincing evidence that emergency-room doctors acted with “gross negligence.”

Staff Reporter Andy Peters can be reached at apeters@alm.com
Reprinted with permission from the Fulton County Daily Report, 01/09/08.