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Senate committee approves expansion of Georgia Public Safety Memorial Grant to spouses and school employees
Summary
A Georgia Senate committee approved a bill to expand the Georgia Public Safety Memorial Grant to include spouses and to create a separate fund providing the same benefit to teachers and other public school employees; the panel updated award amounts and advanced the measure unanimously.
Chairman Petrie told the committee the bill would expand the Georgia Public Safety Memorial Grant to add spouses and create a separate, parallel fund for teachers and public school employees.
The measure updates award amounts and how the program is administered. "This bill began as an opportunity to simply add spouses," Chairman Petrie said, adding that the measure also updates award sums "to the 18,000 and the 72,000 for 4 years." He said the new section creates a separate fund, still managed by the Georgia Student Finance Commission, to provide the same benefit to teachers and other public school employees who are killed or permanently disabled in the line of duty.
Committee members asked no substantive questions on the record. At the committee’s prompt, a senator moved to pass the bill and Senator Payne seconded; the committee approved the measure by voice vote after the chair asked members to "raise your right hand." The chair described the vote as unanimous.
The bill traces to a prior measure, House Bill 56, that the presenter said passed the committee and the Senate previously but did not clear the full session last year. The committee record notes line-item updates to the statutory sums in "section 2-3" and the addition of a distinct fund for school employees; the chair said the fund will continue to be managed by the Georgia Student Finance Commission.
The bill as described in committee covers law enforcement officers, firefighters, prison guards, paramedics, EMTs, emergency and highway emergency response operators, spouses of covered individuals, and employees in the public school setting. The committee did not record any amendments beyond the updated sums and the added section for school employees in the transcript excerpts presented.
The committee advanced the bill for further consideration; the transcript recorded no roll-call vote or named vote tallies in committee minutes beyond the voice/unanimous approval.
