House committee places multiple bills on supplemental calendar; members present measures on oaths, prosecutions, audits and school release time

An unnamed committee chair presided as presenters briefly described multiple bills and the committee placed a large set of bills on its supplemental calendar.

Presenters described the following measures during the session: House Bill 384 would create a uniform standardized oath for peace officers in Georgia and, as presented, ensure officers could be prosecuted only for violating the specific terms of that standardized oath. House Bill 57, which was described as previously having passed the House two years earlier, was presented as amending a named law in Georgia to add a step grandparent–step grandchild relationship; the specific statute or code referenced in the presentation was not specified in the transcript. House Bill 35 was presented as raising the current pay cap for special prosecutors: the presenter said the current cap is $66.87 per hour and described the bill as raising pay “to $2.50 for attorneys and up to 110 an hour for staffers,” with the rate to be adjusted yearly for inflation (transcript phrasing as presented). House Bill 704 was described as requiring the Department of Audits to transition from a monthly report to an annual, searchable dashboard on the OpenGeorgia website. House Bill 675 was described as creating an offense and penalty for materially intangible and financial terroristic acts to give local prosecutors more tools to hold people accountable. House Bill 133 was presented as allowing local school agencies to adopt policies permitting release time for religious studies off school premises and was described as aligning with a 1952 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. House Bill 101 was presented as a transparency measure requiring health insurers and pharmacy benefit managers to report rebate findings to certain state health plans. House Bill 285 was described as providing a procedure for computer purging.

Committee members moved and seconded a long list of bills onto the supplemental calendar; for many of those calendar motions the chair announced the bills were “on” after no opposition was recorded on the transcript. The calendar-setting routine listed dozens of bills the committee advanced to the supplemental calendar during the same session.

Votes at a glance: the transcript records the committee placing the following bills on the supplemental calendar (motion moved, seconded, chair announced “it’s on” unless otherwise noted): House Bills 54; 56; 161; 224; 250; 331; 433; 439; 447; 451; 466; 491; 513; 521 (rule substitute; also covered separately); 593; 614; 618; 627; 638; 718; House Resolution 7; 248; 429; 445; 511; 429; 445; 511; 429 (some bill numbers were repeated in rapid calendar calls on the transcript; each called bill was announced "on").

The transcript records few substantive questions from committee members during the bill presentations; presenters repeatedly noted that some bills had just come out of committee that morning and were not yet listed on the committee’s “blue sheet.” No roll-call vote tallies for calendar placements or for the bill presentations were recorded in the transcript.

Ending: The committee advanced many bills to the supplemental calendar and heard brief descriptions of several measures that could affect law enforcement oaths, prosecutor pay, audit transparency, school release time and criminal penalties; future committee or floor action will be required for any of the measures to become law.