Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Public Safety Memorial Grant topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Committee advances substitute to expand Georgia Public Safety Memorial Grant to spouses, updates statutory limits
Summary
The House Higher Education Committee moved a substitute for HB 56 that extends scholarship eligibility from children to spouses of fallen or permanently disabled public safety officers, clarifies part-time enrollment rules and updates statutory dollar limits that had not been revised since 1972.
The House Higher Education Committee on Wednesday advanced a substitute for House Bill 56 to allow spouses of law enforcement officers, firefighters and prison guards who are killed or permanently disabled in the line of duty to access the Georgia Public Safety Memorial Grant previously available to their children.
The substitute also creates an explicit part‑time pathway for spouses and updates outdated statutory dollar limits for the program. Materials from the Georgia Student Finance Commission included with the bill show the commission maintained about $4,000,000 in reserves, according to documents distributed at the hearing.
The bill’s substitute defines a full academic year as nine or more credit hours per term or semester and provides a part‑time path when a student completes eight or fewer credit hours per term. The substitute replaces prior “off duty/volunteer” language with a simpler eligibility clause: an individual who is appointed, employed or regularly enrolled in a covered role is eligible whether they were on duty or off duty and whether they served as a volunteer or paid employee. The sponsor told the panel this was intended to remove ambiguity raised in previous hearings.
Committee members noted the statutory award ceilings had not been updated since 1972. The substitute documents the current practice of paying up to $18,000 per year and up to $72,000 over the life of a grant (four years), aligning the statute with current payouts that previously exceeded the statutory caps.
Representative Don Clark asked the committee to confirm that the substitute removed prior “off‑duty” language and limited eligibility to those “killed in the line of duty.” Representative Clark said, “This version now takes the off duty completely out and just says killed in the line of duty.”
Committee members discussed recent local deaths of officers and the real‑world impact the change would have for survivors. The committee voted to give the substitute a do‑pass recommendation and forward it to the House Rules Committee; individual roll‑call votes were not recorded in the committee transcript.
The substitute cites the Georgia Student Finance Commission materials and refers to an existing code section noted in testimony; the committee received the substitute as a second reading and advanced it to rules.
