We are less than a week away from the 158th Georgia Legislative Session! Twenty-two new lawmakers will join the Georgia General Assembly this session, a relatively small freshmen class compared to the past two-year cycle, which saw 57 incoming legislators in January of 2023. By the end of this cycle, we will likely see a similar number of legislators leaving for various reasons, chief among them being retirement or leaving for a bid for higher office.  

This will be Governor Kemp’s final two-year legislative cycle, and as his term draws to a close other statewide officers are eyeing his position, including Attorney General Chris Carr who has already announced his intention to run for governor. Other potential contenders include Lt. Governor Burt Jones and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. If one or both of those constitutional officer holders runs for the Governorship, you can expect a slew of candidates within the General Assembly to vie for those positions as well.  

Given this dynamic, we will likely see some controversial topics pop up within this and the succeeding session, but most of those will likely not advance very far. One such partisan topic that both the House and Senate are eyeing is restricting the participation of transgendered athletes in women’s sports. However, the Speaker recently stated that there’s little appetite for any other restrictive measures regarding transgendered individuals.  

On the nonpartisan front, the legislature will likely consider legislation regarding the regulation of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Over the interim, a joint study committee on artificial intelligence met to discuss legislative solutions to AI problems. Smart Cities recommended that Georgia adopt the National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST)’s 171 guideline, which outlines best practices and provides guidelines for governments regarding security of personally identifiable information and Senator John Albers, who chaired the Senate study committee alluded to this being a priority of his.  

Additionally, both the Governor and the Speaker stated that they will prioritize Hurricane Helene relief and we expect other relief and resiliency efforts to be considered this session. Both officials also mentioned that part of the state’s budget surplus will go to transportation infrastructure funding. While the official sum of that does not seem to have been agreed upon yet, the Speaker said it will likely be in the range of last year’s appropriation in the $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion range. 

Tort reform remains a top priority of the business community, including the admissibility of seat belt non-use (which would allow a defendant to enter evidence of a plaintiff’s non-use of a seat belt in an accident in court) and premises liability (which would clarify a landowner’s responsibility for actions that happened on their property without their knowledge). Though at the moment it remains unclear just what legislation will be introduced, the business community will be hard at work to pass reasonable tort reform initiatives that balance civil justice and limit lawsuit negligence.  

ACEC Georgia will be supporting two legislative endeavors this year, including the passage of a Qualifications Based Selection (QBS) bill that would extend the “Mini Brooks Act” to local governments. Georgia’s “Mini Brooks Act” requires state agencies to follow QBS. The legislation will likely include an effective date of sometime in 2026 to allow local governments time to transition to QBS for the procurement of A/E services and have their questions and concerns answered before the effective date. Secondly, we will be advocating for the passage of a decoupling bill that would remove the requirement for aspiring engineers to obtain and complete their professional experience requirement before taking and passing the PE exam, so that new engineers are able to take their exam at a point after graduation that makes sense to them.  

We’re excited for what this session will bring! As always, please reach out to Sully (sully@acecga.org) or Christy (Christy.tarallo@acecga.org), for questions, comments, or to volunteer to help advocate for the business of engineering!