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community where they plan to locate.

Senate Bill 99 was statewide in implication but was prompted by plans to build a new hospital in Jones’ hometown of Jackson. The Senate passed the bill easily, but it failed to even get a committee vote in the House.

The legislature made progress on education during this year’s session. While the ambitious goal of overhauling the decades-old Quality Basic Education (QBE) k-12 student funding formula failed to gain traction, lawmakers supported Kemp’s recommendation to fully fund QBE for the second year in a row.

The General Assembly also agreed to restore full tuition coverage to the HOPE Scholarships program, which had fallen to as low as 80% in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

But Republicans were unable to get the vouchers bill over the finish line. The Senate passed the legislation in early March, voting along party lines. But it fell short by six votes in the House on the last day of the session when a handful of rural Republicans joined Democrats opposed to diverting funds from public schools in voting against it, reflecting the paucity of private schools in rural communities.

“That was tough vote,” said Burns, who supported the vouchers bill as a way to give parents more options for educating their children. “I’m sure you’ll see this issue come before us again.”

Another Republicanbacked bill that failed called for prohibiting nocash bail for a wide range of crimes from murder and rape to nonviolent offenses including possession of marijuana.

The Senate passed the legislation along party lines in February, but the House raised objections to the Senate version of the bill. The two sides formed a joint conference committee on the last night of the session, but the General Assembly adjourned before the conferees could reach agreement.

Republicans and Democrats did see eye to eye on legislation aimed at accommodating the growth of electric vehicles in Georgia. After some controversy erupted over how much senators wanted to tax EVs to replace the revenue the state stands to lose as motorists move away from gasolinepowered care, the proposed tax rate was reduced somewhat and Senate Bill 146 passed overwhelmingly on the next-to-last day of the session.

Supporters of legalized gambling weren’t so fortunate. Sports betting was the vehicle of choice for this year’s push to legalize gambling in Georgia. But a proposed constitutional amendment asking Georgia voters to decide the issue couldn’t muster the two-thirds vote needed to pass the Senate.

Senate supporters went back to the drawing board and passed a bill in committee allowing sports betting to come under the oversight of the Georgia Lottery Commission without the need for a constitutional change. But it, too, was defeated.

In the frenzy of the session’s final day, other legislation that fell by the wayside included a tenants’ bill of rights, a bill targeting antisemitism, and a proposal to overhaul the system the state uses to financially compensate the wrongfully convicted.