Ga. House Approves Bill To Limit Cuts To City And County Police Budgets
By: Ross Williams | February 25, 2021
“Defund the police” became a rallying cry at protests in the wake of last summer’s wave of killings of Black people at the hands of law enforcement, and Republican lawmakers are pressing ahead with a new bill intended to stop that cry from becoming reality in communities across Georgia.
The bill authored by Athens Republican state Rep. Houston Gaines passed the Georgia House 101-69 Wednesday, largely along party lines. It aims to prevent cities and counties from reducing police budgets by more than 5% over a rolling ten-year period. It contains exemptions for cities and counties that experience unexpected revenue drops and for those where departments make large one-time purchases.
“When a victim calls 911, we need quick response times,” Gaines said. “Defunding the police is a radical idea that will slow response times for victims and put our families and communities at risk.”
The lingering outrage spurred some Georgia legislators to file bills intended to grant police new protections or clamp down on protests. Republican lawmakers recently filed similar bills in other states, including Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and North Carolina.
Democratic lawmakers have filed bills calling for police reform measures including expanded body camera use and more police training in de-escalation.
All Georgians want to live in safe communities, but more police presence does not always make communities safer, said Rep. Bee Nguyen, an Atlanta Democrat.
“It is the truth that we do not like to admit, but we have the statistics and the stories to show it: if you are Black or brown, whether armed or unarmed, you are more likely to be killed by law enforcement than your white counterparts,” she said. “The calls for reimagining public safety are exactly about this.”
Others called it an attempt to grab power from city councils and county commissions.
“It is critically important that we do not forget that these local elected officials represent their communities in a way that, candidly, we don’t,” said Rep. Teri Anulewicz, a Democrat from Smyrna and a former city council member there.
“We all want to live in safe communities, and they are the people who best know how to keep these communities safe,” she added. “It is them, not us, who should be the ones who have the final purview over their municipal and county police department budgets.”
Athens Mayor Kelly Girtz opposes the bill because he says it would limit the ability of local government officials to do what they think is best for their constituents.
“It’s nonsensical to me,” he said. “There’s no other operational and budget component of local government in which the General Assembly has made comparable moves. When it comes to road paving, when it comes to fire department activity, when it comes to the provision of homeless services, there is no other arena in which the General Assembly has said to 500-plus cities and 159 counties, ‘You’ve got to run your budget this way.’ I just see this as massive overreach.”
Atlanta considered but voted down a proposal that would have redirected $73 million from its $218 million police budget to social services.
This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with Georgia Recorder.
https://www.gpb.org/news/2021/02/25/ga-house-approves-bill-limit-cuts-city-and-county-police-budgets