TIFTON — Rural development, adoption and the opioid crisis are three of the topics that legislators expect to see addressed in the upcoming 2018 session.

(For this article, we sat down with State Senator Greg Kirk and State Representative Clay Pirkle for one interview and then talked with State Representative Penny Houston for another. Calls, emails and a game of phone tag were made to interview State Representative Sam Watson, but we were unable to schedule a time.)

Rural development

Pirkle and Houston are both on the House Rural Development Council that crisscrossed the state in 2017, visiting rural Georgia counties and talking with residents about what their county needs.

That’s led to a sizable report, one that finds several common needs in rural communities: education, workforce development, broadband internet access and healthcare.

When businesses consider locating in a community, one thing they look at is workforce: is there a good number of educated workers that can fill positions from the start?

Kirk, Pirkle and Houston have all talked with businesses who say they can’t fill positions because of failed drug tests from applicants.

“The jobs are out there, but they can’t be filled because of the drug problem and the opiate problem,” said Houston.

“If we bring jobs and we’ve got crime issues…it’s going to help with your crime rate,” said Kirk. “Show kids they can make a living. There’s too many of them that don’t see any hope.”

Houston wants to see more focus on technical education.

Lack of broadband internet access in rural communities is a problem across the state.

Pirkle points to a story from Clay County where high school kids were congregating around city hall and the library after school to use wi-fi because they didn’t have access to the internet at home to do their homework.

“We’ve got pockets even in Tift County that don’t have broadband,” said Pirkle. “It’s important for educational development that we have broadband access.”

The problem goes beyond education.

For established businesses looking to expand, broadband access is a must-have.

And for new businesses, lack of broadband can handicap them in reaching potential customers and in daily operations.

The need is established. It’s the how that legislators will have to work through.

“We’re not looking to increase government,” said Pirkle. “I’m not interested in establishing a state sponsored internet provider. But if we can lower the regulations, if we do what we do to allow the free market to work, that’s in our wheelhouse.”

Kirk suggests letting electric co-ops have a go at providing internet, running lines along power poles.

Houston would like to see a Center for Rural Innovation and Prosperity, one that teaches leadership training and best practices for rural communities.

“We have a good chance at getting it at ABAC [Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College],” said Houston. “It’s the perfect place to put it.”

Access to healthcare in rural communities is another issue, with many hospitals in rural Georgia communities closing their doors or limiting services.

Even Telehealth or Teledoc, which connects residents with medical care over the phone and some legislators have suggested as a possible solution, hits a snag when it comes to limited broadband.

That interconnectedness between education and workforce development, broadband access and healthcare further complicate the challenge of economic development in rural Georgia counties.

Adoption

Houston, Pirkle and Kirk all mentioned the need to readdress the adoption bill that got bogged down at the end of the 2017 legislative session.

“We ended the session on a bad note because we did not come up with a clean adoption bill,” said Houston.

The bill would overhaul Georgia’s adoption laws, which were last updated in the mid-1980s.

“I guess I have a special interest in this because I have two nieces and a nephew that are adopted,” said Houston. “And they had to go out of state to get two of them.”

Pirkle cites a couple he talked with who found it easier to adopt a baby from China than Georgia. He wants to see the process modernized and streamlined.

Houston also cites rising numbers of children in foster care, something she blames on the opioid crises.

After passing the House, the bill was stalled in the Senate

Kirk was one of the senators who had concerns about the bill last year.

One concern was the elimination of a 10-day period where a birth mother who had signed away her parental rights could change her mind.

“This [bill] would have eliminated that,” said Kirk.

He’d also like to see a little more regulation and oversight between birth mothers and adoptive families, including changes to what kind of support a birth mother can get from an adoptive family.

Houston points to a religious freedom bill that was attached to the adoption overhaul in the Senate as a reason for it stalling.

Houston quotes David Ralson, speaker of the Georgie House of Representatives, as saying the 2018 session will last until there’s a clean adoption bill.

“That’ll set the tone for the whole session,” said Houston.

Opioid abuse

Opioid abuse is another issue all three expect to come up.

While it hasn’t been as bad in Georgia as it has some states, opioid abuse has gotten to the point where President Donald Trump declaring it a public health emergency in late October 2017, calling it “the worst drug crisis in American history.”

According to a Georgia Senate report, 68 percent of the drug overdoes in Georgia in 2015 were due to opioids.

“We’ve got to do something about it,” said Houston. “I think we need to tighten up who’s giving pain medicine.”

They all expect to see some legislation introduced concerning Confederate statues and monuments in the state, with each of them saying they aren’t in favor of making changes.

“We have over 2,000 bills every year,” said Houston. “It’ll be brought up. It’s part of history. You can’t change history.”

Houston, Kirk and Pirkle all have their individual focuses as well.

Houston

Houston wants to see additional funding for young children, from birth to five years old and more awareness of Georgia’s “Talk With Me Baby” program.

The program encourages parents to talk to their children, especially in their first three years.

It’s one of several state programs she feels aren’t utilized and talked about enough in rural communities.

“There’s a big disconnect I see between getting people aware of the programs,” said Houston.

Georgia Dream, for example, a program for first-time buyers to purchase a home.

“It helps you with the down payment on the house,” said Houston. “You don’t have to pay the down payment back until you sell the house.”

Houston also expects to see proposed changes to Georgia public transit laws.

Kirk

“My primary focus will be around law enforcement legislation,” said Kirk.

Kirk is a member of the Cops Task Force.

At the time of the interview, the final report from the task force had not been released,

“I’m sure I’ll carry some of that legislation if not the bulk of it,” said Kirk.

Last year, Kirk introduced legislation creating the Back the Badge license plate, with revenues going towards the Peace Officers’ Annuity and Benefit Fund.

Kirk plans to support “anything promoting Georgia Grown.”

Kirk also expects to see a bill for cannabis cultivation.

“I hear from the ag community, some of them want to get into the business,” said Kirk. “The only way I’d agree to any cultivation in Georgia is if we do it in our university system. It can be a public/private…but it needs to be controlled.

“There are still way too many issues around what Colorado and other states have done in legalizing it.”

Pirkle

Pirkle would like to see more agricultural research into cotton.

Cotton production was down this past year, with white flies pointed to as one of the culprits.

“Our cotton farmers have been fighting white flies for years,” said Pirkle.

Pirkle would also like to see more vertical integration in Georgia agriculture, with state businesses able to take a product from the field, process it, package it and send it to store, whether that’s processing cattle or processing cotton into t-shirts.

“We have a tremendous amount of cattle [in Georgia] and few processors,” said Pirkle.

Pirkle also expects to see a proposed law banning cells phone use while driving.

Texting while driving is already against the law in Georgia, but proposed legislation would go further.

“It impacts everyone I know, except the two people I know who don’t have a phone,” said Pirkle.