April 4, 2012
www.gfb.org
Vol. 30 No. 14
LEGISLATURE PASSES BUDGET, CLOSES SESSION The Georgia General Assembly finished its 2012 session by passing the FY2013 budget, which included several provisions of interest to agriculture. One of the last bills passed was HB 872, which is aimed a curbing metal theft. The final metal theft bill, which passed on March 29 with a House vote of 159-8 and a Senate vote of 50-0, includes measures from SB 321. It provides for the establishment of a statewide database of scrap metal sales for law enforcement use. The bill sets up a documentation trail to track metal sales by requiring metal sellers to have a valid driver’s license and provide other information about the metal and the person selling it. The bill also requires that payments be made only by check or electronic transfer - none by cash - and it prohibits recyclers from cashing the checks they write to persons who sell metal. The final version of the bill did not include a waiting period for payment. The bill requires sellers of air conditioner coils to either have proof of ownership or be licensed contractors, and it includes restrictions on the sale of burned or charred wire and cemetery items. The legislature also passed HB 916 on the last day of the session to address instances where legitimate farmers were being denied access to the Conservation Use Value Assessment (CUVA) covenant because of local acreage minimums or because adjacent tracts of land were not allowed into CUVA covenants. HB 916 allows landowners to enter into a CUVA covenant if the land use qualifies and the owner files a Schedule F or Schedule E tax return. During the session, the legislature enacted measures related to Georgia Farm Bureau’s 2012 priority issues - water, taxes & budget, animal agriculture, metal theft and farm labor. Those bills included the tax reform bill that retained current sales tax exemptions for farm inputs and expanded those exemptions to include fuel and other inputs. The $19.3 billion 2013 budget, which is still subject to line-item vetoes by Gov. Nathan Deal, included $150,000 for the Georgia Water Planning and Policy Center in Albany. The Georgia Department of Agriculture received $150,000 to fund two positions to assist farmers who use the H-2A guest worker program. The budget also included $600,000 in funding for research specialists in horticulture, peanuts, soybeans and peaches through the University of Georgia Agriculture Experiment Stations, and the FFA camps in Fort Valley and Covington will receive $2 million in bond funding for upgrades and repairs. The legislature approved $14 million to reimburse counties for activities under the Forest Land Protection Act.