Gold Dome Nuggets
Is your bib back from the dry cleaners? It’s time for a second helping of Gold Dome Nuggets, the Georgia Recorder’s weekly look back at legislative happenings that slipped through the cracks but still deserve their chance to shine.
Right now, if you want to legally shoot a deer in Georgia, you are supposed to be wearing orange, but what if you could wear pink?
And what’s pinker than shrimp? A coastal Georgia lawmaker has a bill he says will help you be sure the little crustaceans on your plate of scampi or within your grits came from the briny blue and not “shallow ponds in their own feces.”
And a senator stumping for a child tax credit got some help from some fun little guys.
Color Revolution
Georgia hunters could soon be heading out to the woods decked out in pink — and no, they’re not stalking flocks of flamingos.
Lyons Republican Rep. Leesa Hagan is taking a second shot at a bill that would allow hunters to wear fluorescent pink in addition to the more traditional blaze orange. Hagan said increasing options for forest fashion could get more women out in the woods.
“The point is to give people options,” she said at a recent meeting of the House Fish, Game and Parks Committee. “Now I have to say, there are some women apparently that don’t want to wear orange so they won’t hunt. Frankly, I think it’s silly to not go hunting just because you don’t like orange, but if it will encourage more hunting in the state, more license sales, I think it’s a good thing to do.”
Hagan pushed a similar bill last year and said the inspiration came from a Georgia student who loves hunting deer and wearing pink, but the girl got an accidental lesson that things can always go sideways under the Gold Dome. Last year’s version passed the House 166-1, but the Senate amended the bill to be about airsoft guns and catfish, and Georgia’s hunters have remained orange.
This year’s bill unanimously passed the committee, so it could be on track for a full House vote.
Hagan told committee members that in addition to helping hunters look cute, pink gear could potentially keep them safer.
“Since we were here last year, I did some research because I had a question about color blindness and if fluorescent pink would be as visible as orange, and what I found out was it actually is more visible, especially in particular types of color blindness, so it might actually be safer than orange,” she said.
Midway Democratic Rep. Al Williams wanted to know whether either color would be more visible to the hunters’ prospective quarry.
“This cries out for an answer: are deer colorblind? Is there any difference between orange and pink?” he asked.
“That’s a good question and I don’t know the answer to that,” Hagan answered. “But I don’t think we’re worried about the safety of the deer during hunting season.”
“I am because I believe that there should be parity in the field,” Williams said.
Do you know where your shrimp came from?
The Georgia Department of Natural Resources keeps a list of what animals residents aren’t allowed to keep as pets. Forbidden critters include minks, moles and muskrats, whales, dolphins, capybaras, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, sky larks and thrushes.
One critter not on the list is the humble shrimp, and it just so happens there are a lot of desperate shrimp in this world looking for a new home.
“These shrimp never see an ocean, folks,” said Savannah Republican Jesse Petrea from the House floor Wednesday. “We call them seafood. They live in man-made ponds. They swim in shallow ponds in their own feces. They get diseases. And so what do we do? We feed them antibiotics. There is no comparison, domestic shrimp to imported shrimp.”
Petrea was introducing his House Bill 117, which would require restaurants to notify customers what countries the shrimp they serve come from.
Petrea, who is usually more concerned about what countries other people come from, said the bill will give consumers more information and potentially help Georgia’s flagging shrimp industry.
“Our shrimping fleet is 10% of what it was. It is almost gone,” he said. “We have a vestige of our shrimping fleet that’s been destroyed by foreign dumping of imports, and I think that’s sad, but yeah this hopefully will be helpful for consumers to know what they’re eating so maybe they can ask for other products if they so choose.”
Co-sponsor state Rep. Al Williams, a Midway Democrat, said it used to be that shrimp boat captain was the kind of job one could aspire to.
“When I was a boy, some of the best jobs on the coast were in the fishing industry,” he said. “I was an African-American kid who saw African-American captains of shrimp boats, who owned their own shrimp boats, who made a great living and hired people to work on these boats.”
“The imports destroyed this industry, and people who were making a great living were unemployed,” he added. “And guess what? We helped eat them into unemployment. So whenever you see a former shrimp fisherman say, ‘I helped put him out of business because I ate all these imported shrimp that I have no idea what was in them.’”
Democratic state Rep. Solomon Adesanya, who operates two restaurants according to his bio on the Georgia House Democrats website, spoke out against the bill.
“Do you know that your average consumer don’t even care about where the shrimp come from? When they look on the menu and ordering food, the origin of the food or the shrimp is not deterring anyone from ordering. Isn’t that true? Do you know that?” he asked Petrea.
“I’m trying to understand, is your question that people don’t care where their shrimp is from, is that you’re asking?” Petrea replied.
“Yeah, when you sit at a restaurant and you’re looking at a food menu and you see the shrimp coming from China or Indonesia, do you know that average consumer going to the restaurant don’t even care about that?” Adesanya said.
“Well, representative, I guess we’ll find out in a moment when we take this vote if consumers care about that,” Petrea said.
If the bill was, as Petrea suggested, a referendum on whether consumers care about the nationality of their shrimp, then they do.
The bill passed 165-7, with Adesanya and an unusual coalition of haters opposing. Republican Rep. Kasey Carpenter, who owns a restaurant, mashed his red button, along with hardline conservative Republican Reps. Charlice Byrd and Noelle Kahaian and a smattering of other Democrats like Reps. Jasmine Clark, Derrick Jackson and Mekyah McQueen.
Henry County Democratic Rep. El-Mahdi Holly voted in favor of the bill, but he couldn’t help taking a swipe at the concept of eating crustaceans.
“While I’m voting in favor of this bill because I believe that it’s right for situations where a person, if they get sick, for their doctor to be aware of where that item came from, (but) the vegetarian in me looks at this bill and wonders how we could ever think we couldn’t get sick from eating the cousins of roaches?” he asked.
“I’m gonna let you take that up with all these guys from the coast, I’m not getting in that argument,” said House Speaker Jon Burns.
Shrimp and roaches are both members of the phylum of arthropods – animals with hard exoskeletons and jointed appendages, but roaches belong to the class insecta with other insects, while shrimp belong to the class malacostraca with other crustaceans like crabs and lobsters.
Where a kid can be a kid
Prior to the Georgia Senate unanimously approving a bill Wednesday designed to alleviate some of the high costs of child care, the bill’s sponsor Sen. Brian Strickland took some ribbing from his colleagues for bringing special guests to tag along.
While the McDonough Republican wrapped up his presentation of Senate Bill 89 by inviting his sons Charles Willis, 7, and five-year-old James “Beecher,” to stand next to their father.
Strickland introduced his sons and wife Lindsay to the Senate chamber by explaining that he wanted to “pander just a second to present to you exhibits A, B and C as to why this bill is so important to Georgia families.”
The bill creates a $250 tax credit for families with children under the age of seven, expands an existing tax credit for child care expenses, and further incentivizes businesses that offer child care for their employees.
The bill carries a projected $176 million price tag,
“While there’s more work to be done to help our working moms and dads, Senate Bill 89 recognizes that as a legislature, we believe that families shouldn’t have to choose between having a career and being a parent,” Strickland said.
Prior to the Senate vote, Cataula Republican Sen. Randy Robertson accused Strickland of hiring child actors curry support prior to senators voting on the legislation.
“Senator, is it not true that the props you used today were hired with film tax credits?” Robertson quipped.
“That’s true,” Strickland admitted. “I’m trying to take after the senator from the 14th.”
Strickland was referring to Sandy Springs Democratic Sen. Josh McLaurin, who frequently gives animated speeches in the Senate, including “Trump Morning News” segments in which he plays legislator and broadcaster while railing against the president.
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