Legislative Priorities

The Georgia Chamber is focused on policy priorities that will increase our state’s economic competitiveness, foster job creation and preserve our quality of life.

The Georgia Chamber 2013 Legislative Priorities include:

Economic Development

• Lessen regulations and improve incentives that facilitate expansions, capital investment, new recruitment, small business creation and hospitality growth
• Expand access to venture and seed capital by offering incentives to attract venture capital firms to Georgia

Education

• Encourage school improvement through a more flexible, accountable and transparent system tied to a new school rating system
• Pursue a new school student-based budgeting funding system that would tie the majority of the state’s educational spending directly to student need

Employment

• Enact workers’ compensation system reforms that promote a balanced and equitable system that is fair to the employee and employer and designed to return the employee to work as soon as medically appropriate
• Preserve Georgia’s employment-at-will doctrine and strengthening the state’s right-to-work status

Environment

• Pursue funding sources for continuation of Regional Water Councils and their work to implement regional water plans

Health Care

• Support a health care financing program through which providers can continue to care for patients without compromising the current delivery system

Legal Reform

Pursue civil justice reforms that provide confidence of equitable and predictable treatment of business in the courts

• E-discovery 
  Create a judicial process for scoping electronic discovery requests that provides for cost sharing

• Duplicative recovery reform
  Permit introduction of evidence to the jury of third party payments for consideration of damages

• Seat belt evidence
  Permit introduction of evidence of seat belt use for determining proportional liability 

• Bad faith
  Extend the time for response to demand letters and clarify who the third party insurer must pay

Transportation

• Protect the “Transportation Investment Act” to ensure the benefits of the law as passed are not diluted in any way

Click HERE for a .pdf version.