Georgia legislature dealt with rural issues; what'd yours do?

A wide-angle shot by The Associated Press's John Bazemore
captured the end of the legislative session in Georgia April 2.

With most state legislatures adjourned for the year, it's a good time to recap what the solons did. In Georgia, Jill Nolin, the statehouse reporter for Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., did a roundup of rural issues for CNHI's papers in Valdosta, Moultrie, Milledgeville, Dalton and Thomasville.

"Rural Georgia’s economic woes loomed large, with many bills being cast – some more convincingly than others – as a lift for the state’s small towns," Nolin wrote in April. "One measure pitched horse racing as a rural jobs bill. Another proposed requiring tech companies to disclose repair information for phones and other gadgets as a way to put more people to work across the state. And another would ban local home design laws as a way to protect workforce housing. None of those passed."

However, the Legislature passed "several rural-focused bills," Nolin reported. "This was at least the third consecutive year where legislators pushed fixes aimed at spurring job growth in the state’s rural corners, where economic recovery has lagged behind metro Atlanta and other urban areas."

High on the list was a bill giving rural electric and telephone cooperatives the authority to offer high-speed internet. Non-profit telephone co-ops will be able to do the same. Two co-ops in north Georgia "are already providing broadband, but others have been hesitant to wade into the internet business without legislators officially blessing it in state code," Nolin wrote. "Another bill that stalled would have raised money for rural broadband expansion by taxing digital goods and streaming services while lowering existing fees on traditional services, such as telephone and cable." Rep. Jay Powell, R-Camilla, told Nolin, “The news media portrayed it as a ‘Netflix tax,’ which I think was couched to see how much public opposition they could generate.”

Amid concerns about rural hospitals and other health-care providers, lawmakers passed legislation requiring nonprofit hospitals to be more transparent with their finances, "including the salary and fringe benefits of their highest-paid staffers, a list of the properties owned and any stake a hospital may have in other enterprises," Nolin reported. There's a lot more in her story; read it here.