By Elliott Brack, editor and publisher | There are four amendments facing voters on the 2016 General Election ballot. Three of these “Constitutional Amendments” need to be defeated, while one should pass.
The four amendments, as worded by the State Legislature (which can confuse you), are:
Amendment One: Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended to allow the state to intervene in chronically failing public schools in order to improve student performance?
Amendment 2: Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended to allow additional penalties for criminal cases in which a person is adjudged guilty of keeping a place of prostitution, pimping, pandering, pandering by compulsion, solicitation of sodomy, masturbation for hire, trafficking of persons for sexual servitude, or sexual exploitation of children and to allow assessments on adult entertainment establishments to fund the Safe Harbor for Sexually Exploited Children Fund to pay for care and rehabilitative and social services for individuals in this state who have been or may be sexually exploited?
Amendment 3: Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended so as to abolish the existing Judicial Qualifications Commission; require the General Assembly to create and provide by general law for the composition, manner of appointment, and governance of a new Judicial Qualifications Commission, with such commission having the power to discipline, remove, and cause involuntary retirement of judges; require the Judicial Qualifications Commission to have procedures that provide for due process of law and review by the Supreme Court of its advisory opinions; and allow the Judicial Qualifications Commission to be open to the public in some manner?
Amendment 4: Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended so as to provide that the proceeds of excise taxes on the sale of fireworks or consumer fireworks be dedicated to the funding of trauma care, firefighter equipping and training, and local public safety purposes.
Let’s take these one by one.
Amendment One should be defeated. It is a power grab by the governor and the state legislature to exercise state control over failing schools. Many parent-teacher and school boards have strongly come out against this measure. It will entirely strip local-elected school boards of any failing schools of authority. While extra-ordinary improvements need to be made in these schools, this is not the way to go about it. It will set a precedent that will takes ages to undo. Vote NO on Number One.
Amendment Two should pass. It opens the way for Georgia to attack sex trafficking, and is known as the “Safe Harbor” bill. It also creates a way to pay for such services, through a creative manner of taxing previously-unregulated adult businesses. Vote Yes on Number Two.
Amendment Three should be defeated. This is similar to the Amendment One in that it is a power grab again, this time primarily by the Georgia Legislature, seeking to get jurisdiction over the way to oversee the court systems. Besides, the current somewhat–independent Judicial Qualifications Commission is doing an admirable job already, purging our courts of judges they find doing a bad job. Vote No on Number Three.
Amendment Four: The State Legislature needs to find a more reasonable way to fund trauma care and public safety than taxing fireworks. While we lament the Legislature’s passing of the current fireworks law, targeting one industry is no way to fund an unrelated problem. Our Georgia firefighters and local public safety workers are so important to us that the Legislature needs to direct its attention to passing a dedicated budget item for this problem. Vote No on Number Four.
Said another way, go the polls and vote No, Yes, No, No on these four amendments.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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