The Georgia bill that would have afforded secrecy to government and private business looking to locate in Georgia is dead for this session.
Senate Bill 159, sponsored by Sen. Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, will not be considered for passage this session, according to Matthew Colvin, the senator’s spokesman. Today was Crossover Day, the point in the legislative session where if a bill hasn’t received a vote in either chamber it dies.
Under Mullis’s bill, any details of what a company is, does, or what it would do would be secret until the negotiations are complete.
As executive director of the Northwest Georgia Joint Development Authority in Walker County, Mullis said if businesses are worried about their plans leaking out they will head elsewhere to states like Tennessee, which already keeps such negotiations secret while they’re in progress.
The bill was opposed by the Sierra Club and the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, but some government officials favored the proposal as a way to attract industry.
Adam Crisp covers education issues for the Times Free Press. He joined the paper's staff in 2007 and initially covered crime, public safety, courts and general assignment topics. Prior to Chattanooga, Crisp was a crime reporter at the Savannah Morning News and has been a reporter and editor at community newspapers in southeast Georgia. In college, he led his student paper to a first-place general excellence award from the Georgia College Press Association. He earned ...
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