Latest news with #Bill267
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Record number of housing bills introduced this session, but little to show for it, advocate says
Workers paint a new apartment complex near Old Town Albuquerque in December 2022. The most housing-related legislation in years was introduced in the recent 60-day session, but there is little to show for it, according to an advocate who paid close attention. (Photo by Patrick Lohmann / Source NM) At the beginning of the 60-day legislative session, housing advocate Winter Torres remembers feeling like the issue of housing affordability and homelessness had reached such a crescendo that lawmakers were jumping over each other to introduce bills. By the session's midpoint, housing advocates watching the session closely said they were tracking more than 60 bills, a huge increase over previous years. Lawmakers introduced nearly 200 bills mentioning the word 'housing' this session. That's the most since at least 2005. 'There's never been bills like this,' said Torres, who runs an eviction diversion program in Santa Fe and also tracks housing-related legislation on her website during the session. 'People just came out of the woodwork with them.' But now that the session is over, Torres said she can't help but feel like the Legislature missed a chance to catch up to other states' efforts to reform housing policies and address the crisis here before it gets worse. The state lacks more than 32,000 housing units, homelessness is on the rise and federal cuts threaten to deprive housing aid to thousands of New Mexicans. 'I feel disappointed,' she said. 'Some of the other advocates may have a different view, but I feel like, you know, we had our shot.' Legislative leaders have touted this year's session as building on recent record investments in making housing more affordable and building more of it. Lawmakers last year appropriated nearly $200 million for various housing projects and programs. This year, lawmakers have earmarked at least $140 million for housing programs, including up to $80 million of that for Albuquerque and Bernalillo County. Outside of the budget, both chambers of the Legislature also passed 21 bills mentioning 'housing,' including Senate Bill 267, which caps late and application fees for renters, and House Bill 571, which creates incentives for municipalities that reform their zoning codes in ways that expands the construction of affordable housing. Another bill creates a new governing subdivision to oversee the New Mexico State Fair grounds and empowers it to study the feasibility of building new housing there. Torres said she doesn't want to minimize those significant bills, but the way other bills were moving early on in the session made their eventual deaths more frustrating. For example, a House bill that would have prohibited landlords from turning away tenants who carry Section 8 vouchers failed early in committees in at least the last two previous sessions, but this year made it all the way to its final Senate committee, Senate Judiciary, where it never received a hearing. Other House bills she tracked also died in Senate Judiciary, their final hurdle before the Senate floor, including ones that would have expunged old eviction records or given mobile home park tenants a chance to buy their park if it goes up for sale. New Mexico governor once again tries to create Office of Housing 'Fundamentally, I think the way we do sessions is an extremely irresponsible way to make law, when we are so far behind the rest of the nation on so many things, and the rest of the world just keeps speeding up,' she said. 'We'll never catch up.' Rep. Kathleen Cates (D-Rio Rancho) sponsored several housing bills and joined a working group with other lawmakers to discuss and propose housing-related legislation. She said the Legislature was abuzz with housing-related energy at the beginning and is proud to have supported another year of significant investments in housing and homelessness. Still, Cates also said significant legislation she supported languished without hearings, primarily in Senate Judiciary 'That's where everything dies, Senate Judiciary,' she said. 'It's ridiculous.' Sen. Joseph Cervantes, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, did not respond to a request for comment on Friday afternoon from Source New Mexico. Other prominent housing-related bills that died this session include one that would have created a new Office of Housing, Planning and Production in the executive branch. Advocates say the office is necessary to collect better data and coordinate various government agencies into a unified statewide strategy. That bill also made it to its final committee hurdle, Senate Finance, without being heard. 'Our priority bill SB205…had amazing support, compelling testimony, and endorsements from diverse organizations around the state. We won bipartisan support in four committee hearings and passed the House 49-17,' Daniel Werwath, housing policy adviser to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, wrote in an email to supporters on the last day of the session. 'Sadly, in the last few days of the session, the Senate Finance Committee chose not to hear our bill and denied us a vote on the Senate floor.' Werwath declined an interview request with Source New Mexico until after the governor decides which bills to sign, but his same email pointed to the money in the budget for housing and also HB571 as reason to call the session a success. 'While we failed to win statutory authority for the Office, this doesn't change our work,' Werwath wrote. 'With record funding and mandates to work on statewide housing regulatory frameworks through HB571 …we will continue to work to ensure that state investments in housing are delivered quickly, efficiently and with a focus on innovation and outcomes.'
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Georgia House keeps hate crimes protection as it seeks to restrict transgender sports participation
ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia's state House has backed away from changes to the state's hate crimes law that could have removed protections for crimes against transgender people, even as it moves forward with efforts to put into law restrictions against sports participation for transgender students. Representatives voted 102-54 for House Bill 267 on Thursday, but only after House leaders on Wednesday stripped out part of the bill that would have changed the hate crimes law that passed in 2020 after the death of Ahmaud Arbery. Three Democrats voted for the bill — Lynn Heffner of Augusta, Tangie Herring of Macon and Dexter Sharper of Valdosta — while a number of other Democrats sat out the vote. The measure moves to the Senate, which has passed its own separate legislation. See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. Georgia's high school athletic association right now bans transgender students from girls' sports participation by policy, but Republican leaders insist the ban needs to be enshrined in law and applied to colleges and universities as well. Laws restricting sports participation for transgender students have passed in 25 other states. Republican leaders in both the House and Senate have made outlawing transgender girls from girls sports a priority this year as President Donald Trump pursues restrictions at the federal level. 'Female athletes deserve fair competition and that means the chance to maintain the women's divisions distinct from men's categories," said Republican Rep. Josh Bonner of Fayetteville, the bill's sponsor. The House bill, heavily influenced by a Christian conservative group called Frontline Policy, replaces most references to 'gender' in state law with the word 'sex.' Democratic Rep. Karla Drenner of Avondale Estates called the bill a 'calculated, dangerous, deeply discriminatory piece of legislation that goes far beyond the realm of athletics.' 'Let's call this the erasure of transgender Georgians act today," said Drenner, who was the first openly LGBTQ+ member of the legislature when she was elected in 2000. It would have originally removed gender from the hate crimes law, which protects against crimes motivated by bias against someone's sex or gender. Democrats warned that could make it hard to prosecute hate crimes against transgender people, with House Democratic Caucus Leader Tanya Miller saying it could result in 'open season' on transgender Georgians. Bonner said Wednesday that he was making the changes out of an 'overabundance of caution and concern' after a lawyer for the General Assembly said the change 'would not likely be deemed meaningless by a reviewing court.' 'Nothing changes in that regard from the original bill that passed several years ago,' Bonner said Wednesday. Georgia's hate crimes law passed in dramatic fashion months after Ahmaud Arbery was killed by two white men while jogging near Brunswick. The state had gone without a hate crimes law for years after a court struck down a previous version.
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Georgia House panel OKs bill to bar trans girls from playing school sports on girls' teams
Rep. Josh Bonner, right, presents his transgender sports bill before committee, alongside Chelsea Thompson, general counsel for Frontline Policy Council. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder A House subcommittee moved forward a bill that would bar transgender girls from playing sports on girls' teams in schools of all grade levels, including college. 'All we're attempting to do through this legislation, Mr. Chairman, is simply provide a level playing field for the girls in Georgia,' said the bill's sponsor, Fayetteville Republican Rep. Josh Bonner. 'To make sure that when they step on that athletic field, that all things are equal, so that, essentially, biological males are not competing against biological females.' Speaker Jon Burns listed the measure as a top priority for this year's session. House Bill 267, also known as the Riley Gaines Act, also mandates separate restroom, locker and sleeping facilities for student athletes based on the sex they were assigned at birth during sporting events, but allows for 'reasonable accommodations' including allowing the use of a single-occupancy restroom for students who do not feel comfortable using facilities that correspond to their sex at birth. Republicans like Dawsonville Republican Rep. Brent Cox called the bill a victory for women's sports. Cox said the bill reminded him of his mother, who graduated high school in 1961 and was an exceptional basketball player in a time when women were often not encouraged to play sports. 'She fought (for), as many have, (the 1972 sports gender equity law) which now we know under Title IX,' he said. 'And myself coaching, it's something that I personally am passionate about, the girls having the opportunities to play against the girls, because of all that happened from the early parts of the 1900s to get us to where we are today.' Unlike a girls' sports bill that recently passed the Senate, the proposed House legislation also replaces the word 'gender' with 'sex' throughout the state's code. 'It addresses any number of areas of code, everything from the legal, in terms of dealing with legal documents, to organ donation, to crime statistics and reporting, that kind of thing,' Bonner said. 'And that's simply to make sure that when we collect that data, that we have very decisive and definitive data points so that we know everything from the crime statistics to how they're annotating that sex on their organ donations and things like that.' The removal of gender from the state's landmark 2020 hate crimes law in particular vexed Democratic state Rep. Park Cannon, an Atlanta Democrat. The bill would remove crimes based on the victim's gender as a category for enhanced sentences under the law, though it would keep sex and sexual orientation as eligible categories, among others like race and religion. It specifies that state agencies that keep track of vital statistics for things like public health, economic measurements or crime identify each individual by their sex at birth. Cannon said those changes will strip transgender Georgians from the hate crime law's protections. 'If someone does experience a hate-based incident, which, here in District 58, we have recently seen Atlanta Police capture somebody who has intentionally been harming transgender women, it would not allow for the Georgia Bureau of Investigations to get that information and store it appropriately.' 'It was a bipartisan bill,' she added. 'It was one of my most proud moments being a member, and so to juxtapose feeling so proud with that legislation and feeling so vulnerable with this legislation, I'm really hoping that the majority will make some amendments and sit on this bill throughout the rest of the session.' More than a dozen people came to the subcommittee's Wednesday hearing, mostly to urge members to vote against the bill. Audrey Lux said she competed in women's rowing as a college student in states including Georgia but never won it big. 'I managed to avoid all controversy and publicity during my time in crew. The reason you haven't heard of me on the news is because I was simply not a great athlete,' she said. 'And that doesn't fit well into your narrative. I practiced just as hard as the other women, but I was simply not as fast as some of them, and that's just the biological reality.' Lux and other opponents of the bill argued that transgender people are relatively uncommon in the first place and are not particularly likely to be dominant in or even play sports. They compared keeping them out through legislation to bullying a vulnerable population. 'This bill, in short, is part of a larger project to strip all dignity and rights from transgender Georgians out of the law,' said Brittany Stancoff. 'And that is not something I particularly appreciate, as we haven't done anything to deserve this. I sell used books. I don't see how this is some widespread issue when there is only one case you can keep bringing back up over and over and over.' Stancoff was referring to Riley Gaines, the namesake of Georgia's bill who became an outspoken opponent of transgender participation in girls' sports after she and other swimmers competed against and shared a locker room with a transgender woman at a 2022 championship held at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. The NCAA changed its eligibility rules after that competition following numerous complaints. Bonner offered a different Riley to testify at Wednesday's hearing, Riley Jones, daughter of South Forsyth Republican Rep. Todd Jones and former high school state champion for girls' pole vault. Jones said she didn't compete against any transgender athletes but likely would have lost if she had. 'The reason why I was able to win my state title was because I only went against girls,' she said. 'If I went against boys, they would have killed me. My senior year, I went 12'6' to win the state record and to win the competition. The boys, I believe there were three over 15'6', and now that's not even the woman's record.' The bill could now be headed to the full House Education Committee. It will need to pass the full House by Crossover Day, March 6, to have a clear chance of becoming law under the normal process. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
