SB23, Sitting on Governor's Desk, is Both Egregious and Unconstitutional

Please Read, Understand, and Call

Lines Cut and Pasted from HB520 into SB23 on Last day are Egregious

On the last day of the 2023 Georgia General Assembly, as it was obvious HB520 would not pass both chambers, an important section of that bill was quietly cut out and pasted into SB23, which passed that afternoon. Those lines are egregious. Here are the important parts of that section along with what they mean below.

(2.1)(A) 'Executive state agency' means any agency, authority, board, bureau, commission, department, division, office, or other unit of the executive branch of state government whether established by or pursuant to the Constitution of the State of Georgia, the Official Code of Georgia, any administrative rule or regulation, or any executive order.

(a) ‘Government information' means any information created, received, maintained, or stored by, or otherwise in the control of, an executive state agency, regardless of the form or the media on which the information is recorded.

(c) The Georgia Data Analytic Center is considered to be an agent of all executive state agencies sharing government information and is an authorized receiver of government information under the statutory or administrative law that governs such government information.

There were two main sections of HB520, (1) the collecting and transmitting of data and predictive analytics from an EXTERIOR DATA SOURCE, and (2) the receiving and sharing of the same across all executive agencies. Under part (2) above, which passed under SB23, upon the governor’s signature GDAC would become an AGENT TO ALL EXECUTIVE AGENCIES. That means GDAC would act as a seamless, frictionless central node in the system, RECEIVING data and predictive analytics from any and all executive state agencies, and TRANSMITTING the same to any and all other executive state agencies merely upon request, with no consideration regarding a ‘need-to-know,’ or reason an executive state agency may make such a request. Once information is received by ONE state executive agency, it would therefore belong to ALL executive state agencies. Under this provision, GDAC would function as a mindless robot, receiving ‘government information’ from both interior AND EXTERIOR DATA SOURCES (an exterior data source would be a monitoring ‘entity’ such as Talitrix, (‘entity’ language describing it as a MONITORING company is in HB520), and transmitting that information upon request. Therefore, upon the governor’s signature of SB23, once both parts of HB520 would pass into law, data and predictive analytics collected and transmitted from a monitoring entity (obviously Talitrix) would be owned and accessible by all state executive agencies, no questions asked. That is egregious, and the unchecked power of GDAC to transmit this information, regardless of reason, is dangerous to the personal freedom of individuals in the system.

Below are provisions describing one example of how all that would work. In this section of HB520, the Georgia Board of Nursing would be the ‘executive state agency.’ The associated ‘entity’ is previously defined as a data monitoring company (Talitrix). This section provides that the data and predictive analytics provided by Talitrix would not be subject to open records requests, would not be available to the courts (so there is no check on the executive), that whoever consents to being monitored would pay the costs associated with monitoring, and that the monitoring ‘entity’ would be given both civil and criminal immunity for anything it does pursuant to its contract with the nursing board.

Lines Cut and Pasted from HB520 into SB23 on Last day are Unconstitutional

Notwithstanding the egregious nature of its provisions, the process undertaken to pass SB23 with these lines made the bill sitting on Governor Kemp’s desk unconstitutional. Here is why:

1. January 25, 2023: SB-23 was introduced at the legislative session and was entitled “various titles; revise a committee name; relating to inactive boards, panels, authorities, centers, commissions, committees, councils, task forces, and other such bodies; provisions; repeal.” Although a very wordy title, the bill basically changed the names of various committees and changed various titles such as “chairman” to “chairperson.”

https://legiscan.com/GA/text/SB23/id/2664604

2. March 29, 2023: On the final day of the legislative session SB-23 then included a second subject matter on data analytics, transferring data and handling disputes of that data with the Georgia Data Analytic Center (GDAC). This subject matter originated in the HB-520 mental health bill.

https://www.georgiarecord.com/grassroots-groups-raise-alarms-on-hb-520/

3. SB-23, in addition to changing names and titles, then gave the Georgia Data Analytic Center (GDAC) authority to act as a central repository of state government data. If any state department disputes sharing data with GDAC over concerns of violating state or federal law, the bill states that the director of the Office of Planning and Budget, a political appointee position, will have the authority to compel a Georgia department to share data.

https://legiscan.com/GA/text/SB23/id/2771869/Georgia-2023-SB23-Enrolled.pdf (lines 343-365)

https://gov.georgia.gov/press-releases/2020-11-03/gov-kemp-announces-new-senior-leadership

4. The Georgia Constitution clearly states that a bill can only have one subject matter. SB-23 therefore covers two subject matters and also contains material different from what the title of the bill expresses. Only 1 senator and 7 house representatives voted no to this bill and the changes made to it on the last day of the legislative session.

https://legiscan.com/GA/votes/SB23/2023

5. SB-23 was sent for Governor Kemp’s signature on April 5, 2023

https://legiscan.com/GA/votes/SB23/2023

Therefore, please CALL Governor Kemp (404) 656-1776

Also, please CALL your state representatives https://openstates.org/find_your_legislator/

Respectfully request that Governor Kemp VETO SB23.

Thank you.