House panel hears Georgia domestic terrorism bill

Georgia House and Senate lawmakers are working on a much shorter version of a contentious bill that started out as a means to redefine domestic terrorism and set up a new body to work on strategies to fight such crimes.

The bill that’s in House committee now is important enough to state Senate Republican leadership that they gave it a symbolic number: Senate Bill 1.

But a new version of it is much shorter than the 33-page original.

In the proposed new version, the definition of “domestic terrorism” is several paragraphs long, but broadly means serious violent or destructive crime driven by ideology and that’s meant to intimidate the population or change public policy.

The original version would have also created a Georgia Department of Homeland Security led by a Board of Homeland Security. The new version does not do that.

The sponsor, Senate Majority Leader Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, said there was criticism that the bill somehow expands government. But he said that Georgia already has a homeland security commissioner and an agency working on the issue, the Georgia Emergency Management Agency.

“What I was attempting to do is to break it out and have a more defined specific role for homeland security,” Cowsert said, at a Tuesday hearing by the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee at the Capitol.

He said he still thinks the original idea for a body to work on coordinated homeland security strategy is a good idea, but that his energy to work for it this year is waning. He said he could return to it during next year’s legislative session.

But throughout hearings, critics have focused on anther part of the bill: they worry that unruly protest, say a spontaneous march without a permit, might get roped into the definition of domestic terrorism. Or that leaders of protests might end up in trouble if serious lawbreakers wrongdoers hijack a legal gathering.

Christopher Bruce of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia said he recognized how much work has gone into the bill and what the committee is trying to do to protect Georgians.

“We just do not think the bill goes far enough to protect protestors,” Bruce said.

During a roughly hourlong hearing, the committee discussed tightening up the definition of domestic terrorism to specify that it only covers felonies, not the kind of misdemeanors that might come with unruly protest.

The committee is tentatively scheduled to continue discussions on the bill — which may include more amendments — on Wednesday.

This story was originally published March 21, 2017 at 2:43 PM with the headline "House panel hears Georgia domestic terrorism bill."