Benton pushing two bills from last year

The other is legislation requested by local school superintendents that would end a requirement that school attendance notifications sent to parents and guardians be sent by registered mail.

The first bill, Benton says, would save the lives of pets. The second would save Jackson County’s school system about $10,000 a year.

“The antifreeze bill, I dropped that on (Jan. 10),” Benton said this Monday. “It was read for the first time and assigned to a committee.”

The bill stalled in the Senate last year.

“It’s a good bill, a good safety bill,” he said. “It probably should have been done years ago. Since I’ve been working on this, four other states have passed similar legislation. There are now 13 or 14 other states who have this in place.
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Benton introduced the legislation at the request of a former student, whose dogs had been poisoned by antifreeze. He also points out that a Cobb County police officer and a Forsyth County firefighter were both poisoned to death by Lynn Turner, who died recently while serving life sentences for those crimes.

The school-related bill came out of a meeting last year with the local RESA group. School superintendents cited the high cost of meeting the requirement of sending attendance notifications by registered mail, which Benton says costs about $4 per letter.

“Jackson County said it would save them over $10,000 a year,” Benton said. “It’s also costing them one person to handle all the letters. I understand that in Gwinnett County, it would save about $50,000.”

By the time a school system sends such a letter, it would have attempted to contact the student’s parents by mail, by a phone call and, if there is an e-mail address, by e-mail. Benton said he has an opinion from the attorney general that eliminating the registered letter requirement will not affect due process.

“We’ve got a tremendous number of kids missing a tremendous number of days, especially in middle school and elementary school,” Benton said.

Benton introduced the bill last year, but it stalled in the Rules Committee.

Contact Rep. Benton

District 31 Rep. Tommy Benton can be reached by phone at 706-367-5891 (home) or 404-656-0177 (office); or by e-mail at tommy.benton@house.ga.gov.

For Daily updates on legislative action and links to Georgia representatives, U.S. Congressmen, Senators and other officials, visit Benton’s Website at www.tommybenton.com.