The Georgia state Senate voted by near unanimous measure on Monday to approve compromise changes offered by the House last week to an adoption reform package that’s been bouncing unsuccessfully through the General Assembly for the last two years.
An attempt to reform the state’s cumbersome adoption processes failed in the eleventh hour last year after a controversial religious liberty provision was attached. After its failure, Governor Nathan Deal and Speaker David Ralston demanded the legislature reconsider the bill without the poison pill provision. The General Assembly made good on the no-religious-liberty-language demand, but the Senate pointedly added a new plank that would empower parents to give temporary, revocable guardianship to relatives or other qualified adults in an effort to keep children out of the foster care system.
While the bill technically satisfied the governor’s religious liberty demand, confusion reigned under the Gold Dome in the days that followed the Senate’s inclusion of the powers of attorney proposal, principally because the governor vetoed the same measure in a separate bill the year prior.
The House offered up last week a potential compromise, but Senate leadership did not outwardly indicate when or whether it would review the adjusted proposal. Now that it has, the bill’s long road in the legislature has ended. The bill heads next to Deal’s desk for consideration.