Unterman under fire from advocates over stalled legislation

Criticism focused on lack of hearings on rape kit, medical marijuana bills

• By Curt Yeomans
  
   
  State Sen. Renee Unterman found herself under fire this week over legislation that stalled in a committee she leads as some of the final days of the Georgia legislative session ticked away.

Advocates of two particular pieces of legislation, one that would force reforms on the handling of rape kits and another that would expand medical marijuana, focused their anger at the Buford Republican because the bills did not get hearings in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, which is chaired by Unterman.

Although there are two days left in the legislative session, which ends on Thursday, the chances of getting those bills passed on their own is gone.

“There are no more hearings (this year),” Unterman said. “All of the committee work is done.”

The rape kit legislation was a particular source of controversy, with Better Georgia board chairwoman Amy Morton saying in a statement that “Unterman’s obstruction prevents rape victims from seeking justice while alleged rapists are never held accountable for their crimes.”

Unterman directed the Daily Post to comments she recently made on the Senate floor about the legislation this past week when asked why it didn’t get a hearing before her committee.

A video of those remarks showed the senator explaining to her colleagues the steps taken by a Senate study committee that she sat on before the session to look at the issue of rapes on college campuses and a backlog of untested rape kits.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation received a $2 million federal grant to clear out some of the backlog by testing older kits to look for serial rapists, Unterman told her colleagues. She said she had an agreement with several hospital groups, local law enforcement and the head of the GBI to hold off on dealing with the issue so it could be studied further this year.

“I had an agreement … that we would stand firm for the next year and continue to see if these infrastructure changes, the process that we are now implementing, that it was being implemented successfully and that it continues to be that way,” Unterman said.

On Friday, Unterman told the Daily Post that she believed politics may be a factor in some of the criticism she has received, particularly from Better Georgia, about not holding a hearing on the bill, adding that she believed it was because she was a Republican.

“I’m a strong conservative in the majority party, who is part of the leadership and I get a lot of bills passed,” she said.

The bill’s author, Rep. Scott Holcomb, D-Atlanta, attacked the idea that politics was involved, in any way, in a series of Facebook posts over the week, however.

“HB 827 is an important bill that needs to pass,” he said in a lengthy post to supporters on Tuesday. “It ensures the timely processing of rape kits to law enforcement and ultimately to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

“These are the facts: We do not have a statewide protocol for ensuring the timely processing of rape kits; we do not know the total number of untested rape kits sitting on shelves across our state; we do know that there are untested rape kits sitting on shelves waiting to be forwarded to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

“House Bill 827 addresses all of these. And there are many other reasons to move forward to include using the DNA evidence from the tests to identify serial rapists — which has happened in other states.”

A day later, Holcomb added, “Nothing about this is, or should be, political.”

Unterman, who has backed other bills to deal with other sex crimes, including human trafficking, in the past, offered a possibility that similar legislation could find a more favorable climate in the 2017 session. That ray of hope is contingent on how the current efforts to clear out the backlog turn out.

“I can assure you that if victims are in harm’s way, that next year in January, if the infrastructure is not continuing to improve, that we will have legislation and I look forward to continuing to work with all of you,” she told her colleagues during her remarks on the Senate floor.

Medical marijuana

As for the medical marijuana issue, Unterman is facing criticism from Rep. Allen Peake, R-Macon, who authored the bill to expand the list of conditions for which the cannabis oil can be used as a treatment, and from families who say their relatives need it to deal with various medical conditions.

One such relative is Buford resident Susan Powell, who said her young cousin, Reid Underwood, suffers from a rare disease known as Epidermolysis Bullosa, which has produced blisters on his body that must be drained, cleaned and bandaged daily. Powell said doctors have given him morphine to reduce his pain, but she said cannabis oil would also help him live more comfortably.

Epidermolysis Bullosa is one of the conditions that would have been added to the list, along with others such as autism, HIV/AIDS and Tourette’s syndrome, by Peake’s legislation.

“Sen. Unterman is a trained registered nurse — she should know better than most of our elected officials how horrible EB can be,” said Powell, who called herself a registered Republican in an email to the Daily Post. “She is also a mother, so I was hopeful she could be persuaded by the pleas of other parents.”

Powell later added, “As a Gwinnett resident who has supported her in the past, I call on Sen. Unterman to show a little compassion for Georgia families in distress and get out of the way!”

During her appearance on “Lawmakers,” Unterman said she sympathizes with the families of people who need cannabis oil to deal with pain from medical conditions they are dealing with. But she said she heard from both parents who wanted it passed and parents who did not. Still, she left the door open to working with them on similar legislation in the future.

Unterman told the Daily Post on Friday that the expansion issue might still pass this session without her committee’s involvement.

“It’s been attached to another bill that’s still in the House,” she said.

It’s a bit of maneuvering that’s not uncommon in the final days of a legislative session. Issues that can’t get passed into law on their own sometimes come back as an amendment to another bill that is still alive, although Unterman said the amendment can’t make the bill it’s attached to any longer than it already was. It can only replace an existing part of the bill.

It’s a slim shot, but the expansion of the list of conditions for which medical marijuana can be used completely replaces the language of Senate Bill 145, which was passed by the Senate last year. That bill, sponsored by Sen. Josh McKoon, R-Columbus, and carried in the House by Peake, originally dealt with the Board of Community Health’s membership.

Although his own bill wasn’t able to get a hearing in the Senate, Peake refused to give up on the issue, saying “#gameon” in a tweet to supporters on Twitter on Tuesday.

“We will not give up,” Peake said in the post. “Georgia families are worth fighting for. One week left, pulling out all the stops.”

But, with only two more days left in the legislative session, it will fighting with several other bills to get out of the General Assembly and sent to Gov. Nathan Deal’s desk before the final gavel is banged Thursday.