MACON, Ga. — The Georgia General Assembly is about to go into Day 19 of the legislative session. We're less than a month out from Crossover Day.
There are already some bills that have become big talkers under the Gold Dome.
The hot topics we expected to see this session are the ones we're still hearing about: mental health, education, and gun rights.
First up, an issue both state Republicans and Democrats seem to be seeing eye-to-eye on--mental health.
Speaker David Ralston introduced the 75-page Mental Health Parity Act bill which would require health insurance companies to treat mental illness in the same way they treat physical illness.
"It's not just a matter of resources. It's much more complicated than that. We got to attract some more people to that field to treat mental illness," said Rep. Robert Dickey. "We're playing catch up in our state."
"We're not putting the money in that that we ought to be putting in," said Sen. David Lucas.
That bill is expected to move out of the Health and Human Services Committee and onto the House floor by next week.
But there's a list of bills that are already prompting debate. Several are relating to education.
There's multiple versions of bills concerned with banning Critical Race Theory.
The one that's being discussed the most is Senate Bill 377.
It would ban teaching that an individual is inherently oppressive based solely on their race or "the United States of America and the State of Georgia are fundamentally or systemically racist." The bill says it would apply to local school systems as well as the University System of Georgia and the Technical College System of Georgia.
"If you teach American history, teach what happened. Slavery is part of American history. You can't erase that," Lucas said.
"You know it's not erasing history," said Rep. Matt Hatchett. "It's not saying 'I'm not going to teach history' or 'I'm not going to teach slavery was wrong.' It's to say that you or I... or one person and another person is better than another person because of something that happened in the past."
A separate education bill we're watching is House Bill 1178 which has been dubbed the Parents' Bill of Rights. Republicans are pushing to give parents more control of their children's education. If passed, it would add transparency provisions to state law and would allow parents to have access to their kids' instructional materials.
Another issue at the forefront is constitutional carry. If passed, it would allow Georgians to carry a gun without any permit or government documentation.
"You ought to be able to get information on people to find out whether they been involved in family violence or whether they have some mental problems," Lucas said.
"Our permit process is working pretty well right now," Dickey said. "That will be a strong debate we have this year," he added when commenting on constitutional carry.