Major Political Advocacy Wins

ACEC Georgia advocates for the business interests of the engineering industry at every level of government - federal, state, and local - by advancing and securing policies that will positively impact firms in every part of our state. Some of our major political advocacy initiatives include the following:

• CREATING AN INDEPENDENT PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERS & LAND SURVEYORS (PELS) BOARD
  • For many years, ACEC Georgia worked collaboratively with the engineering organizations that make up the Georgia Engineering Alliance to solve the chronic customer service complaints and enforcement issues that plagued the PELS Board’s operations. These issues jeopardized public safety and hampered employee recruiting, retention, and career advancement. After exhausting every other option, House Bill 476 was introduced to create an independent PELS Board. Signed into law by Governor Kemp on May 9, 2022, this bill was the culmination of years of cooperative effort by ACEC Georgia in working with the General Assembly and the offices of the Governor and Secretary of State. ACEC Georgia has been and will continue to be a resource for the PELS Board as it transitions from being under the Secretary of State’s purview to becoming a completely independent board.
• PROHIBITING THE USE OF BROAD FORM INDEMNIFICATION AND DUTY TO DEFEND CLAUSES IN GEORGIA
  • In 2016, Governor Nathan Deal signed House Bill 943 into law, which prohibits the use of broad form indemnification and/or duty to defend clauses in contracts for engineering, architectural and/or land surveying services. ACEC Georgia exclusively led the effort that resulted in its successful passage.
• PASSING THE TRANSPORTATION FUNDING ACT OF 2015
  • ACEC Georgia helped lead the effort to pass the Transportation Funding Act of 2015 (HB 170), which created approximately $1 billion per year in new, permanent, constitutionally dedicated funding for Georgia DOT. This amount will increase over time due to indexing mechanisms built into the legislation.
• EXPANDING PRIVATE PLAN REVIEW AND INSPECTIONS BY ENGINEERS & ARCHITECTS
  • Passed into law in 2019, House Bill 493 creates the option for developers, builders, and contractors to go straight to licensed private-sector engineers and architects for local government inspections and plan review. ACEC Georgia worked collectively with stakeholders for over a year on this legislation.
  • In 2020, with local governments shut down due to the pandemic, ACEC Georgia worked with the Governor’s Office to get Executive Orders that allowed engineering firms to remain open and projects to continue to move forward. These Orders included significant expansion of private plan review and inspections, and these changes were later made permanent by legislation that was signed into law later in 2020.
• TRANSIT GOVERNANCE AND FUNDING COMMISSION
  • ACEC Georgia was instrumental in the successful passage House Bill 930 that created a new transit governance agency (the “ATL”). It also established a new 1% transit only T-SPLOST that can utilized for up to 30 years after the passage of the required local ballot referendum.
• SIGNIFICANT TAX REFORM BENEFITS FOR ENGINEERING FIRMS
  • The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and created a 20% tax deduction for passthrough firms, including S corporations, partnerships, and LLCs. Engineering firms were originally excluded from this deduction but following an extensive advocacy effort by ACEC National in Washington, Congressional leaders modified the final version to provide engineering firms with full use of the new 20% passthrough deduction. The law also allows engineering firms to continue to use cash basis accounting (rather than accrual), which was a critical ACEC priority. The bill also preserves ESOPs and other retirement savings mechanisms, as well as private activity bonds and renewable energy incentives.
• PANDEMIC WINS:
  • During the uncertainty of the first several months of the pandemic, which resulted in an amalgamation of competing and confusing local ordinances, ACEC Georgia worked with the Governor and his office to:
    • Eliminate the time clock before an owner could use a private provider to provide plan review and inspection Executive Order 3.20.20.02
    • Secured an Executive Order that allowed private providers to conduct plan review and inspections of hospitals, ambulatory health care centers, nursing homes, jails, penal institutions, airports, buildings that impact national or state homeland security and high rises, structures which were previously exempted from the private sector.  The successful execution of the program during lockdown led to the permanent implementation Executive Order 3.30.20 with SB 377. Private plan review and inspection is now permitted for all structures
    • Ensure that A/E/C workers were considered essential workers, and not subject to county lock-down orders, so that projects could continue on schedule Executive Order 4.2.20
  • In addition to our executive level efforts, we successfully advocated for the passage of the STRUCTURAL ENGINEER LICENSURE BILL, SB 310 during the bifurcated legislative session. SB 310 created a new professional engineering license category for structural engineers. The Structural Engineer (SE) license was established to help alleviate some of the competitive disadvantages Georgia structural engineers were facing when competing against engineers from states that have created some form of established SE license.