The Unit 3 tower under construction at Plant Vogtle (left). Units 1 and 2, built more than 30 years ago, are on the right.
ATLANTA – Georgia Power has announced another delay in the completion of the nuclear expansion at Plant Vogtle.
The first of two new reactors being built at the plant south of Augusta won’t be ready to go into commercial service until the third quarter of next year, the Atlanta-based utility announced Thursday. Under the revised schedule, the second unit will be delayed until the second quarter of 2023.
In both cases, that marks an additional delay of three months for two reactors that originally were due to be completed in 2016 and 2017.
Georgia Power blamed the delay on the need for additional time to deal with ongoing construction challenges and allow for the comprehensive testing necessary to ensure quality and safety standards are met.
“As we’ve said from the beginning of this project, we are going to build these units the right way, without compromising safety and quality to achieve a schedule deadline,” said Chris Womack, chairman, president and CEO of Georgia Power.
“We have endured and overcome some extraordinary circumstances building the first new nuclear units in the U.S. in more than 30 years. Despite these challenges, progress at the site has been steady and evident.”
The project was originally expected to cost $14 billion but has nearly doubled after years of delays and cost overruns. A key factor driving up the cost was the bankruptcy of prime contractor Westinghouse and its replacement by Southern Nuclear, like Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Co.
The most recent delay Georgia Power announced back in July drove up the capital cost of the project by $460 million.
The state Public Service Commission is scheduled to vote early next month on how much of the mounting costs for the first of the new reactors the utility will be allowed to pass on to customers.
A tentative agreement announced last week would let Georgia Power pass on an additional $2.1 billion. However, the utility would not be permitted to start recovering those costs until one month after that first reactor goes into commercial operation.
Between them, the two reactors once in service will power more than 500,000 Georgia homes and businesses. With more than 7,000 workers on the site, the Plant Vogtle expansion is the largest construction project in the state.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – In 2011, majority Republicans in the General Assembly drew such heavily partisan legislative maps that the GOP captured a “supermajority” – 38 of 56 seats – in the state Senate the following year.
In the Georgia House of Representatives, Republicans fell just one seat short of that two-thirds majority in 2012, winning 119 of 180 seats.
But the Georgia Democratic Party of 2021 is stronger than it was a decade ago. In the last two election cycles, Democrat Stacey Abrams lost an open gubernatorial race to Republican Brian Kemp by just 1.4 percentage points, while Democrats flipped two GOP-held congressional seats in Atlanta’s northern suburbs.
Democrat Joe Biden carried Georgia by 11,779 votes last November on his way to turning Republican President Donald Trump out of office. And two months later, Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock defeated Republican incumbents to win Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats.
Republicans will still be in charge of drawing new maps based on the 2020 Census results during a special legislative session starting Nov. 3. But Georgia political observers aren’t looking for a repeat of 2011’s GOP successes.
“This is not 2011,” said Brian Robinson, a top aide to former Gov. Nathan Deal and a Republican political commentator. “Republicans can’t go in trying to run the table. They have to pick what they’re willing to give up to shore up other areas.”
The reason behind the Democratic gains in Georgia lies in demographic changes.
The Peach State’s Black population has grown by 15.8% during the last decade. The state’s Hispanic population is up by 31.6%, and Asian Americans in Georgia have soared by 54.8%. All three minority groups tend to vote for Democrats.
Advocates for minority groups called on legislative Republicans to incorporate those demographic changes into the new maps during public hearings held across the state over the summer.
“If the lines are drawn fairly, they will accurately reflect racial diversity,” said Glory Kilanko, founder and CEO of Women Watch Afrika Inc., an Atlanta-based social justice nonprofit. “If our communities are divided up, we’ll be inadequately represented.”
Another trend that could play in Democrats’ favor in the upcoming redistricting process is a loss of population during the last decade in rural South Georgia, where voters tend to favor Republicans. By law, redrawn legislative districts cannot vary in population by more than 10%.
“[Republicans] are going to have to move some seats out of South Georgia to North Georgia,” said Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia. “It may take some creative cartography.”
Georgia Republicans do have some advantages they didn’t enjoy during the 2011 redistricting. The U.S. Supreme Court in a 2013 ruling did away with the “preclearance” provision of the federal Voting Rights Act, which required states with a history of racial discrimination to submit their congressional and legislative maps to the Justice Department.
“This is a potential obstacle that’s been removed,” said Kerwin Swint, a political science professor at Kennesaw State University.
But state Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta, said parties that might object to maps the Republicans draw still have recourse to the courts despite the loss of the preclearance requirement.
“The provisions of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act are in place,” she said. “There are legal protections for historically disenfranchised communities.”
Bullock said a further motive for Republicans not to take advantage of the lack of preclearance is that drawing districts designed to elect Black legislators helps Republicans politically by allowing them to “pack” surrounding districts with white voters likely to support GOP candidates.
“The idea that without preclearance, these Black districts are going to be carved up and split up is not going to happen,” he said.
Another advantage legislative mapmakers will have is that next month’s special session won’t take place until after the Nov. 2 municipal elections across Georgia. Under the law, incumbent state lawmakers who don’t like how their district has been drawn can’t move elsewhere to run within a year of the next election.
The ability to “freeze” lawmakers in their districts will allow Republicans to sabotage Democrats by drawing two or more Democratic incumbents into the same district and forcing them to run against each other.
But Swint said the loss of population in heavily Republican rural counties means GOP incumbents could also end up inside the same districts in order to make the population numbers work.
“It can be a real challenge to do that to Democrats and not Republicans as well,” he said.
Bullock predicted the demographic trends going against the Republicans are going to be too much to overcome despite GOP leaders’ control over redistricting.
“My guess is the Democrats won’t get what they like, but they’re probably going to get more seats than they have now,” he said. “Republicans are going to have to figure out how to strategically cut their potential losses.”
But Robinson said Republicans should be able to do better than mitigate an inevitable loss of seats. He said the key to GOP success will lie in drawing maps that pack Democrats – who tend to live closer together – while spreading out Republicans who already live in less dense communities.
“If Democrats win districts by 80%, and Republicans win by 50% to 60%, that’s how you do it,” he said.
Edward Lindsey, a former Georgia House majority whip, said he doesn’t believe redistricting will result in any dramatic shifts in the makeup of the General Assembly.
“Republicans should expect to lose three to five [House] seats south of Interstate 20,” he said. “[But] Republicans have a chance to regain three to five seats in suburban Atlanta by focusing on Republican principles.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia posted the strongest employment numbers last month since the coronavirus pandemic began more than a year and a half ago, the state Department of Labor reported Thursday.
Unemployment fell to a record low of 3.2% in September, dipping below the 3.3% jobless rate posted in January of last year, shortly before COVID-19 struck Georgia.
The number of employed Georgians rose above 5 million for the first time since the pandemic began, and the 161,786 listed as unemployed was at its lowest level since June 2001.
“This is excellent progress for Georgia,” state Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler said Thursday. “It shows that the state’s economy is rapidly recovering, and [the labor department’s] programs, along with other state policies, are working to get people back to work.”
The number of jobs statewide rose 14,300 last month compared to August. As a result, the state has regained 521,000 of the 609,500 jobs lost during the early stages of the pandemic in March and April of last year.
The job sector posting the most over-the-month job gains were retail trade, which gained 5,900 jobs in September. The number of wholesale trade jobs in Georgia was up by 2,100, and jobs in the transportation and warehousing sector increased by 1,800.
At the same time, accommodation and food services – the job sector hardest hit by the pandemic – is still down by 52,000 jobs.
“Our teams are proactively reaching out to unemployed jobseekers around the state to offer support services with finding a job, along with staff doing specialized recruitments,” Butler said.
First-time unemployment claims dropped substantially last month by 19,037 to 28,835. For the year, initial jobless claims are down 172,955, or 86%.
The labor department has 193,739 job openings posted on the Employ Georgia website, with a minimum of 308,106 unfilled positions.
“This is almost twice the number of available jobs than we have people currently looking for employment,” Butler said. “This is the main factor affecting job growth as employers across the state continue to struggle to fill vacant positions.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The Georgia House and Senate Democratic caucuses Thursday released their own proposed congressional map ahead of the special legislative session starting Nov. 3.
The Democrats’ map follows a congressional map the Republican-controlled state Senate put out back in September. With the GOP holding majorities in both the state House and Senate, the Democratic map isn’t likely to get serious consideration.
“Georgia has changed significantly over the last decade, and our proposed congressional map reflects that growth,” said U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Columbus. “Georgia voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around, and this map guarantees that.”
Democrats said their map provides a fair opportunity for voters of color in Georgia to elect representatives of their choice, as minorities make up a majority of the residents in six of the 14 districts (Districts 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, and 13).
“The proposal also fairly represents the partisan makeup of Georgia’s evenly divided electorate, with seven districts that lean Democratic and seven districts that lean Republican,” the Georgia Democratic Party said in a news release. “Additionally, with seven districts centered within metro Atlanta, this proposal rightly acknowledges that more than half of all Georgians live in metro Atlanta, which has driven more than two-thirds of Georgia’s population growth over the last decade.”
“As we crafted this proposed map, we wanted to ensure that it takes into account population trends within Georgia, reflects the will of Georgia voters at the ballot box, and allows voters of color an equal opportunity to elect their candidates of choice,” said Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler, D-Stone Mountain.
The congressional map being proposed by the state Senate would increase the size of districts in rural South Georgia to reflect losses in population during the last decade. The plan also targets Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Marietta, by shifting portions of the 6th Congressional District she represents into heavily Republican areas.
The Republican map was overseen by Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and state Sen. John Kennedy, R-Macon, who chairs the Senate Redistricting and Reapportionment Committee.
“This map not only meets principles of redistricting, but we are proud to present a map that regardless of political party, Georgians can be proud of,” Duncan said when the map was released. “Ensuring that any maps we produce are fair, compact, and keep communities of interest together will continue to be of upmost importance.”
The General Assembly currently has an online portal in which people can comment on the proposed Senate map.
ATLANTA – The Georgia Supreme Court heard arguments Thursday in a case where a metro Atlanta couple is blaming a social media app for a catastrophic car crash.
In 2015, Christal McGee, then 19, was using Snapchat’s speed filter to photograph herself driving at a high speed. McGee was using the app’s speed filter to shoot a selfie when she crashed into another vehicle driven by Wentworth Maynard, who suffered serious injuries. The crash happened in Spalding County around 10:15 pm. Maynard spent weeks in a local hospital, suffering from traumatic brain injuries.
Maynard and his wife have since been seeking damages from the California-based social media app, arguing the app tempted McGee to speed.
“The family would like Snapchat to take the speed filter down immediately so no other family will have to go through what they’re going through,” the Maynards’ attorney told ABC News in 2016. The speed filter feature is still available on the Snapchat app.
Recently, the Georgia Court of Appeals upheld a trial judge’s dismissal of the case. Presiding Judge Sara Doyle wrote Snapchat could not be held liable for the plaintiff’s injuries.
“Based on the facts of this case, the allegedly negligent design claim does not fall within Snapchat’s duty of care to the plaintiffs,” Doyle wrote.
The lawsuit had already been tossed once, only to be revived by the appellate court two years ago.
“Snapchat should have known the filter would be used in this type of incident,” said Naveen Ramachandrappa, the Maynards’ attorney. “There was a Change.org petition that existed prior to this crash to remove this filter. At the time of the crash, Snapchat had that knowledge.”
Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice David Nahmias said companies have to design their products to be reasonably safe.
“I have Leggos all over my house, and it’s known that if you step on a Leggo or slip on one, it will do damage,” said Justice Sarah Hawkins Warren. “So does that mean they will change the product? What will the company do for me?”
“Full face masks that are commonly used around Halloween are sometimes used in robberies,” added Justice Charles Bethel. “Do the manufacturers of those masks owe a duty to the general public with respect to robberies?”
“In terms of risk liability, I believe they do,” Ramachandrappa said.
“There are absolutely no allegations that any accidents have been caused using the speed filter,” John Major, an attorney representing Snapchat, told the court.
Snapchat allows people to take temporary photos and videos and share them. One of its speed filters is a speedometer that shows the speed at which the user is moving. According to an affidavit, McGee was using the filter to create an image showing she was driving more than 100 miles per hour.
The Maynards claim Snapchat is liable because it knew that users could use the application in a way that would distract them from obeying traffic laws and that the speed filter encouraged excessive speeding. They argue Shapchat should remove the filter under the federal Communications Decency Act, which the Georgia Court of Appeals denied.
The Maynards allege that Snapchat’s design contains an inherent incentive to engage in risky behavior.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
