ATLANTA – Georgia lawmakers took another step Thursday toward determining the state’s political balance of power for the next decade, as a state Senate committee approved a Republican-drawn congressional map.
Voting 9-5 along party lines, the Senate Reapportionment and Redistricting Committee approved a map aimed at gaining a seat in Georgia’s congressional delegation by making one metro Atlanta district more friendly to the GOP while leaving another solidly in Democratic hands. Georgia’s U.S. House delegation currently consists of eight Republicans and six Democrats.
The map is now headed toward final approval on the floor of the GOP-controlled Senate. The state House of Representatives is still holding hearings on the map.
The General Assembly has been meeting in special session for two weeks as lawmakers redraw legislative and congressional boundaries to accommodate changes in population reflected in the 2020 U.S. Census.
The map approved Thursday adds more white voters to the 6th Congressional District by extending it north through all of Forsyth and Dawson counties and eastern Cherokee County. As a result, the 6th District’s white voting-age population would increase to 66.63%.
That makes the reelection prospects of U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Marietta, problematic at best. McBath won the seat representing East Cobb, North Fulton and North DeKalb counties in 2018 after it had been in Republican hands for decades.
Under the new map, the 7th Congressional District would take in most of Gwinnett County and a portion of North Fulton, increasing its concentration of minority voters and, thus, making it safer for freshman Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux, D-Lawrenceville.
The Republican map also makes the 2nd Congressional District in Southwest Georgia held by Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Albany, more competitive by slightly lowering its Black voting-age population (VAP) and raising its white VAP.
Before approving the GOP map, the committee rejected — again, along party lines — a Democrat-authored map introduced by Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler, D-Stone Mountain.
The Democratic map made little change to McBath’s district while keeping Bourdeaux’s majority-minority district wholly inside Gwinnett County.
“[The 6th District] will continue to be one of the most competitive in the state under our map,” Butler said.
The Democrats also sought to create an additional majority-minority district by shifting the 10th Congressional District from east Georgia to the western portions of metro Atlanta, reflecting the metro region’s rapid growth during the last decade.
Sen. Michael Rhett, D-Marietta, complained that the Republican map moves the Northwest Georgia district of controversial Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Rome, south into some of the most heavily Black areas of Cobb County.
“That’s not sitting well with my constituents,” he said.
Sen. John Kennedy, R-Macon, the committee’s chairman, said the change was made to meet the legal requirements that all congressional districts be virtually even in population. He said the map has to be viewed as a whole, with populations shifts in each district affecting others.
“None of this is done in a vacuum,” he said.
Late last week and early this week, lawmakers passed new state House and Senate maps amid protests from Democrats that the maps were drawn in secret and without enough time for public comment.
Legislative Democrats and civil and voting rights advocates criticized the Republican congressional map at House and Senate committee hearings Wednesday as ignoring communities of interest in favor of giving the GOP a partisan advantage.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia’s unemployment rate dipped to 3.1% last month, the lowest in the state’s history, the Georgia Department of Labor (GDOL) reported Thursday.
October joblessness in Georgia was well below the national unemployment rate of 4.6% and slightly below September’s 3.3%.
“We have seen continuous job growth this year as we have gained back 90% of the jobs lost during the pandemic,” state Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler said.
“The continual increase in employment opportunity, particularly in those areas hardest hit by the pandemic, reinforces the critical need for encouraging available Georgians back into the workforce.”
Jobs in Georgia have increased by 117,400 since last May, and October’s growth of 21,000 jobs marks only the fifth time since 1990 that over-the-month job growth for that month exceeded 20,000.
The administrative and support services, transportation and warehousing, and retail trade job sectors have all recovered the jobs lost during the pandemic and added to their respective totals.
However, sectors including accommodation and food services, local government, and religious, grants, civic, and professional services continue struggling to fill jobs.
Jobs in Georgia were up 21,000 last month and are up 4.5% over the year to more than 4.6 million.
But the labor force remains down 32,000 compared to March of last year, just before the coronavirus pandemic struck Georgia.
The sectors with the most over-the-month job gains in October were transportation and warehousing, which gained 3,600 jobs; retail trade, which gained 3,000 jobs; and the 2,500 jobs gained by the health care and social assistance sector.
First-time unemployment claims last month were down 1,525 from September to 27,310, a 5% decline. For the year, initial claims fell by 86%.
More than 208,000 job openings are posted online at Employ Georgia for Georgians to access. Market salaries range from $23,000 to $103,000 with a median salary of $42,000.
“The GDOL is working to ensure that every Georgian who wants a job can find a job,” Butler said. “Our Business Services Unit is helping the state’s employers find employees that meet their business needs, and we are scheduling in-person appointments across the state in our career centers to make sure jobseekers have the support they need to successfully find employment.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
As electric vehicles sales increase, gasoline tax revenue is expected to decline.
ATLANTA – With sales of electric vehicles on the rise, transportation agencies are going to have to find a way to raise tax revenue other than the gasoline tax, a transportation consultant told Georgia lawmakers this week.
Robert Poole, director of transportation policy for the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation, urged members of the Georgia Freight & Logistics Commission to start thinking about replacing the gas tax by taxing motorists based on the number of miles they drive.
“Electric vehicle technology is coming much faster than most people realize,” Poole said. “Fuel tax revenues have begun what is going to be a long decline. We’re going to need to replace the fuel tax as a source of transportation funding.”
Poole and Benita Dodd, vice president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, teamed up on a recent report extolling the potential of the vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) tax.
“We support looking at this as an alternative to a declining fuel tax base,” Dodd said.
Poole said another reason to consider the VMT besides the flood of electric vehicles hitting the auto market is the tightening of mileage standards for new cars by the federal government.
While the Trump administration temporarily blunted the push for higher mileage requirements by rolling back the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards, the Biden administration is working on restoring them, Poole said.
“You can expect even tougher miles-per-gallon standards,” he said.
Poole said Oregon and Utah have launched pilot projects experimenting with the VMT, and the new $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending bill President Joe Biden signed this week authorizes a federal VMT pilot.
But Poole conceded the concept of a VMT has run into both practical and psychological obstacles.
On the practical side is the bureaucratic complexity of collecting a tax based on miles driven, compared to the simplicity of collecting gas taxes at the pump.
“This looks like a lot of record-keeping,” said state Sen. Frank Ginn, R-Danielsville, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee and a member of the Freight & Logistics Commission.
Poole said the collection issue could be addressed by phasing in the VMT tax to apply only to interstate highways at first, which account for 28% of the road miles traveled in Georgia. Transponders installed along interstates could reduce the cost of collection to 5% of the revenue the tax brings in, he said.
But the idea of using transponders to track how far drivers are traveling has raised concerns among the public.
“One of the biggest worries is privacy, that you have Big Brother in your car tracking you,” Poole said.
“Everywhere you go, there’s a camera,” Ginn added. “I just don’t want to go that route.”
Sen. Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega, suggested a way to sell the VMT politically would be to levy the tax only on electric vehicles and continue taxing motorists who use gasoline when they fill up.
He said the General Assembly passed legislation in 2015 levying an annual fee of $200 on non-commercial EVs in order to avoid the unpopular idea of tracking motorists.
The Reason Foundation report recommended that Georgia take part in a multi-state VMT pilot project, then look to phase in the tax by imposing it first on limited-access highways before moving to state and local roadways.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Republican lawmakers on Wednesday released a new congressional map that would make one metro Atlanta district more friendly to the GOP while leaving another solidly in Democratic hands.
The General Assembly has been meeting in special session for two weeks as lawmakers redraw legislative and congressional boundaries in accordance with new U.S. Census data.
The new congressional map adds more white voters to Democratic U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath’s 6th Congressional District by extending it north through all of Forsyth and Dawson counties and eastern Cherokee County. As a result, the 6th District’s white voting-age population would increase to 66.63%.
On the other hand, Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux’s 7th District taking in most of Gwinnett County and a portion of North Fulton County would remain a majority-minority district.
An alternative map introduced by the state House and Senate Democratic caucuses would make little change to McBath’s district, leaving it competitive, while keeping Bourdeaux’s majority-minority district wholly inside Gwinnett County.
Legislative Democrats and civil and voting rights advocates criticized the Republican congressional map at House and Senate committee hearings Wednesday as ignoring communities of interest in favor of giving the GOP a partisan advantage.
Maggie Goldman, a Democrat from Johns Creek, complained that moving McBath’s district north through Forsyth and Dawson counties was politically motivated.
“Dawson and Forsyth have nothing to do with Sandy Springs except to create a majority white district,” Goldman told members of the Senate Reapportionment and Redistricting Committee.
Others complained that the Republican map packs Black voters into certain districts to dilute their voting strength while spreading out GOP voters to maximize their power.
Rep. Bonnie Rich, R-Suwanee, chairman of the House Legislative & Congressional Reapportionment Committee, denied the accusations. She said Georgia’s rapid population growth in metro Atlanta during the last decade coupled with population losses in rural South Georgia made it necessary to move districts to the north.
“We drew our maps based on population shifts,” Rich said.
“We think this map fairly represents all Georgians,” added Sen. John Kennedy, R-Macon, chairman of the Senate redistricting panel. “It is not gerrymandered.’
The two committees will continue discussing the competing congressional maps on Thursday.
Late last week and early this week, lawmakers passed new state House and Senate maps amid protests from Democrats that the maps were drawn in secret and without enough time for public comment.
Capitol Beat Bureau Chief Dave Williams contributed to this report.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Georgia Commissioner of Transportation Russell McMurry
ATLANTA – The Georgia Department of Transportation (DOT) is targeting distracted and impaired driving through a partnership with a nonprofit foundation.
The DOT is entering a two-year partnership with the Lutzie 43 Foundation, created after former Auburn football player Philip Lutzenkirchen died in 2014 as a passenger in an auto crash in LaGrange involving a driver who had been drinking.
The partnership, being launched ahead of the holiday travel season, will promote the foundation’s 43 Key Seconds safe driving initiative together with the DOT’s Drive Alert Arrive Alive campaign in an effort to reduce the number of crashes and fatalities in Georgia caused by unsafe driving.
“We are looking forward to working with the Lutzie 43 Foundation to make the roadways in Georgia safer,” Georgia Commissioner of Transportation Russell McMurry said. “Together, these driver safety-focused initiatives can make an impact on driver behavior.”
The partnership will include a comprehensive communications plan, new Safe Driving Summit events and the distribution of the Lutzie 43 Foundation’s 43 Key Seconds keys through the DOT’s HERO and CHAMP programs.
The 43 Key Seconds key serves as a safe driving tool. By keeping the key on a keychain or somewhere visible in their car, drivers are prompted to take 43 seconds to ensure they have a clear head, clear hands, clear eyes and click their seatbelt before starting the car.
“We are thrilled to be partnering with GDOT to share our 43 Key Seconds safe driving initiative and work together to make our roads safe,” said Mike Lutzenkirchen, Philip’s father and executive director of the Lutzie 43 Foundation.
“Through the Safe Driving Summits, paid marketing campaigns and distribution of the 43 Key Seconds keys … we believe that at the end of this partnership, we will have made a difference not only on the roads, but in the lives of drivers across the state.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol BeatNews Service, a project of the Georgia Press EducationalFoundation.
