ATLANTA – Residents of East Cobb were divided at a legislative hearing Wednesday over whether their community should become a city.
A Georgia House subcommittee is considering a bill asking East Cobb voters to decide the cityhood issue in a November referendum.
“Closer to the people is better,” East Cobb resident Scott Hausman told members of the subcommittee, explaining his support for a new city.
“More government means more taxes,” countered resident Scott Killebrew, a cityhood opponent.
The legislation, sponsored by Republican state Reps. Matt Dollar and Sharon Cooper, both of whom represent East Cobb, calls for a city of about 55,000 centered around the Johnson Ferry corridor. It would stretch from the Chattahoochee River on the south to Shallowford Road on the north and from the Fulton County line on the east to Old Canton Road on the west.
A study conducted last year by the Fiscal Research Center at Georgia State University found the proposed city to be financially feasible.
The city would be governed by a six-member council with three at-large posts and three district seats, all elected citywide. The six would elect a mayor from among themselves.
“We wanted a weaker mayor and a strong city council,” Dollar said.
House Bill 841, which Dollar and Cooper introduced last year, is the second legislative effort at forming a city in East Cobb. A 2019 bill was abandoned due to lack of public support, Dollar said.
“It is a far more well received idea [now],” he said. “People are starting to understand it.”
Democrats captured control of the Cobb County Commission last fall, while East Cobb is heavily Republican.
East Cobb resident and Realtor Pamela Reardon said she doesn’t like the direction the commission is taking on land use and zoning issues.
“They make no bones that their goal is to urbanize our suburbs,” she said. “They want to have high density along Johnson Ferry.”
Rep. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, who supports the bill, said East Cobb residents could expect better police protection with a local rather than a countywide police force.
“If you’re a resident of East Cobb, you are paying for police who are not patrolling your community,” he said. “You’re going to get a demonstrably better level of service.”
But opponents questioned the fiscal wisdom of operating a smaller city government in an area now served by Cobb County.
“Incorporating a city is another layer of government,” said Mindy Seger, an organizer of the East Cobb Alliance, a group formed to oppose cityhood.
Setzler said the municipal services the new city would provide would replace county services, not duplicate them.
“It’s not another layer of government,” he said. “It’s just a different layer.”
Seger also criticized the provision in the bill calling for the city council to elect the mayor.
“Citizens should be able to directly participate in the election of this public officer,” she said.
Rep. Victor Anderson, R-Cornelia, the subcommittee’s chairman, said the full House Governmental Affairs Committee could take up the East Cobb cityhood bill as early as Thursday.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The Biden administration is cracking down on the disposal of coal ash generated by power plants in Georgia and other states.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced this week it intends to enforce a 2015 rule prohibiting utilities from dumping coal ash into unlined ponds.
Georgia Power is in the process of closing all 29 of its ash ponds at 11 plants across the state, a $9 billion investment. While the Atlanta-based utility’s plan calls for excavating and removing the ash from 19 of those ponds, the other 10 are to be closed in place.
The Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) issued a proposed permit last year for an unlined coal ash pond at Georgia Power’s Plant Hammond near Rome. Environmental groups and nearby residents have protested, claiming some of the ash is sitting in groundwater.
The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) welcomed the EPA’s announcement.
“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has stepped up to offer communities hope and to protect clean water, rivers and drinking water supplies from the threats posed by coal ash,” said Frank Holleman, a senior attorney with the SELC.
“With EPA’s leadership, we now have the opportunity to put coal ash pollution and catastrophes behind us and to restore common-sense protections for communities across the South that have lived with coal ash contamination for far too long.”
The EPA’s Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery sent a letter Tuesday asking Georgia EPD Director Rick Dunn to review pending coal ash pond closure permits to determine whether they need to be modified or reissued in light of the EPA’s announcement.
The federal agency suggested a meeting with EPD later this month to discuss the results of the review.
Georgia Power spokesman John Kraft said the utility is committed to closing all of its ash ponds safely.
“We are evaluating EPA’s position as announced Tuesday and we will continue to work with them, as well as Georgia EPD, to safely close our ash ponds,” he said. “We remain committed to compliance with all environmental regulations and ensuring that our closure plans are protective of the environment and the surrounding communities.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp wants to use a record state budget surplus to cut taxes.
The Republican governor proposed $1.6 billion in tax refunds Wednesday worth $250 for state income tax single filers and $500 for joint filers.
“We should continue to fund our priorities but also be good stewards of that taxpayer money,” Kemp told Georgia political and business leaders during the annual Eggs and Issues breakfast sponsored by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce.
Kemp said the record $3.7 billion budget surplus the state posted at the end of the last fiscal year in June resulted from Georgia’s ability to recover quickly from the recession brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. While some states shut down businesses during the pandemic’s early months, Kemp chose to keep Georgia’s economy open.
“We chose hope over fear, freedom over lockdowns,” he said. “As a result, our state led the nation in economic recovery.”
While the governor’s tax refund plan likely will enjoy smooth sailing in the Republican-controlled legislature, an Atlanta-based think tank criticized it as overly broad.
“Public opinion data shows that what most Georgians want is not a smaller one-time payment for all taxpayers, but strategically targeted tax relief for those who need it the most,” said Danny Kanso, senior policy analyst with the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. “State leaders should reconsider the approach to one-time payments and choose a lasting solution that would benefit those hardest hit by the pandemic.”
Kemp also announced plans to reverse the budget cuts to higher education the state imposed during the Great Recession of the late 2000s and early 2010s.
He said he will ask the General Assembly for $262 million to remove “institutional” fees the University System of Georgia slapped on students during that economic downturn and $25 million to increase the HOPE Scholarship program’s coverage to at least 90% of tuition costs at the state’s public colleges and universities.
The mandatory institutional fees, which were not earmarked for specific purposes such as athletics, have been a major source of complaints by students and their parents. The lottery-funded HOPE program, which used to provide full tuition coverage for eligible students, was reduced in 2011 because growing student enrollment was failing to keep pace with HOPE revenues.
Kemp also announced legislation will be introduced on his behalf during the 2022 General Assembly session to exclude from taxes retirement income earned by members of the military.
Also during the Eggs and Issues breakfast, Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan pitched his proposal for a $250 million state tax credit to raise money to support law enforcement.
Georgia House Speaker David Ralston said he will introduce a comprehensive bill aimed at improving mental health services in Georgia by, among other things, providing parity to mental health-care workers.
“For too long, our state has ranked among the worst in the nation for delivering mental-heath services,” said Ralston, R-Blue Ridge. “That is a distinction that’s going to change.”
Wednesday’s Eggs and Issues breakfast was the first held inside Midtown Atlanta’s Fox Theatre and the first to be held in person since before the pandemic struck Georgia nearly two years ago.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Protecting voting rights in America is important enough to abolish the U.S. Senate’s filibuster rule to get it done, President Joe Biden said Tuesday during a speech in Atlanta.
Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to the campus of historically Black Atlanta University Center to drum up public support for two voting rights bills stalled in the Senate.
With every Republican senator opposing the measures in the evenly divided legislative chamber, neither can gain passage because of the filibuster rule, which requires 60 votes to take action.
“Filibusters have been weaponized and abused,” Biden said. “The majority should rule in the United States Senate.”
Biden, who served in the Senate for 36 years, has long been a supporter of the filibuster rule, which historically has been used to ensure bipartisan support before legislation could win passage.
But he said protecting voting rights is too critical to worry about saving the filibuster.
“The right to vote is democracy’s threshold liberty,” he said. “Without it, nothing is possible.”
The Freedom to Vote Act, a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s voting rights laws, would set federal standards for elections, end partisan redistricting that tends to perpetuate parties in power in Congress and state legislatures, and reform campaign finance laws.
The more narrowly drawn John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named for the late Atlanta congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis, would strengthen and restore portions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in response to U.S. Supreme Court rulings during the last decade.
Specifically, Biden and Harris criticized the overhaul of Georgia election laws the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed last year.
Senate Bill 202 adds a voter ID requirement for absentee ballots, restricts the location of absentee ballot drop boxes and prohibits non-poll workers from handing out food and drinks within 150 feet of voters standing in line.
Georgia’s was among 19 laws 34 states passed last year that Democrats say make it more difficult for Americans to vote, particularly voters of color.
Harris urged those in the audience not to be complacent about protecting voting rights.
“In the last few years, we have seen so many anti-voting laws there is danger of becoming accustomed to these laws, as if they are normal,” she said. “There is nothing normal about a law that makes it illegal to pass out water and food to people standing in a long election line.”
Georgia Republicans took exception Tuesday to the Democrats’ characterization of the state’s new election law and criticized the two bills before the U.S. Senate.
Gov. Brian Kemp accused Biden and congressional Democrats of attempting an “unconstitutional federal takeover of elections” that he vowed to oppose.
“Georgia is ground zero for the Biden-Harris assault on election integrity,” Kemp said during a news conference shortly before Biden and Harris spoke. “[But] we refuse to be bullied … into backing down.”
“The Biden administration continues to wage a shameless political attack on Georgia’s constitutional authority to regulate its elections,” state Attorney General Chris Carr added. “The truth is, our election law strengthens security, expands access and ensures transparency for all Georgians.”
Some voting rights groups in Georgia did not attend Tuesday’s presidential speech, urging Biden and Harris to stay away from Atlanta until they come up with a specific plan for moving the voting rights bills through Congress.
“We don’t need even more photo ops,” said Cliff Albright, cofounder of Black Voters Matter. “We need action.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger called on Congress Tuesday to pass a constitutional amendment banning non-U.S. citizens from voting.
“American leaders should be elected by American citizens,” Raffensperger said during a news conference at the Georgia Capitol. “It’s as simple as that.”
Raffensperger spoke out Tuesday hours before President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were due in Atlanta to drum up public support for Democrat-backed voting rights legislation stalled in the U.S. Senate.
The Republican secretary of state’s remarks also came a day after state Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller, R-Gainesville, introduced a state-level constitutional amendment to prohibit non-citizen voting. Miller is seeking the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor.
Non-U.S. citizens already are banned from voting in Georgia under state law. While no states allow non-citizens to vote, New York City recently enacted an ordinance permitting non-citizens to vote there.
Raffensperger criticized Biden and congressional Democrats for pushing legislation he said would amount to a federal takeover of state and local elections.
He said the two bills being pushed by Democrats would virtually eliminate voter ID requirements, allow third parties not affiliated with election officials to distribute and collect absentee ballots and prohibit election agencies from purging voter rolls within six months of a federal election.
“Make no mistake: This is an attempt to weaken election integrity in the guise of voting rights,” he said.
Besides the constitutional change to prohibit non-citizens from voting, Raffensperger also proposed establishing voter ID requirements nationwide, banning third-party “ballot harvesting” and shortening the blackout period for maintaining voter rolls.
Democrats have criticized election overhaul laws passed in Georgia and other states since the 2020 elections as an effort by Republicans to use voter suppression to reverse their electoral losses.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
