ATLANTA – The state awarded more than $422 million in federal economic stimulus grants Tuesday to help communities across Georgia improve their water and sewer systems.
The grants are part of Georgia’s share of $4.8 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funds.
Gov. Brian Kemp appointed a committee of 13 Georgia lawmakers and state environmental agency officials to review applications submitted by local communities and choose which would receive grants.
“Because we remained focused on protecting lives and livelihoods throughout the pandemic, Georgia is now in a position to make strategic, transformational investments in our state’s water and sewer infrastructure,” Kemp said.
“I am proud to know that we have worked hard to prioritize projects which address pressing public health and environmental issues, support economic development, and enhance our ability to be good stewards of our water resources for generations to come.”
The money will be used to improve drinking water treatment, extend drinking water service into high-need areas, improve sewer systems and improve wastewater treatment.
The Water and Infrastructure Committee included Mark Williams, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, and Rick Dunn, director of the state Environmental Protection Division.
The state awarded more than $400 million in federal stimulus grants three weeks ago for broadband projects.
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 signed bipartisan legislation Monday that prohibits the state from doing business with companies that are boycotting Israel.
The Georgia House and Senate overwhelmingly passed different versions of House Bill 383 last year. It didn’t receive final passage until early in this year’s session when the House agreed to the Senate version.
Taking a stand in support of Israel is particularly important in the wake of growing anti-Semitism in the U.S. and across the Western world in recent years in the form of physical and verbal attacks, Kemp said during a brief bill-signing ceremony at the state Capitol.
“This legislation pushes back against that shameful and inexcusable prejudice,” he said. “It reasserts that hatred has no place in Georgia.”
The bill specifically takes aim at the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, a Palestinian-led effort supporters say is to pressure the Israeli government into granting full civil rights to Palestinians.
“The movement is not about criticizing Israeli policy,” said Anat Sultan-Dadon, Israel’s consul general to the Southeastern United States. “It’s about denying Israel’s right to exist.”
House Bill 383 is limited to companies with five or more employees with state contracts valued at $100,000 or more.
Georgia and Israel have longstanding ties. Israel has maintained a consulate in Atlanta since 1956, and Georgia has had a presence in Israel since 1994.
The two countries carry on a trade relationship worth $800 million a year. More than 100 Georgia companies do business in Israel, while more than 90 Israeli companies are in Georgia representing industries including financial technology, cybersecurity, health care, aerospace and e-commerce.
Kemp said the Georgia Department of Economic Development is planning to send a delegation on a trade mission to Israel next year. A trip planned for last year had to be postponed due to COVID-related travel restrictions.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Libertarian Ryan Graham of Atlanta entered the race for lieutenant governor Monday touting a platform of education reform and personal freedom.
Graham, 36, an IT project manager, is especially critical of standardized testing, which he said emphasizes “teaching to the test” at the expense of harder-to-measure but more meaningful student outcomes.
“We’re spending more money than ever, administering more tests, assigning more homework, requiring more hours, and none of it has improved outcomes,” he said. “It’s time to do something fundamentally different, not just more of what we know doesn’t work.”
Graham also called for less government overreach into the lives of citizens, especially COVID vaccine mandates.
“The decision to receive a vaccine is between an individual and their health-care provider,” he said. “No government has the authority to make that decision for you.”
In keeping with the longstanding Libertarian position on drugs, Graham said Georgia should decriminalize drug possession and legalize marijuana.
In the area of voting rights, Graham said he supports fair ballot access laws, ranked-choice voting and replacing Georgia’s voting machines with hand-marked paper ballots.
“I want there to be more choices that represent more Georgians,” he said. “If independents and minor parties are not actively blocked from ballots … more people could actually vote for someone who represents them and not just against the other guy.”
With Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan not seeking re-election to a second term, the field of candidates for lieutenant governor this year is crowded.
GOP candidates include Georgia Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller of Gainesville, state Sen. Burt Jones of Jackson and Savannah activist Jeanne Seaver.
Democrats running for lieutenant governor include Georgia Reps. Renitta Shannon of Decatur, Erick Allen of Smyrna, and Derrick Jackson of Tyrone; Dr. Jason Hayes of Alpharetta, and attorney Charlie Bailey of Atlanta.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Election years in the General Assembly are typically marked by politically motivated legislation.
But the trend is on steroids this year, as majority Republicans push a conservative agenda aimed at GOP base voters on topics from gun rights to abortion to what goes on in Georgia schools.
On Feb. 9, for example, legislative committees approved bills prohibiting Georgians from obtaining abortion-inducing drugs through the mail and forbidding transgender students born male from competing in girls’ sports.
That same afternoon, a committee also began debating a bill guaranteeing parental involvement in their children’s education.
Critics have derided the bills as unnecessary at best.
“What we’re seeing over and over this session is a solution in search of a problem,” Cecily Harsch-Kinnane, policy and outreach director for the group Public Education Matters and a former Atlanta Board of Education member, told members of the Senate Education and Youth Committee.
Several factors are at work making this election-year legislative session different, said Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia.
An unusual number of Republican lawmakers are running for statewide office this year and are seeking to establish their conservative bona fides with voters, Bullock said.
The list of those seeking higher office includes Georgia Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller, R-Gainesville. He is running for lieutenant governor in the May GOP primary against state Sen. Burt Jones, R-Jackson, who has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump.
Miller has garnered attention by introducing legislation to eliminate Georgia’s income tax and abolish absentee ballot drop boxes.
Early in the session, a constitutional amendment sponsored by Miller to allow only U.S. citizens to vote in Georgia was shot down because it failed to muster the two-thirds vote necessary for passage. Senate Democrats argued the measure isn’t needed because such a prohibition already exists in state law.
But the need for lawmakers to establish a high profile this year goes beyond those seeking statewide office. The General Assembly redrew the House and Senate maps last November in a redistricting process carried out every 10 years to account for population changes reflected in the U.S. Census.
As a result, many legislators will be shopping for votes from a lot of new constituents who aren’t familiar with them, Bullock said.
“The new districts are like open seats,” he said. “Being on the right side of one of these issues could help them form a connection with voters.”
Bullock said legislative Republicans also feel threatened this year by victories Democrats scored during the last election cycle, when President Joe Biden carried the Peach State and Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock became the first Georgia Democrats elected to the U.S. Senate since the late Max Cleland in 1996.
“[Republicans] see the handwriting on the wall.” Bullock said. “They see that Georgia is not a red-red state anymore.”
But if Georgia Republicans are backing a conservative agenda to appeal to GOP base voters, conservative activists say that’s what voters want.
Cole Muzio, president of Frontline Policy Action, a Georgia-based Christian organization, said polls the group has conducted among Georgia parents, grandparents and guardians have found strong support for “fairness in girls’ sports” and a high level of concern that schools are indoctrinating students in polarizing ideologies like critical race theory.
“We’ve seen a culture shift, from a values perspective, that’s largely gone unreported,” he said.
Republican leaders say there’s more to this year’s conservative agenda than election-year politics and are defending the merits of their legislation.
Senate Majority Leader Mike Dugan dismissed arguments from Democrats and their allies that the bills are unnecessary.
“This is not coming out of the blue,” Dugan, R-Carrollton, said of Senate Bill 377, which prohibits the teaching of nine “divisive concepts” in Georgia schools, colleges and universities.
Critics warn the bill’s language is so vague it could make history teachers afraid to talk about certain controversial subjects.
“We create a state of fear,” Robert Costley, executive director of the Georgia Association of Educational Leaders, said during a recent hearing. The group has not taken a formal position on the bill.
“If [teachers] do something wrong, we should hold them accountable,” Costley added. “But they shouldn’t have to be afraid to serve.”
But Dugan said there’s nothing in the divisive-concepts language – the heart of the bill – that prohibits an honest teaching of history.
“If you look through the nine bullets, the first half say, ‘You can’t,’ and the last half say, ‘You must,’ ” he said. “It says, ‘You must teach history, slavery, the Holocaust, the civil rights movement, women’s suffrage.’
“But you can’t use your students in a manner that’s going to diminish their self-esteem. You can’t hold them culpable for something they had nothing to do with.”
Dugan denied accusations the bill is politically motivated.
“I’m doing this bill because it’s the right thing to do,” he said.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia Power has encountered additional delays in the nuclear expansion at Plant Vogtle that will delay the project an additional three to six months.
The Atlanta-based utility announced Thursday that the first of two new reactors at the plant south of Augusta won’t be completed until the fourth quarter of this year or the first quarter of 2023. The second reactor will follow in the third or fourth quarter of next year under the revised schedule.
The delays will add $920 million to the project’s cost, more than doubling the original projected price tag of $14 billion when the Georgia Public Service Commission first approved the project in 2009.
While the first new reactor was 99% complete as of Jan. 31 and the entire project was 96% complete, detailed documentation required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is holding up the process.
“Our priority is, has been and will continue to be bringing Vogtle Units 3 & 4 safely online – to ‘get it right’ – so that we can provide Georgia with a reliable carbon-free energy resource for the next 60 to 80 years,” Georgia Power spokesman Jeff Wilson said Friday.
The Vogtle expansion has been hit with a series of scheduling delays and cost overruns since work began, prompting environmental and consumer advocates to criticize the project as a waste of money that should have been spent pursuing renewable energy.
Key factors in the delays were the bankruptcy of original prime contractor Westinghouse Electric and, later, disruptions in the schedule due to the impact of COVID-19 on the construction workforce.
As a result of the latest delay, the utility partners bankrolling the project – including Oglethorpe Power, the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia (MEAG) and Dalton Utilities – must vote by March 8 on whether to continue construction. Georgia Power already has voted to complete the project, Wilson said.
“Building new nuclear units is a complex process – and building the first new nuclear units in the U.S. in more than 30 years makes the process that much more complex,” he said.
“We have had to re-establish America’s nuclear energy supply chain and talent pipeline to ensure nuclear quality construction as well as work through the extensive nuclear quality documentation needed to bring new units online for the first time in three decades.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
