ATLANTA – Georgia’s hotel industry will receive by far the largest chunk of more than $415 million in federal pandemic relief grants announced by Gov. Brian Kemp Monday.
The Georgia Hotel & Lodging Association (GHLA) will get $150 million to help offset the losses hotels across the state have sustained during the pandemic.
The GHLA is among 33 Georgia recipients of federal assistance through the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) President Joe Biden signed into law in March of last year.
The recipients were approved by one of three committees Kemp formed last summer to determine how to distribute Georgia’s $4.8 billion share of ARPA aid among state and local governments, businesses and nonprofits applying for the money.
The Negative Impact Economic Committee included Pat Wilson, commissioner of the state Department of Economic Development; State Economist Jeffrey Dorfman; Georgia House Appropriations Committee Chairman Terry England, R-Auburn; and state Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia.
“I’m proud of our state’s resilience,” Kemp said Monday. “We have worked hard and identified ways to further deliver assistance to hardworking Georgians, support businesses and speed up the recovery of impacted industries and rebuild crucial public services.”
While business and vacation travel is starting to bounce back, COVID-19 hit the hotel industry harder than most.
“This program will provide Georgia’s hospitality industry with the support it needs to create and sustain jobs for people throughout the state, helping the industry return to its pre-pandemic level of success,” GHLA Executive Director Jim Sprouse said Monday.
Other recipients of grants announced Monday include the Atlanta Community Food Bank, which will receive about $29.6 million, and Buckhead Christian Ministries, which will get $12.7 million to expand an emergency assistance program.
The Georgia Department of Economic Development will receive about $11.5 million to help performing arts venues around the state recover from the impacts of the pandemic.
“The arts and culture sector contributes $23.8 billion to Georgia’s economy, and getting it fully back on track after pandemic-caused economic harm is a priority,” said Tina Lilly, executive director of the Georgia Coucncil for the Arts. “Governor Kemp allowed our arts and entertainment venues to safely return to work earlier than many other states, and the funding he announced today will provide further assistance in restoring this sector.”
The GHLA will allocate its grant funding through a formula that will be tested through a pilot program. A deadline for applications will be determined in the coming weeks and apply to Georgia hotels that were in operation before the pandemic.
“We will make this a fair, data-driven application process that will get critical funds into the right hands efficiently,” Sprouse said. “We have the right partners in place to ensure this program succeeds.”
The state awarded more than $422 million in federal ARPA grants for water and sewer project across Georgia earlier this year as well as more than $400 million for broadband projects.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Democratic Party leaders exhorted their members to work hard to turn out voters in November in Georgia at the party’s state dinner in downtown Atlanta on Friday night.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, U.S. Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar were among the leaders who urged the party faithful to ensure Democrats repeat their 2020 success in Georgia.
Speakers zeroed in on the difference between the Democratic and Republican approaches to health care as a key reason party members should recommit to getting Democrats elected in November.
“A Democratic governor would never allow a hospital to close in Randolph County and a hospital to close in Commerce, Ga., and a hospital to close in East Point in Atlanta,” Abrams said. “We would not let a hospital close when people’s lives are on the line.
“We care about the people of our state…Yes, we want to have new plants and new jobs. But Medicaid expansion will bring us 64,000 jobs, bring us $3.5 billion a year, give half a million people access to health care, provide mental health support to thousands of Georgians, and it will do it all without raising a dime in taxes.”
Depending on the results of the upcoming May 24 Republican primary, Abrams will face off against either incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp, challenger David Perdue, or one of three lesser-known candidates. Incumbent Kemp is the current GOP frontrunner.
Another hotly contested top-of-ballot race will pit incumbent senator Warnock against one of six Republicans currently vying for that party’s nomination – most likely former University of Georgia football star Herschel Walker.
Warnock touted Democratic accomplishments over the last two years, such as passing the American Rescue Plan, infrastructure investments, and the appointment of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first African-American woman to be appointed to the court.
“Georgia, you made all of these things possible by showing up in historic numbers,” Warnock said, calling on party members to show up again because “the soul of our country is at stake.”
Warnock said he would continue to work on his proposal to cap insulin prices at $35 a month and that he supports a woman’s right to choose an abortion.
“I just happen to think a patient’ s room is too small and cramped a space for a woman, a doctor and the United States government,” Warnock said.
“If you really have a reverence for life, try this out: expand Medicaid in Georgia,” he urged.
Warnock also called on President Joe Biden to take immediate executive action to forgive student loan debt, explaining that he was able to study at Morehouse College only because of Pell grants and low-interest student loans.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar also spoke, noting that election results will determine a woman’s right to have an abortion.
“For the first time in generations, the women in this country will have less rights than their mothers and grandmothers,” Klobuchar said. “Get mad and vote.”
So far, early voting in the state’s primaries has set records. As of Thursday, more than 330,000 Georgians had already voted, according to a press release from Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Of those, 137,226, or 41%, were cast in the Democratic primary.
U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, D-Atlanta, chairman of the Democratic Party of Georgia, and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens announced that Atlanta will bid to host the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
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 issued four line-item budget vetoes Friday and instructed the General Assembly to ignore the language in 26 other budget line items.
One day after signing the $30.2 billion fiscal 2023 spending plan, the governor axed three technical college projects that were to be financed with bonds, including funds to design a logistics, transportation and manufacturing complex at West Georgia Technical College and an advanced manufacturing center at Columbus Technical College.
In both cases, the projects had been identified as of “lower priority” by the Technical College System of Georgia, Kemp wrote in a memo.
The third vetoed technical college project would have provided $4 million in bonds for land acquisition for a planned technology center at Piedmont Technical College in DeKalb County. That would only have amounted to half of the money needed to buy the land, Kemp wrote.
The governor’s fourth veto would have earmarked $3 million in bonds for improvements to Georgia’s short-line railroads. The money isn’t needed because the state Department of Transportation already has $35 million in prior-year bond authorizations, according to the memo.
Kemp used the same reasoning in instructing lawmakers to disregard another $8 million the General Assembly appropriated for short-line railroad upgrades aimed at reducing truck traffic on highways.
By far the largest budget line item Kemp told the legislature to disregard was a $44.2 million appropriation intended for a new value-based purchasing initiative being undertaken by the Georgia Department of Community Health’s Medicaid program.
Value-based purchasing links health-care provider payments to the provider’s performance.
Kemp explained the initiative isn’t ready to be rolled out during the upcoming fiscal year and instructed the agency to use the funds instead to cover enrollment growth.
In some cases, Kemp issued disregard notices for budgeted items tied to the passage of legislation that failed to get through the General Assembly this year. That included a $1.44 million appropriation that would have funded service-cancelable loans for law enforcement officers interested in pursuing degrees in criminal justice or a related field.
The fiscal 2023 budget takes effect July 1.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Gov. Brian Kemp (left) and former U.S. Sen. David Perdue are locked in a battle for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.
ATLANTA – Primary challengers to Georgia’s last two sitting Republican governors’ reelection bids didn’t fare well.
Ray McBerry garnered only 11.6% of the vote against then-Gov. Sonny Perdue in 2006. David Pennington did a little better against then-Gov. Nathan Deal in 2014, collecting 16.7% of the vote.
Former U.S. Sen. David Perdue likely will eclipse those numbers against Gov. Brian Kemp in the May 24 GOP gubernatorial primary.
Perdue entered the race last December at the urging and with the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, who was angered over Kemp’s refusal to help overturn the 2020 election that saw President Joe Biden win Georgia’s 16 electoral votes.
Trump turned to Perdue after the former CEO lost his bid for a second Senate term to Democrat Jon Ossoff early last year.
Although the presidential election took place 18 months ago, Kemp’s inaction following complaints of widespread voter fraud in the election’s aftermath has been Perdue’s main theme on the campaign trail. He has hammered away at that argument despite repeated court rulings that the allegations were unsubstantiated.
“Our governor allowed radical Democrats to steal our election,” Perdue said last month in a contentious one-on-one debate with Kemp. “We have evidence that is compelling. Yet, nothing has been done.”
Kemp said he followed the law and the Constitution, which gave him no wiggle room to intervene in certifying Biden’s victory in Georgia.
The governor pointed instead to the Republican-controlled General Assembly’s passage of an election-reform law last year that added restrictions to absentee voting.
“We passed the strongest election integrity law in the U.S.,” he said. “We’ve tied photo ID to absentee ballots. We’ve secured drop boxes.”
Kemp has been leading in the polls and has drubbed Perdue in fund-raising. The governor is hoping to avoid a June 21 runoff rematch with Perdue.
But amassing the 50%-plus-one vote margin needed to win the Republican nomination outright will be difficult in a field crowded with five GOP candidates.
Besides Kemp and Perdue, the race includes educator Kandiss Taylor, conservative activist Catherine Davis and retired software engineer Tom Williams. All are polling in the single digits.
While Perdue has focused much of his fire at Kemp’s handling of the “rigged” 2020 election, the ex-senator also has criticized the governor’s handling of rising crime and his approach to economic development.
Perdue supports this year’s passage of legislation backed by Kemp to let Georgians carry firearms without a permit to help citizens defend themselves.
But Perdue cites an alarming rise in murder and rape in Atlanta, which are on track this year to beat last year’s record. While much of the responsibility for combating violent crime in Georgia’s capital goes to the city police department, Perdue said the state has 15% fewer troopers than when Kemp took office.
“What we have is a runaway crime situation,” Perdue said. “This governor is not enforcing the law.”
Kemp said the recent graduation of 75 new trooper candidates lifts the force back to where it was when he was elected. He also cited his creation of a multi-agency Crime Suppression Unit that has arrested 7,450 people with outstanding warrants, including 26 wanted for murder.
“We have taken stolen weapons off the street,” he said. “We’re going to continue doing that.”
On economic issues, Perdue argued a $1 billion phased-in state income tax cut championed by Kemp doesn’t go far enough. Perdue is calling for eliminating the tax entirely, as other Southern states that compete with Georgia for jobs have done.
“Florida, Tennessee and Texas are eating our lunch,” he said.
Kemp touted the success of the Georgia Department of Economic Development in landing job-generating projects, particularly in rural Georgia. Last year, 74% of private sector investments in Georgia as well as half of the new jobs went outside the 10-county Atlanta region, he said.
“We’re bringing in 7,500 jobs to rural parts of our state,” Kemp said, referring to plans by electric-vehicle startup Rivian to invest $5 billion in a manufacturing plant east of Atlanta. “[Perdue] has spent his whole business career outsourcing jobs to China.”
Perdue and Kemp are on the same page when it comes to the education issue that is drawing the most attention: efforts to restrict how racism can be taught in Georgia schools.
The General Assembly passed a Kemp-backed bill this year prohibiting the teaching of nine “divisive concepts,” including that the United States and Georgia are systemically racist and that no race is inherently superior or inferior to any other.
“History is proper. We want to teach history,” Perdue said. “[But] we’ve let the liberal school districts supersede the power of our government.”
“I’ve never said we don’t need to teach about race or slavery,” Kemp added. “But it needs to be facts, not somebody’s ideology.”
The highly charged issue of abortion inserted itself late in the primary campaign when a leaked draft of an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court ruling indicated the justices are poised to reverse the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion.
Perdue is calling for a special session of the General Assembly to enact a total ban on abortion – with no exceptions – if the court rules as expected and turns the issue back to the states.
Kemp has called the “heartbeat bill” he pushed through the legislature in 2019 banning abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected – typically about six weeks – the most restrictive anti-abortion statute in the nation. The law is on hold pending the Supreme Court ruling.
This story isavailable through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp signed a $30.2 billion state budget Thursday that includes pay raises for teachers and state employees.
The fiscal 2023 spending plan, which takes effect July 1, is just shy of the record $30.3 billion fiscal 2022 mid-year budget covering state spending through June 30.
It includes the $2,000 final installment of a $5,000 pay hike for Georgia teachers Kemp promised on the campaign trail four years ago.
Most state workers also will get $5,000 raises, while larger increases will go to correctional officers in the adult and juvenile prison system plagued with high turnover rates.
State retirees will receive their first cost-of-living adjustment in 14 years.
The budget also contains a $180 million increase in mental health spending, the largest in the state’s history, and $28 million to extend Medicaid coverage for new mothers from the current six months to a year.
In the criminal justice arena, the budget funds a new state trooper class of 75 cadets, an expansion of the attorney general’s human trafficking unit and a newly created gang prosecution unit.
“We have prioritized education, public safety and health care, even when we faced truly unprecedented times,” Kemp said during a budget signing ceremony at the University of North Georgia’s Blue Ridge campus.
Kemp said state coffers are flush with enough money to cover the various spending increases because he reopened Georgia’s economy earlier than many other states during the early months of the pandemic.
But Democrats attributed the additional spending to the availability of federal funds from the American Rescue Plan a Democratic-controlled Congress passed shortly after President Joe Biden took office last year.
“After calling Democrats’ American Rescue Plan a ‘slap in the face for hardworking Georgians,’ Brian Kemp is hypocritically trying to take credit because he thinks it will help his chances of reelection,” said Max Flugrath, spokesman for the Democratic Party of Georgia.
While the state pours additional funds into education, public safety and health care, the budget also made room for a one-time $1.1 billion tax refund. A phased-in $1 billion state income tax cut will kick in starting in 2024.
The refunds are starting to go out to taxpayers this week. However, the process isn’t expected to be completed until August due to the volume of refunds.
“This is a good budget, one which invests strategically in … a growing, thriving state while at the same time keeping state government lean and returning every dollar possible to the taxpayer,” said Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge.
Ralston noted the budget also will provide $13 million to expand the Blue Ridge campus that hosted Thursday’s signing ceremony.
The budget also includes $388 million to restore cuts to the state’s K-12 student funding formula imposed during the pandemic.
In higher education, the spending plan does away with special institutional fees the University System of Georgia began charging students during the Great Recession and raises tuition coverage offered by the HOPE Scholarships program to 90% for most qualified students.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
