ATLANTA – Lt. Gov. Burt Jones appointed a roster of state Senate chairmen Thursday including naming Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, R-Marietta, to head the new Senate Children and Families Committee.
“This critical committee will be tasked with taking the lead on mental health, child protection, foster care, and adoption initiatives,” said Jones, who will preside over the Senate. “This committee will give a bigger platform to these critically important issues and develop policies that benefit children and families across our state.”
Jones, who was elected lieutenant governor in November and took the oath of office on Thursday, appointed holdovers to head many of the Senate’s key committees.
Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, returns as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Other returning committee chairs include Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, R-Rome, on the Finance Committee; Sen. Ben Watson, R-Savanah, on the Health and Human Services Committee; Sen. Brian Strickland, R-McDonough, on the Judiciary Committee; and Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, on the Public Safety Committee.
Sen. Matt Brass, R-Newnan, will be among the new committee chairmen. He will head the powerful Senate Rules Committee, which decides which bills make it to the Senate floor.
Brass will succeed former Sen. Jeff Mullis as Rules chairman. Mullis, a Republican from Chickamauga, did not run for reelection.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Gov. Brian Kemp is sworn in for his second term by Justice Carla Wong McMillian in an inauguration ceremony at Georgia State Convocation Center in Atlanta on Thursday, January 12, 2023. (Photo credit: Arvin Temkar)
ATLANTA – State employees will get a $2,000 pay raise if Gov. Brian Kemp can get the General Assembly to approve his budget request.
Law enforcement officers, school employees, and other state workers all need the raise, Kemp said during an inaugural address Thursday that marked the start of his second term as Georgia’s governor.
“If you want to keep good people in jobs critical to the safety and well-being of our children, our communities and our state as a whole, we must be willing to be competitive with state salaries,” Kemp said.
Kemp also said he plans to use part of the state’s current record surplus to fund a one-time $1 billion income tax refund for Georgians. He pushed through a similar income tax refund last year.
The governor is also recommending the state spend $1.1 billion to provide homeowners with a property-tax relief grant.
“We are putting you and your families first because that’s your money, not the government’s,” Kemp said.
Kemp plans to request $150 million for grants that school districts can apply for to address pandemic learning loss and security needs. Some of the funding will also be designated to help current paraprofessionals become certified teachers.
And Kemp promised to continue to build on his success in bringing high-tech manufacturing facilities to the state. He pointed to Archer Aviation’s plans to hire 1,000 people to build electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft as well as Hyundai and Rivian electric vehicle manufacturing plants and an SK battery facility as prime examples of his administration’s commitment to economic growth.
“By the end of my second term, I intend for Georgia to be recognized as the electric mobility capital of America,” Kemp told the crowd of lawmakers and supporters.
Republicans won all of the state’s constitutional offices in the November elections. Those officials were also sworn in during the inauguration event at the Georgia State University Convocation Center in downtown Atlanta.
Three former state senators took the oath of office for their new statewide roles. Burt Jones was sworn in as lieutenant governor, Tyler Harper as agriculture commissioner and Bruce Thompson as labor commissioner.
The occasion also marked the start of new terms for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Attorney General Chris Carr, Commissioner of Insurance John King, and State School Superintendent Richard Woods.
Now that the inauguration formalities are over, elected officials can turn their attention to the state’s budget. Kemp is expected to release further details of his spending recommendations Friday, and the House and Senate Appropriations Committees will begin three days of budget hearings Jan. 17.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The first of two new nuclear reactors being built at Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle will go into service later this year about a month after anticipated, the Atlanta-based utility announced Wednesday.
Vibrations of pipes within the cooling system were discovered during startup and pre-operational testing at Unit 3, the company reported in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
As a result, Georgia Power now projects the startup date for the project will be put back to April rather than March.
“As we continue to conduct start-up and pre-operational testing for Vogtle Unit 3, everything we do is to help ensure that the unit will function safely and as designed,” Georgia Power spokesman Jacob Hawkins wrote in an email to Capitol Beat. “We are focused on getting this project done right, with safety and quality first, as we work to bring these new nuclear units online that will serve as a clean, zero-emissions energy source for millions of Georgians.”
Delaying the project beyond the first quarter is expected to raise capital costs for Georgia Power up to $15 million per month.
Southern Nuclear, the Southern Co. subsidiary managing the Vogtle expansion, plans to file an amendment request with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
The projected schedule for Unit 3 depends primarily on the progression of startup, final component, and pre-operational testing, which may be affected by equipment or other operational failures, according to the SEC filing.
Ongoing or future challenges also include management of contractors and vendors, subcontractor performance, supervision of craft labor and related productivity, ability to attract and retain craft labor, and/or related cost escalation.
New challenges also may arise requiring engineering changes or remediation related to plant systems, structures, or components, some of which are based on new technology. The new Plant Vogtle reactors are the first to be built in the U.S. in more than 30 years.
The two reactors were originally expected to go into service in 2016 and 2017, respectively. But the work was delayed by the bankruptcy of Westinghouse Electric, the original prime contractor on the project, as well as pandemic-related disruptions to the construction workforce.
The delays caused a series of cost overruns that more than doubled the original expected price tag of $14 billion.
The project’s critics have long complained that Georgia Power could have found less expensive ways to increase its power generating capacity to meet the needs of a growing number of customers, including more aggressive deployment of renewable energy.
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 likes to tout how his smart shepherding of state resources and track record landing major economic development projects helped make Georgia a success story during the pandemic.
He’s about to get a chance to tell that story on an international stage. Kemp’s office announced Wednesday he will be addressing the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, next week.
“Governor Kemp looks forward to traveling to Davos to share with leaders how the state of Georgia’s long record of conservative governance, protecting individual liberty, and championing opportunity can serve as a model for economic success across the country and around the world,” a Kemp spokesperson said Wednesday.
The World Economic Forum, established in 1971, brings together decision-makers from across the globe to share strategies and inform each other on policy initiatives around the world. The annual event is a Who’s Who of global political and business leaders, economists and other academics.
This year’s list of attendees includes former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry – now the Biden administration’s special envoy for climate – FBI Director Christopher Wray, a sprinkling of corporate CEOs, and several other governors, congressmen, and U.S. senators.
Kemp’s office did not release details of the trip Wednesday or Kemp’s planned remarks.
This will be Kemp’s first trip overseas since he was reelected to a second term last fall. During his first term, he traveled to South Korea and Germany on trade missions.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Georgia Senate Majority Leader Steve Gooch advocates for the Senate rules resolution on Wednesday. (Photo credit: Rebecca Grapevine)
ATLANTA –- The Georgia House and Senate passed separate resolutions primarily along party lines Wednesday setting rules for the two-year term that began this week.
The resolutions set the procedures – most of them routine – for the operation of the two legislative chambers. But this year, the resolutions included a few notable changes.
Most controversial was the addition of new provisions that exempt communications between lawmakers and non-legislators about legislative business from public disclosure.
Rep. Stacey Evans, D-Atlanta, complained that the new rule keeping communications from the public could be read to include discussions between lawmakers and members of the executive branch of state government.
House Majority Leader Chuck Efstration, R-Dacula, said the rule does not apply to members of the executive branch.
“We can’t all be experts on every issue,” he said. “We have to rely on others who have expertise.”
“We should have the ability to speak freely to third parties about the legislative process,” freshman Sen. Colton Moore, R-Trenton, added when the issue came up in the Senate.
House Minority Whip Sam Park, D-Lawrenceville, argued that House rules aimed at maintaining decorum in the House chamber and committee meeting rooms could have a chilling effect on free speech rights.
House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, said the rules on decorum are simply clarifying policies the House has followed in the past.
“You will have an adequate opportunity to be heard, cast your vote, and represent your people,” Burns responded.
On the Senate side, the new rules resolution requires the Senate president pro tempore – currently Sen. John Kennedy, R-Macon – to resign if he or she publicly announces a run for a different elective office.
The resolution also eliminated the Senate’s Special Judiciary Committee, traditionally the province of minority Democrats, and replaced it with a standing committee on children and families.
The new Senate rules also clarify that the lieutenant governor is authorized to engage in legislative activities within the Senate. Newly elected Lt. Gov. Burt Jones will begin presiding over the Senate after he is inaugurated on Thursday.
Only one House member and one senator voted across party lines on the new rules. Freshman Rep. Mitchell Horner, R-Ringgold, voted against the House rules, while veteran Sen. Donzella James, D-Atlanta, supported the Senate rules.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
