Voters wait in line at a precinct in Cobb County (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – Local elections offices in Georgia will not be allowed to receive private donations under controversial legislation Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law Wednesday.
Senate Bill 222, which the General Assembly’s Republican majorities passed along party lines, was prompted by complaints that out-of-state private funds have been flowing into elections offices in large Democratic counties across the country, including a $350 million contribution by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to the nonprofit Center for Technology and Civic Life.
Legislative Democrats charged the bill was aimed at denying the financial assistance already resource-poor elections offices need to run their elections smoothly. Without the ability to receive private donations themselves, the measure’s opponents argued, local elections offices will be forced to rely on the State Election Board to allocate private dollars.
Kemp signed 13 other bills into law Wednesday, including legislation to:
— require cities and counties to enforce local ordinances prohibiting homeless people from camping and sleeping in public areas. Democrats opposed the Republican-backed bill as a blow to local control.
— authorize financial advisors to delay transactions involving their elderly or disabled clients if they suspect fraud.
“Georgia law now grants financial institutions the ability to slow down and verify transactions involving the accounts of elderly and at-risk Georgians,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Wednesday. “This proactive measure against fraud was my key legislative priority of the past legislative session.”
ATLANTA – A parade of expert and citizen witnesses asked the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) this week not to let Georgia Power recover 100% of higher fuel costs incurred during the last couple of years from customers.
While the witnesses blamed the increased costs on the Atlanta-based utility’s overreliance on natural gas, a witness for Georgia Power cited factors beyond the company’s control as driving up the costs of the fuel it uses to generate electricity.
Tuesday’s daylong hearing was on a request by Georgia Power to increase the average residential customer’s monthly bill by $15.90 to allow the utility to recover $2.2 billion in higher fuel costs. That’s down from the $23 monthly hike the company originally sought, thanks to an agreement Georgia Power reached last month with PSC staff.
Citizen witnesses complained that Georgia Power is too dependent on natural gas, which has a track record of huge price swings, and isn’t being aggressive enough in pursuing alternatives include wind and solar energy.
“The sun is free,” said Wanda Mosley, an Atlanta-area voting rights activist. “We get a whole lot of sun.”
A significant portion of Tuesday’s discussion centered on how much authority the commission has over fuel costs. Commissioner Lauren “Bubba” McDonald said state law requires the PSC to grant the increase.
“Our staff has looked at this fuel case. Everything is in order,” he said. “We have the responsibility of making the proper adjustments that are necessary under the law.”
But Jeremy Kalin, a clean energy finance attorney and advisor, said the law does not require the PSC to let Georgia Power recover all of its higher fuel costs from customers. Without at least some skin in the game on the part of Georgia Power and its shareholders, the company has no incentive to manage fuel costs prudently, he said.
Kalin said the law does not require the commission to sit on the sidelines and simply act as a pass-through for Georgia Power’s higher costs.
“I believe the commission does have an obligation under the law to conduct greater scrutiny on whether Georgia Power has been sufficiently prudent in mitigating … increases in natural gas reliance and natural gas costs,” said Kalin, who testified on behalf of the Georgia chapter of the Sierra Club and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
Sarah Adams, Georgia Power’s vice president and comptroller, said the agreement between the utility and commission staff represents a significant improvement for customers over the company’s original request.
The agreement not only reduced Georgia Power’s initial request by more $1 billion, Adams said. The company also agreed to increase its senior citizen discount from $6 to $8, bringing it to $32 per month, and extended the recovery period from two years to three, she said.
Adams attributed the higher fuel costs to a combination of geopolitical unrest, supply chain constraints, higher than expected domestic demand for natural gas, and an increase in U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas, all outside of Georgia Power’s control.
The commission is scheduled to vote on the proposed increase May 16.
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp has signed a fishing rights bill the General Assembly passed in the waning seconds of this year’s session.
Senate Bill 115, which the governor inked late Monday, guarantees Georgians’ right to fish in navigable portions of the state’s rivers and streams.
Fishing rights didn’t become an issue until a property owner along a portion of the Flint River asserted its exclusive right to control fishing from the bank on its side of the river to the center of the stream and banned fishing there.
Four Chimneys LLLP, which owns a stretch of the Flint along Yellow Jacket Shoals, sued the state alleging failure to enforce the ban and won an agreement from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources in late March promising to enforce the ban.
The agreement prompted legislative leaders to scramble as the General Assembly was about to adjourn for the year to find a way to enact a fishing rights guarantee. Working with the governor’s office, they removed the language from a Senate bill heading for passage and inserted the fishing rights provision.
Senate Bill 115 cleared the Senate overwhelmingly minutes after midnight on March 30. The bill had passed the House on the night of the 29th – the 40th and final day of the 2023 session – but not without dozens of “no” votes from lawmakers apparently unhappy with the 11th-hour process used to pass it.
In a signing statement issued Monday, Kemp acknowledged that his office received numerous calls on the bill, both in support and opposition. He went on to explain why he signed it.
“The state has invested millions of dollars collected through license fees to establish fisheries and boat ramps and to manage recreational fishing populations in our rivers,” Kemp wrote. “This bill allows for the public to hunt, fish, and transit the navigable waters of this state … a privilege that has been assured Georgians for generations.”
Kemp noted that the bill does not affect non-navigable streams nor does it impact “the use of water by adjacent landowners in navigable rivers.”
The governor also acknowledged there seems to be some uncertainty about the bill’s language. He said the upcoming House Study Committee on Fishing Access to Freshwater Resources will provide an opportunity for clarity.
“This study committee will meet between legislative sessions this summer and is the appropriate venue to receive suggested amendments to the language in Senate Bill 115,” Kemp wrote.
On a busy day for bill signing, the governor also inked legislation to:
— guarantee Georgia public school teachers a daily planning period.
— apply the state sales tax to digital downloads.
— ban Tik Tok from devices owned by the state government.
— do away with the sunset provision on a law prohibiting the state and local governments from requiring Georgians to show proof of COVID vaccination in order to receive government services.
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp signed a package of a dozen bills related to health care Tuesday, including legislation providing welfare benefits to pregnant women.
“We’re taking important steps to improve access to and quality of health care,” Kemp said during a signing ceremony inside the Georgia Capitol.
Federal law currently allows low-income pregnant women to receive cash aid through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, but Georgia law does not. The General Assembly overwhelmingly passed House Bill 129 to rectify that.
Kemp pledged in his State of the State address in January to push for legislation extending TANF benefits to pregnant women. The bill was introduced by freshman state Rep. Soo Hong, R-Lawrenceville, one of the governor’s floor leaders in the House.
The other health-care bills Kemp signed Tuesday include:
— House Bill 85, which requires insurance companies to cover biomarker testing if supported by medical and scientific evidence.
— House Bill 383, increasing penalties for assaulting a health-care worker.
— House Bill 295, beefing up consumer protections against surprise billing.
— Senate Bill 46, requiring testing of all pregnant women for HIV and syphilis.
— Senate Bill 106, creating a three-year pilot program providing coverage for remote maternal clinical health services.
— Senate Bill 223, requiring reimbursements of expenses incurred by patients participating in cancer clinical trials.
The cooling towers for Units 1 and 2 at Plant Vogtle blow off steam (left) as Units 3 and 4 wait to go into service.
ATLANTA – Georgia Power is making significant progress with the second of two additional nuclear reactors being built at Plant Vogtle even as the first of the new reactors prepares to go into commercial operation.
The Atlanta-based utility announced Monday the completion of hot functional testing for Unit 4 at the plant south of Augusta. Unit 4 is projected to begin operations late this year or early in 2024.
“The energy and enthusiasm at the Vogtle site, and across our entire company, is high with Unit 3 in the final stages of startup testing and Unit 4 making progress towards safely loading fuel,” said Kim Greene, Georgia Power’s chairman, president and CEO.
“The team at Unit 4 has been able to take lessons learned from Unit 3 and apply them. That has allowed us to safely complete hot functional testing on Unit 4 in significantly less time than we did for Unit 3.”
During hot functional testing, plant systems achieved normal operating pressure and temperature without nuclear fuel in the reactor to demonstrate the systems will operate as designed.
The Unit 4 site team will focus next on completing the remaining work necessary to submit documentation assuring the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that all inspections, tests and analyses have been performed and all acceptance criteria have been met. The NRC has to give the green light before fuel can be loaded into the reactor.
Unit 3 began generating electricity early last month and is due to go into service later this spring or early this summer.
The nuclear expansion at Plant Vogtle was originally expected to be completed in 2016 for Unit 3 and 2017 for Unit 4. But a series of delays pushed back the schedule and more than doubled the $14 billion price tag.
The delays and cost overruns prompted critics to call for cancelling the project. But Georgia Power officials argued the two additional reactors will provide the company’s 2.7 million customers with a reliable, carbon-free source of energy for the next 60 to 80 years.
