ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp has removed veteran Republican political operative Nick Ayers from the state Board of Natural Resources, citing an oversupply of board members from Georgia’s 5th Congressional District.
In an executive order Kemp issued late last week, he pointed to a provision in Georgia’s Constitution that no more than two members of the board can come from the same congressional district. Including Ayers, three of the 19 board members were from the 5th District, which includes the heart of metro Atlanta.
In a second executive order, the governor named Lesley Chandler Reynolds of Greene County to replace Ayers. Reynolds is the wife of Harold Reynolds, chairman of the University System of Georgia Board of Regents and founding partner of the company that developed Reynolds Plantation on Lake Oconee.
Ayers served as chief of staff to then-Vice President Mike Pence between 2017 and 2019. Before that, he was executive director of the Republican Governors Association. He got his start in politics with the College Republicans at the University of Georgia and later served as an adviser to then-Gov. Sonny Perdue.
Kemp named Ayers, who lives in Atlanta, to the Board of Natural Resources in 2020. Lesley Chandler Reynolds’ term on the board will expire in August 2027.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger discusses absentee voting in Georgia amid the coronavirus pandemic. (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – Georgians have taken to early voting in a big way.
The Peach State ranked second in the nation for early voting last November, according to a new study released by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. The report found that 58% of Georgia voters cast their ballots before Election Day, up from 48% in 2018.
“Georgia leads the nation in voter access, election security, and innovation,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said. “Georgia voters have the confidence that they can cast their ballot easily, and that their vote will count.”
Raffensperger famously refused then-President Donald Trump’s request to “find” enough votes to overturn Georgia’s presidential election results in January 2021. Democrat Joe Biden had carried the state the previous November by 11,779 votes.
Since then, Raffensperger has defended the security and accuracy of Georgia elections and backed innovations to further improve the voting process.
In May, he announced the state will be conducting “health checks” in all 159 Georgia counties. The health checks will examine election management systems, ballot marking devices, and scanners to verify that the software used in last year’s elections has not been changed.
The new study found that Georgians voted early last year more than any other state except Texas. At the same time, only 6% of Georgia voters cast their ballots through the mail, returning to pre-pandemic levels.
Only about one-third of voters waited until Election Day to cast their ballots in person, which kept lines at the polls short or nonexistent in most precincts.
ATLANTA – The state slapped a moratorium on drilling new irrigation wells in large portions of Southwest Georgia in 2012, responding to a two-year drought that dried up one stream and significantly decreased flows in others.
Now, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) is moving to partially ease the ban, due in part to court victories Georgia has won in the long-running tri-state water wars with Florida and Alabama. The agency is proposing to lift the moratorium to protect vulnerable citrus and blueberry crops from spring freezes.
Farmers in the Flint River Basin and the region’s political and business leaders are cheering the plan as the a first step toward revitalizing the state’s No.-1 industry in the heart of Georgia farm country.
“We understood the need for [a moratorium] years ago,” said Will Bentley, president of the Georgia Agribusiness Council. “But now, technology and producer education are catching up to where they need to be.”
Bentley cited technological improvements during the last decade that are allowing farmers to better track the amount of water they’re using to irrigate their crops as a key to improved conservation of groundwater supplies. Farmers also are making progress with variable rate technology, he said.
Gordon Rogers, executive director of Albany-based Flint Riverkeeper, said the need to defend Georgia’s agricultural water use against water wars lawsuits was a driving force in that technological progress. The state won its most important legal battle two years ago when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of Georgia in a lawsuit Florida filed in 2013 over the allocation of water that flows between the two states.
“All during the litigation, the work that’s bearing fruit now was going on in the background,” Rogers said. “Some of it was explicitly to create defenses in court, and some was common sense.”
Rogers also pointed to a grant program the state launched last year to reduce water withdrawals from surface streams and the Floridan aquifer by drilling deeper irrigation wells. The $49.8 million award to Albany State University’s Georgia Water Planning and Policy Center is being funded mostly with federal pandemic relief.
Bentley cautioned that the EPD’s proposal is limited to freeze protection for citrus and blueberries.
“We have a pretty new citrus industry in South Georgia, which is really growing,” he said. “They’re particularly vulnerable to a late freeze.”
Not all farmers are happy with the state’s plan. A public hearing on the proposal in Albany last month drew complaints that lifting the ban only for the limited time of the year when freezes are a concern doesn’t go far enough.
“There’s a desire for EPD to do a better job and allow more withdrawals,” then-EPD Director Rick Dunn told members of the Georgia Board of Natural Resources late last month. Dunn has since moved on to become director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget.
Rogers said he expects the EPD will expand the easing of the ban sooner rather than later.
“This is just the first of several episodes,” he said. “I’m convinced in the next three to five years, we’ll see further loosening of the moratorium.”
The EPD will continue reviewing public comments on the plan through the summer. The agency plans to begin accepting applications from interested farmers on Sept. 1.
ATLANTA – U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been kicked out of the conservative House Freedom Caucus after voting to raise the nation’s debt limit and making disparaging remarks about a fellow House Republican, The Daily Beast and other Washington, D.C.-based media outlets reported.
Greene, R-Rome, has aligned herself in recent months with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who was opposed by many Freedom Caucus members last winter in his successful bid to become speaker after Republicans captured control of the House.
Her alliance with McCarthy continued into last month, when she voted in favor of raising the debt limit after McCarthy negotiated a compromise agreement with President Joe Biden to prevent the U.S. from going into default.
Also last month, Greene was involved in a well publicized spat with Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., a prominent member of the House Freedom Caucus and one-time ally. At one point, Greene called Boebert a “little bitch” to her face, according to The Daily Beast.
Greene appeared unfazed by the action of the Freedom Caucus.
“In Congress, I serve Northwest Georgia first, and serve no group in Washington,” Greene told The Daily Beast in a statement.
“I will work with ANYONE who wants to secure our border, protect our children inside the womb and after they are born, end the forever foreign wars, and do the work to save this country,” she continued. “The GOP has less than two years to show America what a strong, unified Republican-led Congress will do when President Trump wins the White House in 2024. This is my focus, nothing else.”
Greene has been a lightning rod since winning election to the House in 2020. After taking office at the beginning of 2021, the then-Democratic majority in the House voted to strip her of her committee assignments for – among other things – questioning whether the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and school shootings were staged.
She got her committee assignments back after Republicans took control of the House in last year’s midterm elections.
Greene’s Democratic challenger in 2022, Army veteran Marcus Flowers, raised millions of dollars in an effort to unseat her, with a large portion of his campaign contributions coming from out of state. However, Greene trounced Flowers last November, racking up nearly 66% of the vote in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District.
ATLANTA – The University of Georgia has sold the largest undeveloped parcel on Lake Blackshear to an undisclosed buyer for $18.5 million.
The money will go to benefit UGA’s Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources.
The university received the 2,500-acre property in 1989 as a donation from businessman Charles Wheatley. It’s been used since then for timber and hunting, yielding $8.2 million from timber sales and other investment earnings.
“After years of stewardship, we felt the market was in a good place,” Dale Greene, the Warnell school’s dean, said Wednesday. “We are very pleased with the outcome, and the funds from the sale will be transformative for our school as we prepare the next generation of foresters and natural resources professionals.”
The school plans to create three separate funds from the land sale. One fund will be dedicated to modernizing the campus facilities in Athens. The other two will be established as endowments to allow the school to benefit in perpetuity.
“It means our faculty can find dedicated support for lab improvements or technology advances,” Greene said. “This kind of funding gives our faculty added flexibility when pursuing research funding and special projects, or in recruiting top talent for graduate students.”
