ATLANTA – Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has renewed his call for a constitutional amendment prohibiting non-U.S. citizens from voting in elections in Georgia.
Raffensperger said a recent surge in illegal immigrants crossing the nation’s southern border makes stopping non-citizens from voting more important than ever.
“Organizations like the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda are currently suing to end critical citizenship verification in our registration process, potentially exposing our elections to foreign interference and diluting the power of legally registered voters,” he said.
“I’m calling on the General Assembly to take immediate action and pass a constitutional amendment ensuring that no liberal group can leverage the courts to add noncitizens to our voter rolls.”
The issue last surfaced in the legislature during the 2022 session, when Democrats in the state Senate shot down a proposed constitutional amendment banning noncitizens from voting in Georgia elections. Democrats argued the legislation was unnecessary because such a prohibition already exists both in state law and in the Georgia Constitution.
About eight in 10 new Georgia voters apply for registration automatically when they get or update their driver’s license. The state Department of Driver Services verifies citizenship status of license applicants.
Raffensperger conducted the first citizenship audit of Georgia’s voter rolls in the state’s history last year. The audit found 1,634 people who had tried to register to vote could not be verified as U.S. citizens.
ATLANTA – State tax collections rose slightly last month compared to November of last year, the Georgia Department of Revenue reported Friday.
The state brought in $2.32 billion in November, up 1.5% over the same month a year ago.
Tax receipts increased by 3.3% during the first five months of fiscal 2024, driven primarily by the state collecting the sales tax on gasoline and motor fuels during much of the period. The gas tax was suspended during much of the comparable period last year.
Not counting gasoline tax revenue, state tax revenues for July through November declined 1.7% compared to the same months last year.
Individual income tax collections increased slightly – just 0.5% – last month compared to November 2022. Net sales taxes rose by 1.7% in November.
Typically more volatile corporate income tax receipts were up by 48.4% last month, largely due to a huge 219.3% jump in corporate tax return payments.
ATLANTA – The final stage of the nuclear expansion at Plant Vogtle has produced an unusual twist in the back-and-forth between Georgia Power, state energy regulators and the environmental and consumer advocates who act as watchdogs.
The long-delayed, overbudget project has managed to split groups that for years have opposed the construction of two additional nuclear reactors at the plant south of Augusta as a boondoggle.
Some environmental and consumer groups have signed onto an agreement Georgia Power reached in August with the state Public Service Commission’s (PSC) Public Interest Advocacy Staff letting the Atlanta-based utility recover from customers nearly $7.6 billion of its 45% share of the project’s cost.
“While project delays and overruns do mean Georgians will be paying for this project for decades, Georgia Power agreed to significantly lower the construction costs they were expected to pass on to customers,” Bob Sherrier, a staff attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), said at the time.
Besides the SELC, other groups signing onto the agreement included Georgia Interfaith Power and Light, the Partnership for Southern Equity, and the consumer advocacy organization Georgia Watch.
But other advocacy groups are so incensed over the agreement that they took out a full-page ad in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution late last month urging the PSC not to hold “prudency” hearings on the project until after the next commission elections. The terms of two of the five commissioners have expired because elections have been held up by a lawsuit that challenged the process of electing commissioners statewide rather than by districts.
“What’s the rush to decide who pays $7.56 billion in cost overruns?” the ad proclaimed in large letters.
The ad was taken out by Plant Vogtle expansion opponents Nuclear Watch South and Georgia WAND. Other groups signing onto the ad included the Center for a Sustainable Coast and Georgia Conservation Voters.
The hearings went ahead anyway, with a day and a half of testimony Dec. 4 and 5. The PSC will hold a final vote on the agreement Dec. 19.
Georgia Power officials – bolstered by outside energy experts – used the hearings to defend the seven years of delays and huge cost overruns the nuclear expansion has encountered. A price tag originally estimated at $14 billion when the PSC approved the project in 2009 has soared to about $35 billion, including three other utilities partnering with Georgia Power.
Aaron Abramovitz, Georgia Power’s chief financial officer and treasurer, said some of the delays and cost overruns were to be expected considering the Plant Vogtle expansion is the first new nuclear project built in the United States in more than 30 years.
Mark Gentry, a Minneapolis-based energy consultant, testified Dec. 4 that other unforeseen issues also contributed to the delays. He said those factors included the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the construction team to reduce its workforce by 20% as a safety precaution; the identification of additional scope needed to complete the work; and greater-than-anticipated complications during testing and startup of Unit 3, the first of the new reactors.
“Despite these challenges … the project team addressed each of these issues it encountered and successfully reached commercial operation of Unit 3 in July 2023,” Gentry said.
Unit 4 is being completed in a shorter time frame and is due to go into service by the end of March.
“Unit 4 has benefited from the lessons learned with Unit 3,” Gentry said.
Joseph Miller, another outside energy expert, cited the 2017 bankruptcy of Westinghouse Electric – the project’s prime contractor – as another factor in the delays. Georgia Power brought in Southern Nuclear – like Georgia Power a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Co. – to finish the work.
“The decisions made and actions taken by Georgia Power related to controlling costs were reasonable and prudent,” Miller said. “Southern Nuclear and Georgia Power exercised appropriate oversight and monitoring of the project.”
Acknowledging the impact of the cost overruns, the agreement calls for Georgia Power’s shareholders to absorb $2.6 billion of the project’s costs rather than pass them on to ratepayers. The $7.6 billion the utility will pass on to customers will mean a rate increase of about 8%, Abramovitz said Dec. 5.
Abramovitz cited the willingness of environmental and consumer advocacy groups to sign onto the agreement as evidence it’s a fair deal.
“The (agreement) was negotiated and signed by a diverse group of stakeholders representing the broad-based interests of our customer base,” he said. “(It) strikes a reasonable balance between the costs of Vogtle units 3 and 4 … and the cost impact to customers.”
But the project’s critics said the agreement still represents the biggest electric rate increase in Georgia history, costing exponentially more than alternative energy sources including wind, solar, and natural gas.
“Georgia Power is one of the richest utilities in the nation,” Patty Durand, a Democrat running for the PSC, testified on behalf of the group Concerned Ratepayers of Georgia. “Georgia Power should be required to use their huge profits to pay for the cost overruns rather than allowing Georgia Power to pass these billions of dollars onto its captive customers.”
ATLANTA – The Biden administration is stepping up federal funding of three planned intercity passenger rail projects in Georgia.
The Federal Rail Administration has awarded $1.5 million in grants to explore linking Atlanta with Savannah; Charlotte, N.C.; and Chattanooga, Tenn. The grants are part of $8.2 billion in new funding for passenger rail projects announced Thursday.
“Creating new transit options with routes connecting Atlanta to Savannah, Charlotte, Chattanooga, and cities in between would be a boon to our state and economy,” said U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., a member of the Senate Commerce & Transportation Committee.
The money comes from the bipartisan infrastructure spending legislation Congress passed two years ago.
The Atlanta-to-Savannah route – championed by U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga. – would include potential stops in Athens, Augusta, and Macon. The $500,000 grant announced Thursday is in addition to $8 million in congressionally directed spending on the project approved in March of last year.
“Through the bipartisan infrastructure law, Senator Warnock and I are accelerating progress toward passenger rail networks to serve Georgia and the Southeast region,” Ossoff said. “This is a long-term project that will require cooperation and strong execution at all levels of government, but it has the potential to unlock huge gains in mobility and quality of life for Georgians.”
The Atlanta-to-Savannah project is envisioned as a high-speed rail project, as is the planned route between Atlanta and Charlotte. It, too, would include potential stops in Athens and Augusta and would terminate at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
The Atlanta-to-Chattanooga passenger rail line, which Warnock has pushed, would continue on to Nashville and Memphis.
ATLANTA – The U.S. Soccer Federation has chosen Fayette County as the site of a first-of-its-kind national training center (NTC), a project that will create 440 jobs through a $228 million investment.
The organization announced in September plans to move its headquarters from Chicago to Atlanta and build the first-ever NTC in the metro area.
“U.S. Soccer joins a long and proud tradition of sports in the Peach State, including our fast-growing soccer fanbase,” Gov. Brian Kemp said Thursday. “This project will solidify Georgia’s position at the forefront of this increasingly popular sport, from the success of our own Atlanta United team to the FIFA World Cup 2026 events in a few short years.”
Atlanta United joined Major League Soccer as an expansion team in 2017 and took home the league championship following its second season a year later. Then last year, Atlanta was selected as a host city for the 2026 World Cup.
The new facility will serve as the national center for training and competition of all 27 U.S. Soccer men’s, women’s, youth, and extended national teams; the development of youth players; and coaching and referee training.
“The NTC will help player development at the highest level and serve as a central destination to support and inspire players across the country as well as a hub of knowledge and resources for all our member organizations,” U.S. Soccer President Cindy Parlow Cone said. “Beyond its national importance, the NTC will be an institution firmly rooted in its community.”
The Arthur M. Blank Foundation is contributing $50 million toward the NTC. Blank is the owner of Atlanta United.
U.S. Soccer board members and athletes will join state and local officials in a celebration to welcome the new facility Dec. 13 at the Town Stage at Trilith, a movie studio in Fayetteville.
