ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp is talking up Georgia to foreign business and political big wigs for the second January in a row.
Kemp is spending the week in Switzerland attending the World Economic Forum, meeting business executives and political leaders and taking part in discussion panels.
“We get a lot of value being able to see, talk to, and pitch a lot of people in one place,” Kemp told Capitol Beat Tuesday in an exclusive interview from Davos, Switzerland. “The exposure we get is really helpful selling the state.”
The trip includes meetings both with executives from companies with an existing presence in Georgia and those that might be interested in setting up shop in the Peach State.
On Tuesday, the governor met with officials from Korean automaker Hyundai, which is building a massive electric vehicle manufacturing plant west of Savannah, and multinational technology company Cisco, which has offices in Midtown Atlanta. Tomorrow, the state will host a luncheon reception for 25 companies.
Kemp also participated in a panel discussion on the EV industry, which has become a major player in Georgia with both the Hyundai plant and a manufacturing facility Rivian is building east of Atlanta along the Interstate 20 corridor.
The governor will lead Georgia’s delegation to meetings elsewhere in Switzerland later this week before heading back home on Saturday.
Kemp, a potential candidate for the U.S. Senate after his second term as governor expires in 2026, dismissed the notion that he’s out to burnish his own national and international profile by going to Davos.
“My No.-1 goal is selling our state,” he said. “That’s the reason I came to the forum.”
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp and the General Assembly’s budget writers vowed Tuesday to continue a cautious approach toward spending, despite the huge surplus the state has built up during the last several years.
Kemp kicked off three days of legislative hearings on the budget proposals he outlined last week by touting $5 billion in tax relief he has steered through the General Assembly and pitching his plan to accelerate additional tax cuts that took effect this month.
“We chose a smart fiscally conservative path,” Kemp told lawmakers in a remote video hookup from Switzerland, where he is attending the World Economic Forum. “We need to stay on that path.”
“There are a lot of needs around our state, but revenues are not as strong as they’ve been in the past,” added Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia. “We need to be sure we’re prudent with the state’s money.”
State Economist Robert “Bob” Buschman said the nation is likely to suffer a mild recession during the first half of this year, with the U.S. Gross Domestic Product expected to decline by 0.1% during the first quarter and 0,7% during the second quarter.
While Georgia continues to fare better than the nation as a whole in key economic indicators including inflation and unemployment, Buschman noted that much of the state’s revenue growth of the last few years was fueled by capital gains. He said he expects a significant drop in capital gains this year due to an economic slowdown.
“In a down cycle, these gains can drop very quickly,” he said.
Buschman said a mild recession likely would lead to rising unemployment in Georgia, which in turn would affect the state’s tax collections. The trend already has started, with the state reporting declining tax revenues during the first half of the current fiscal year.
But Buschman said Georgia’s unemployment rate is likely to remain below the national rate, which is projected to hit 4.3% later this year.
Kemp said the pay increases he is recommending for state and university system employees as well as public school teachers should help serve as a buffer against recession.
“With the pay raises and the jobs we’re creating, that keeps people working,” he said. “We’ll be in good shape.”
ATLANTA – Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has broken her silence over allegations she was involved in an improper relationship with the special prosecutor she hired in the election interference case against Donald Trump.
Speaking Sunday at the Big Bethel AME Church in Atlanta, Willis defended the qualifications of Nathan Wade for the post, numerous media outlets reported. Willis didn’t mention Wade by name or refer specifically to the allegations surrounding her relationship with the prosecutor.
The allegations surfaced last week in a motion filed on behalf of Michael Roman, one of the defendants charged in the indictment of Trump and 18 associates last August for allegedly working to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia that saw Democrat Joe Biden carry the Peach State.
The motion seeks to have the case dismissed because Willis and Wade were engaged in an “improper, clandestine personal relationship.” It goes on to claim Willis and Wade took vacations together using public funds Wade’s law firm received from Fulton County.
Trump and his Republican allies have cited the allegations in arguing the case against the former president in Fulton County should be dropped.
“While we pointed out the naked politics of the case brought by D.A. Willis from the beginning, these new revelations raise new and important questions about why these indictments were issued in the first place,” Georgia Republican Chairman Josh McKoon said last week.
“Clearly, there is an urgent need for all criminal proceedings in these cases to be halted until a complete and thorough investigation can be conducted regarding the specific allegations of misconduct, and perhaps even criminal conduct, on the part of D.A. Willis and Nathan Wade, along with any others that aided them in this alleged scheme.”
Willis has said she will answer the specific allegations in a court filing. But she did speak out on Sunday, defending her decision to hire Wade. Without naming Wade, she described him as an excellent lawyer with “impeccable credentials.”
Willis also talked about the personal toll the case has taken on her, including repeated death threats.
Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee is expected to hold a hearing on the motion next month.
ATLANTA – A sure sign that Georgia’s coffers are flush with an unprecedented budget surplus is that for the first time in memory, the state plans to fund its annual list of building projects with cash instead of bonds.
The budget proposals Gov. Brian Kemp released during the first week of the 2024 legislative session call for spending more than $2 billion of the surplus on what the governor’s office described as “historic” investment in education, public safety, tax relief for Georgians, and infrastructure improvements across the Peach State.
“A strong economy and conservative fiscal management of state revenues … has led to record job growth, historic investment in communities from Bainbridge to Blue Ridge, $5 billion in tax relief, and enough funds saved to operate state government for months in an emergency, not days,” Kemp declared Thursday in his annual State of the State address to a joint session of the Georgia House and Senate.
Kemp’s $37.5 billion mid-year budget includes $1.9 billion for capital projects, all funded with cash. It’s a significantly larger pot of money than the $800 million to $1 billion the state’s annual bond package usually contains.
That capital investment doesn’t include other new spending in the governor’s budget recommendations designed to take advantage of the bulging surplus.
The list of new spending in the mid-year budget includes:
$1.5 billion for transportation improvements, including $659 million for construction projects in the state Department of Transportation’s existing pipeline and $641 million aimed at improving the movement of freight.
$500 million to reduce the Georgia Employees’ Retirement System’s debt.
$450.9 million to build a new state prison.
$400 million for technology improvements designed to increase the efficiency of the state’s workforce.
$250 million for the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority to spend on local water and sewer projects.
$178 million to design and construct a new dental school at Georgia Southern University’s Armstrong campus in Savannah.
$50 million for a new medical school at the University of Georgia.
All of those spending items involve one-time appropriations, based on the state’s policy of not using surplus revenues to create long-term obligations, according to the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget.
Another series of ongoing investments, most contained in Kemp’s $36.1 billion fiscal 2025 budget, includes $700 million in pay raises for state and university system employees and public school teachers. State and university system workers would get 4% cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs), while teachers would receive $2,500 COLAs and one-time bonuses of $1,000.
Another $205 million would go to local school districts for new school buses, $104 million would be set aside for grants to local schools for safety projects, and $66 million would restore a budget cut the General Assembly imposed on the university system last year.
The budget also would fully fund the state’s Quality Basic Education k-12 student funding formula.
Legislative Democrats say that new spending still is not enough to make up what for they see as chronic underfunding of education, health care, and housing.
Following Kemp’s State of the State address, Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler, D-Stone Mountain, criticized the governor’s decision to use the surplus primarily for short-term investments. More permanent spending commitments are needed to erase a “disparity of opportunity” confronting Georgians, she said.
“Let’s use the surplus to try to make the American dream that is out of reach for so many a reality,” Butler said.
The Republican governor will present his budget recommendations Tuesday, kicking off three days of joint hearings before the House and Senate Appropriations committees. Kemp will be speaking remotely from Davos, Switzerland, where he will travel for the second year in a row to the annual World Economic Forum.
ATLANTA – State Sen. Jason Anavitarte introduced legislation this week aimed at protecting teenagers from cyberbullying and other negative effects of social media.
Anavitarte, R-Dallas, and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who presides over the Senate, first announced they planned to target social media last summer.
“Since we announced this initiative, Senator Anavitarte and I have worked with industry and education leaders, online safety advocates, and legal experts to craft this legislation, and we will continue working with them as this process moves forward,” Jones said Friday.
“We believe Senate Bill 351 is an important step forward in protecting Georgia’s children and giving them the tools they need to be safe in their use of social media and other technologies.”
Numerous studies have found overuse of social media to pose a significant danger to young people, particularly girls, increasing their risk of suicide.
The legislation would require social media companies to take concrete steps to verify the age of their users. Existing rules requiring schools to monitor bullying would be updated to reflect the realities of modern technology.
The bill also would require the state Department of Education to develop and periodically update programs to educate students to use social media safely and require local school systems to adopt, implement, and enforce social media policies and submit them to the Georgia Board of Education for review. Districts that fail to comply would be subject to losing state funds.
“No kid should have to worry and stress about bullying and online threats,” Anavitarte said. “We will continue to promote efforts to have strong families against the poison eroding America.”
The bill has been referred to the Senate Committee on Education and Youth.
