by Dave Williams | Jun 27, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The Port of Brunswick handled an all-time high of 86,577 units of Roll-on/Roll-off cargo last month, a 26% increase over May of last year, the Georgia Ports Authority announced this week.
About half of the machinery increase and approximately 15% of the increase in autos were related to the bridge collapse in Baltimore, which shut down that port for 11 weeks. But other factors were involved as well.
“Brunswick’s proximity to domestic manufacturers and to vibrant sales markets make it a critical partner for the auto industry in driving new business,” said Griff Lynch, the ports authority’s president and CEO.
“The recent addition of 120 acres of processing space, along with hundreds more acres available for development, make Colonel’s Island Terminal uniquely able to expand along with the needs of car manufacturers.”
The auto port at Colonel’s Island handled 57 vessels last month, an increase of 12% compared to May of last year.
The strong numbers in May brought Georgia Ports volumes for the first 11 months of the current fiscal year to 796,000 units of autos and heavy machinery, up 20% compared to the same period in fiscal 2023.
“Our increasing Ro/Ro volumes are a testament to the outstanding work of our auto port partners and the reliable service customers have come to expect at Brunswick,” said Kent Fountain, the authority’s board chairman.
Overall, Brunswick imported 54,550 autos in May and exported just over 23,000.
by Dave Williams | Jun 26, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A nonprofit organization dedicated to land conservation has acquired two parcels of land in Middle Georgia that will support efforts to establish the Ocmulgee Mounds as Georgia’s first national park.
The “Branson Tracts” occupy 931 acres in Bibb and Twiggs counties. The Open Space Institute has acquired the properties from conservation-minded landowner Martha Bond Branson with plans to transfer them to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as additions to the 8,600-acre Bond Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.
The tracts are located a short distance from traditional Muscogee (Creek) Nation lands and Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park.
More than half a million people live in close proximity to the Bond Swamp, which will allow easy public access to an outdoor recreation opportunity.
“The benefits of protected land should be for everyone,” said Maria Whitehead, the Open Space Institute’s senior vice president of land in the Southeast. “The protection of the Branson Tracts … is a meaningful conservation accomplishment and the next step in creating the national park and preserve.”
Georgia’s two U.S. senators, Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, and U.S. Reps. Austin Scott, R-Tifton, and Sanford Bishop, D-Albany, introduced legislation into Congress last month to create a national park and preserve at the Ocmulgee Mounds.
The area is the ancestral home of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and has been inhabited continuously by humans for more than 12,000 years. The Muskogean people built mounds there during the Mississippian Period, which began around 900 AD, for meeting, living, burial, and agricultural purposes.
The Branson properties were saved with help from the Knobloch Family Foundation, the Green South Foundation and the Peyton Anderson Foundation.
by Dave Williams | Jun 26, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A Georgia Senate study committee Wednesday set a broad framework for determining how the state should regulate emerging artificial intelligence technology to protect the public without stifling innovation.
“(AI) will literally cure cancer,” Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, the study committee’s chairman, said during the panel’s first meeting. “However, it also has the propensity to do great harm. … It’s going to impact and change things like never before.”
Several legislative committees held hearings on AI last year, and a bill was introduced in the Georgia House of Representatives during this year’s legislative session to criminalize the use of “deepfakes” generated by artificial intelligence to impersonate candidates in political ads. House Bill 986 overwhelmingly passed the House but died in the Senate.
On Wednesday, the new Senate study committee agreed on a broad range of policy areas AI will affect that need to be addressed in any legislation Georgia lawmakers come up with, including health care, public safety, education, and transportation.
Overlapping all of those categories is how to regulate AI in a way that ensures the technology is being used ethically and transparently. A House committee planning to begin meeting soon will also take up that issue, said Rep. Brad Thomas, R-Holly Springs, who was the chief sponsor of the deep-fakes bill.
Georgia could be among the first states to adopt regulations for AI. While the European Union’s Parliament adopted AI legislation last March, Colorado is the only U.S. state to have done so, Hayley Williams, director of the state Senate Office of Policy and Legislative Analysis, told the Senate panel.
Congress thus far hasn’t passed any AI regulations, she said.
“It’s a very complex universe to deal with and very difficult to regulate,” she said. “The reality is, the impact is too huge not to regulate.”
Williams said the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, which will take effect in 2026, regulates AI systems based on the risk they pose to the public. AI systems that pose an “unacceptable” risk are prohibited altogether, while systems considered to pose “minimal” risk are not regulated at all.
European companies that fail to comply face stiff fines, Williams said. Colorado’s law does not impose fines for non-compliance, she said.
Sen. Max Burns, R-Sylvania, said the study committee’s goal should be to foster innovation in the development of AI in Georgia with less emphasis on imposing restrictions like the EU model.
But Sen. Jason Esteves, D-Atlanta, said regulating AI systems to protect the public also must be an important goal.
“The primary function of government is to protect its citizens,” he said. “We should be ensuring we protect citizens from the potential impacts of AI.”
Albers said he plans to schedule seven or eight meetings of the study committee this summer and fall before the panel makes recommendations to the full Senate. The next meeting is set for July 17.
by Dave Williams | Jun 26, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A new poll shows overwhelming public opposition to an Alabama company’s plans to mine titanium near the Okefenokee Swamp.
The survey of 600 Georgia voters, conducted last week by Washington, D.C.-based Hart Research Associates, found widespread bipartisan opposition to issuing state permits to Twin Pines Minerals for the project.
More than nine of 10 poll respondents said it is important to protect the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and its wildlife from pollution and other environmental dangers. By the same overwhelming margin, the voters surveyed said it’s more important to protect plants and wildlife that live in the swamp from harm, even if it might prevent economic development.
“This supports exactly what we’ve been hearing across our state for years, that Georgians do not want this mine threatening the Okefenokee,” said Bill Sapp, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “For years, Twin Pines has failed to prove their proposed mine would not harm the swamp. Clearly, Georgians oppose any threat to the swamp, including Twin Pines’ proposed mine.”
The Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) released draft permits for the first phase of the proposed mine in February. Twin Pines executives have said the project would not harm the swamp.
But opponents cite research showing that mining titanium oxide along Trail Ridge on the Okefenokee’s eastern rim would threaten the swamp’s water levels, increase wildfire risks, harm wildlife, and release toxic contaminants into nearby surface and groundwater.
Legislation aimed at stopping the mine has been introduced in the General Assembly but has failed to win passage. The latest effort, which the state House of Representative passed on the next-to-last day of this year’s legislative session, called for a three-year moratorium on the type of mining being planned near the swamp. But the bill died when it failed to get a vote in the Senate.
At least 19 local governments across Georgia have passed resolutions calling for protecting the Okefenokee.
“Georgians of all political stripes know this proposal to mine for titanium dioxide, a common pigment, is flat-out wrong for the Okefenokee,” said Chris Watson, Southeast campaign director for the National Parks Conservation Association. “This polling makes that clear.”
by Dave Williams | Jun 25, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., Tuesday called for an investigation into the discovery this month of more than 1,000 official pieces of court correspondence dating back as far as 2021 that were not delivered.
Fulton County Clerk of Courts and Magistrate Courts Ché Alexander received the undelivered mail in a huge batch marked “return to sender” during the week of June 3 and notified Ossoff, who has been pressuring the U.S. Postal Service for months over delayed mail deliveries across Georgia.
“I want to emphasize the real human impact when Georgians don’t receive correspondence from the court,” Ossoff said during a news conference. “This impacts their liberty. This impacts their property. This impacts the official functioning of the courtroom.
“This impacts the judges’ docket. This can impact potentially overcrowding in the jail, disrupting the normal course of business for the court.”
Ossoff first raised the issue of delays in mail delivery in Georgia during a Senate committee hearing in April.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told the committee the delays were the result of problems encountered during the rollout last January of a restructuring plan aimed at making the postal service economically self-sufficient. The plan was first implemented at the regional mail processing center in Palmetto and at a second center in Richmond, Va.
To deal with the issue, DeJoy ordered a pause in the restructuring plan nationwide until at least the beginning of next year. To address the mail processing delays at the Palmetto facility, he brought in more than 100 employees from other processing centers and revised transportation schedules between Palmetto and other mail processing centers.
Ossoff is asking the Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General to investigate the failure to deliver the Fulton County court correspondence and get back to him with answers.
“This and everything Georgians have been dealing with for the last six months demonstrate the urgent need for much more intense, much more robust, and much more sustained oversight of the U.S. Postal Service and its management,” Ossoff said Tuesday.
DeJoy reported last week in a letter to Ossoff that 64.5% of first-class mail the Palmetto facility handled between May 18 and May 24 was delivered on time, up from a mid-March low of just 35.8%. In addition, 82.9% of first-class mail during that period was delivered within one day of on time, DeJoy wrote.
