by Dave Williams | Aug 30, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Former Hall County Solicitor General Stephanie Woodard pleaded guilty Friday to unlawfully using funds from the county and the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia (PAC) to cover personal expenditures.
Woodard was charged with one count of unprofessional conduct for claiming a number of travel expenditures for which she was not entitled and misusing Local Victim Assistance Program funds.
“Mrs. Woodard took advantage of our state by violating the same laws that she was elected to uphold,” Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said. “She has now been held accountable for her actions.”
“Hall County citizens entrusted Solicitor General Stephanie Woodard to serve the community with honesty and integrity,” added Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. “However, Woodard betrayed that trust for her personal gain.”
Woodard was sentenced under the First Offender Act to 12 months of probation and ordered to pay $1,190.48 in restitution to the PAC and $1,028.80 to Hall County. As part of her plea, she was also required to resign as Hall County solicitor general, backdated to Aug. 9.
The case was investigated by the GBI and prosecuted by Senior Assistant Attorney General Laura Pfister, who head the attorney general’s White Collar and Cyber Crime Unit.
by Dave Williams | Aug 30, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – An energy supply resource generally considered renewable and in plentiful supply in Georgia is running into opposition from environmental groups.
Atlanta-based Georgia Power is seeking approval from the state Public Service Commission (PSC) to buy about 80 megawatts of electricity from three plants in South Georgia that burn wood pellets and other forms of biomass.
Most of that power – 70 megawatts – would come through a 30-year power-purchasing agreement (PPA) with Altamaha Green Energy LLC, which operates a mill in Wayne County. Two other 10-year PPAs with International Paper Co. would yield the rest of the biomass from mills in Port Wentworth and Macon County.
Georgia Power officials are pitching the proposal as a way to create jobs in rural parts of the state and give a forestry industry with an oversupply of trees another market for Georgia timber.
It’s an argument that resonates with members of the PSC, who have historically backed Georgia Power’s efforts to ensure a diverse portfolio of energy supply sources including coal, natural gas, nuclear, and solar.
“Biomass is produced in Georgia. The trees are grown in Georgia and transported by local trucks,” Commissioner Lauren “Bubba” McDonald said Thursday during a hearing on the plan. “I see that as part of the total picture.”
But environmental groups argue burning biomass spews harmful pollution into the atmosphere.
“Burning wood pellets releases more greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy than burning fossil fuels like gas, oil, or even coal, accelerating climate change,” the North Carolina-based organization Dogwood Alliance writes on its website. “We need to use low-carbon technologies like solar and wind to produce energy, not wood pellets or fossil fuels.”
However, Thursday’s hearing focused more on the cost of the three biomass projects than on pollution.
“Customers will be paying for more than three times the value of the energy they will be receiving,” said Aradhana Chandra, a lawyer for the Southern Environmental Law Center, which represents the environmental group Georgia Interfaith Power and Light in the case.
Georgia Power officials who testified Thursday conceded biomass is significantly more expensive than other sources of energy generation in the utility’s arsenal.
“Biomass is not the least expensive resource,” said Jeffrey Grubb, director of resource planning for Georgia Power. “I think everyone knows that.”
But Grubb said finding the least expensive way to generate electricity wasn’t the point of the Request for Proposals the company put out for the biomass projects.
“(The cost) doesn’t take into account the other things the commission will consider in this hearing, which is the economic development and forestry support aspects,” he said.
“It was not a price-driven evaluation,” added Harold Judd, president of New Hampshire-based Accion Group, who conducted an independent evaluation of the projects. “We did not have a price cap.
“There are different considerations here. There’s the cost issue. There’s also the issue of a determination by this commission whether it is a benefit not only to the state but to ratepayers to have diversified generation.”
Chandra also questioned the reliability of biomass. She said Georgia Power had 303 megawatts of biomass in its system when Winter Storm Elliott hit Georgia on Christmas Eve, 2022, setting record-low temperatures in many areas. However, 267 of those megawatts were unavailable, she said.
“Biomass didn’t perform very well during Winter Storm Elliott,” she said.
Chandra dismissed arguments that the storm was particularly ill-timed for utilities to respond, striking on a holiday weekend.
The PSC’s Public Interest Advocacy Staff has recommended that the commission certify the three biomass projects based both on the economic benefits they would bring to the forestry industry and the benefits of diversifying Georgia Power’s energy generation mix.
Judd, however, took no position on the plan.
The commission is scheduled to hold a final hearing on the projects Sept. 12 and vote on them Sept. 17.
by Dave Williams | Aug 29, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Vice President Kamala Harris capped a two-day campaign swing through South Georgia late Thursday afternoon with a rally in Savannah.
The newly minted Democratic presidential nominee pulled no punches in describing the race against Republican former President Donald Trump as an uphill battle.
“This is going to be a tight race until the very end,” Harris told cheering supporters at the 9,500-seat Enmarket Arena. “We are running as the underdog. We have some hard work ahead of us. But we like hard work and, with your help, we’re going to win in November!”
Harris’ description of a close election was reflected in a FOX News poll released Wednesday that showed Harris leading Trump in Georgia by two points, well within the poll’s 3% margin of error.
But that represents significant progress for the Democrats considering President Joe Biden trailed Trump in the Peach State before Biden dropped out of the race last month and threw his support behind Harris. The surge by Harris has put Georgia back in play, prompting her and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democrats’ nominee for vice president, to head to Georgia Wednesday and Thursday.
The pair went on a bus tour of Coastal Georgia that dipped south to Liberty County High School in Hinesville on Wednesday and into Savannah’s Historic District on Thursday. Harris also took time out Thursday afternoon to record an interview with CNN, her first in-depth interview of the campaign.
At the rally, Harris touted what she would do if elected president and warned what a second Trump term could mean for Americans.
She vowed to build an “opportunity economy,” which has become a campaign theme, “so that every American has the opportunity to own a home, start a business, and build wealth.”
Harris said she would work to prevent price gouging at America’s grocery stores, cap the cost of prescription drugs, and provide $6,000 in assistance to families during the first year of each child’s life.
“Unlike Donald Trump, I will always put middle-class families and working-class families first,” she said.
In contrast, Harris said Trump would push for additional tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations on top of the tax-cut measure Congress passed in 2017 during his first year in office, which has been widely criticized as skewing toward upper-income Americans.
She criticized Trump for appointing the three U.S. Supreme Court justices who helped provide the court’s majority two years ago in overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade guaranteeing decision abortion rights.
“This is a fight for freedom, like the freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body and not have the government tell her what to do,” Harris said.
Republicans gave Harris a measure of credit for venturing outside of metro Atlanta to campaign in heavily Republican South Georgia, something few Democratic candidates for president in done. In fact, no candidate for president had traveled to Savannah to campaign since the 1990s.
But Michael Whatley, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said the strategy won’t help Harris win the state’s 16 electoral votes.
“(Georgians) know America cannot afford another four years of Kamala Harris’ failed, weak and dishonest leadership,” Whatley said. “Georgians are suffering under Harris’ dangerously liberal agenda that put criminals back onto the streets, brought an invasion of illegal immigrants in to Georgia’s suburbs and college campuses, and allowed drugs to pour into the state’s cities.”
by Dave Williams | Aug 29, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger Thursday finalized a list of six presidential candidates whose names will appear on the state’s ballot Nov 5.
Besides former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, Georgia voters will get a choice of four other third-party and independent candidates.
Independent Cornel West will join the Green Party’s Jill Stein, Libertarian Chase Oliver, and Socialist Claudia De la Cruz on the Georgia presidential ballot.
Raffensperger ruled that independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not qualified to appear on the ballot. The secretary upheld an administrative law judge’s ruling that the address Kennedy listed was inaccurate.
The issue became moot earlier this week when Kennedy withdrew his candidacy and endorsed Trump.
by Dave Williams | Aug 29, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A Middle Georgia man has been convicted of assaulting law enforcement officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as members of Congress were certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Michael Bradley, 50, of Forsyth was found guilty in federal court of multiple felony and misdemeanor offenses including civil disorder; assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers; and entering, remaining, and engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon.
According to evidence presented during a bench trial, Bradley took at least two swings at an officer with a baton at the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace Tunnel, the site of some of the most violent attacks against law enforcement that day. Before he could deliver any blows, however, he was sprayed with a chemical agent, causing him to retreat.
The case was investigated by the FBI’s Atlanta and Washington, D.C., field offices with assistance from the U.S. Capitol Police and Metropolitan (Washington) Police Department. The U.S. Attorney’s offices for the Middle District of Georgia and the District of Columbia handled the prosecution, working with the Justice Department’s Counterterrorism Section.
Bradley was arrested in September of last year in his hometown. He is due to be sentenced in December.
