by Dave Williams | Oct 29, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A funeral home owner in Coffee County has been arrested following the discovery of 18 bodies in various stages of decomposition.
Chris Johnson, 39, of Douglas was charged with 17 counts of abuse of a dead body.
Johnson was arrested on Sunday after Coffee County Sheriff’s deputies serving an eviction notice at Johnson Funeral Home & Cremation Services discovered the bodies on Saturday. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) was called in and made the arrest.
Johnson ran unsuccessfully for Coffee County coroner last May.
Additional charges are expected, according to a news release from the GBI.
As the investigation is continuing, anyone with information is encouraged to contact the Coffee County Sheriff’s Office at 912-384-4227 or the GBI Regional Investigative Office in Douglas at 912-389-4103.
Anonymous tips can be submitted by calling 1-800-597-TIPS, reported online by clicking on https://gbi.georgia.gov/submit-tips-online, or by downloading the See Something, Send Something mobile app.
Once the investigation is completed, the case will be sent to the Waycross Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s office for prosecution.
by Dave Williams | Oct 28, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Former President Donald Trump brought his 2024 presidential campaign to the campus of Georgia Tech in Midtown Atlanta Monday night.
Just eight days before Election Day, the Republican nominee called Georgia critical to a Trump victory over Vice President Kamala Harris on Nov. 5.
“We win this state and we win the whole ball of wax,” Trump said during a rally at Tech’s McCamish Pavilion to a cheering crowd waving “47” signs. The next president of the United States will be the 47th in the nation’s history.
As he has throughout the campaign, Trump put an emphasis on his pledge to secure America’s southern border
“The day I take the oath of office, the migrant invasion ends and the restoration of our country begins,” he said.
But Trump also made some promises of more recent vintage. He said he would push for legislation offering tax credits to family caregivers and making interest payments on car loans fully tax deductible if the vehicle was made in the U.S.
Trump also vowed to cut energy prices in half during his first year in office, making America energy dependent through his “drill baby drill” mantra.
The former president repeated a litany of criticisms of Harris as an incompetent candidate with “radical left lunatic policies.”
At the same time, he pushed back on attacks Harris and other Democrats have leveled at him, that he is a fascist who, at age 78, doesn’t have the energy to serve a second term in the White House.
“I’m not a Nazi,” he said. “I’m not tired. I’ve done this (campaigning) for 58 days in a row, and I’m not tired, not even a little bit.”
Trump also characterized as politically motivated his indictment in Georgia last year on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “They went after their political opponent, and they made me more popular.”
Trump said he was pleased with the record-setting pace of early voting in Georgia but urged his supporters who haven’t yet voted not to get complacent.
“Get out and vote,” he said. “We can’t take any chances.”
While Trump predicted he will defeat Harris, Democrats cited the huge crowd that attended her rally in Clarkston last week as proof positive that her campaign has built energy and enthusiasm in the Peach State.
“As Trump and (Republican vice presidential nominee) JD Vance parachute into our state, Georgians are ready to turn the page on Trump’s extreme Project 2025 agenda,” said Matt Blakely, Georgia rapid response director for the Harris campaign.
by Dave Williams | Oct 28, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Early voting has become the option of choice for many Georgia voters.
As of 12:30 p.m. Monday, more than 2.7 million voters in the Peach State had cast their ballots during the early voting period that began two weeks ago. Combined with 177,192 absentee ballots, more than 40% of active voters in Georgia already have voted.
That Day 15 early voting total shattered the previous record of nearly 2 million for the same day in the 2018 early voting period. Nearly 1.98 million had voted early by Day 15 in 2020, and more than 1.6 million had cast ballots early by the same day in 2022.
“Georgia voters know we’ve made it easy to cast a ballot. It’s really that simple,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Monday. “Over the past four years, we’ve worked tirelessly to prepare for this election by adding early voting days and investing in infrastructure. … We’re battle tested and ready.”
Statewide, reports of long early voting lines were minimal, although some voters were waiting in line for more than 30 minutes in a few popular voting locations in metro areas.
The early voting period comes to an end this week. The last day for early voting is Friday, four days before Election Day a week from Tuesday.
by Dave Williams | Oct 28, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A leading agriculture industry executive urged Georgia lawmakers Monday to consider a constitutional amendment that would let the state government provide direct financial relief to farmers who suffered losses from Hurricane Helene.
The Georgia Constitution includes a gratuities clause that prohibits the state government from giving gifts to individuals without a benefit to taxpayers in return. Historically, state policy makers have supported the clause as promoting fiscal responsibility and preventing corruption.
But the damage wreaked by last month’s storm on Georgia farmers, ranchers, and foresters was so immense that the state needs the authority to provide direct disaster payments to victims, Will Bentley, president of the Georgia Agribusiness Council, told members of a Georgia Senate study committee meeting in Cedartown.
Helene caused at least $6.46 billion in losses to Georgia’s agriculture industry, according to estimates from the University of Georgia College of Agriculture & Environmental Science. That included $1.8 billion in direct losses to farms and $1.3 billion in direct forestry losses, Bentley said.
“Farmers need help,” he said. “If there’s ever a time to (abolish or limit the gratuities clause), now would be the time after the biggest ag hit we’ve ever had.”
Bentley said the state needs to act because federal disaster relief tends to be slow in coming. It took two years for federal relief to flow to farmers who sustained losses from Hurricane Michael in 2018, he said.
“If we have a two-year delay this time in recovery dollars from the federal government, we’re going to lose thousands of farms in the state of Georgia,” he said.
Bentley also recommended exempting disaster relief payments from state taxes, as was done in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael.
While getting rid of the gratuities clause in Georgia undoubtedly would be controversial, Senate Majority Caucus Chairman Jason Anavitarte, R-Dallas, said the idea is worth considering.
“If it’s a matter of putting food on the table and helping the No.-1 industry in the state … we need a serious discussion and debate,” he said.
Sen. Billy Hickman, R-Statesboro, chairman of the Senate Study Committee on Preservation of Georgia’s Farmlands, said he plans to hold one more meeting this fall before the panel issues its recommendations for the full Senate to take up during the 2025 General Assembly session starting in January.
by Dave Williams | Oct 25, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A South Georgia woman has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for her role in a scheme to defraud the state Department of Labor out of more than $30 million in unemployment benefits.
According to court documents, Tyshion Nautese Hicks, 32, of Vienna and seven co-conspirators filed more than 5,000 fraudulent unemployment insurance claims from March 2020 through November 2022, a period marked by the COVID-19 pandemic.
To perpetrate the scheme, the defendants created fictitious employers and fabricated lists of employees using information from thousands of identify theft victims, then filed fraudulent unemployment insurance claims on behalf of those nonexistent people on the labor department’s website.
They then caused the benefits to be disbursed via prepaid debit cards mailed to addresses of their choice, many of which were in Vienna and Cordele.
Hicks pleaded guilty last February to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. Her co-conspirators already have pleaded guilty or been sentenced.
The scheme was one of the largest episodes of COVID fraud ever prosecuted, said Nicole Argentieri, head of the U.S. Justice Department’s Criminal Division.
“The defendant and her co-conspirators exploited a program designed to alleviate pandemic-related economic hardship to enrich themselves at the expense of federal taxpayers,” Argentieri said Friday. “Yesterday’s sentence underscores the department’s commitment to investigating and prosecuting those who steal from the public.”
In addition to the prison sentence, Hicks was ordered to serve three years of supervised release following the prison term and pay restitution in an amount yet to be determined.
