by Dave Williams | Sep 25, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp activated the State Operations Center Wednesday in anticipation of the arrival of Hurricane Helene, a day after declaring a state of emergency throughout Georgia.
Forecasters expect Helene to make landfall along the eastern part of the Florida Panhandle late Thursday as a Category 3 hurricane before moving into Georgia early Friday. The fast-moving storm is expected to bring damaging winds, heavy rainfall, and flooding.
“The current forecast for Hurricane Helene suggests this storm will impact every part of our state,” Kemp said. “We are not taking anything for granted, which is why I have directed appropriate state agencies to work around the clock to ensure we’re prepared for whatever is heading our way.”
An executive order Kemp issued Tuesday directed up to 500 Georgia National Guard troops to help with preparation, response, and recovery efforts. Federal rules and regulations limiting operating hours for commercial truck drivers will be suspended to let an uninterrupted supply of goods and services be dispatched to areas in need of assistance.
“We’ve prepositioned resources, enhanced communication channels and are advising residents to stay informed and take the necessary precautions,” said Chris Stallings, director of the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency. “Our team is ready to respond to emergencies and assist communities as needed.”
Georgia Power and the state’s Electric Membership Corporations (EMCs) were preparing personnel and resources to respond to potential power outages later this week.
The Georgia Department of Transportation advised motorists Wednesday to avoid non-essential travel, particularly following the storm when roads may still be affected by debris and could be impassable.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr warned Georgians to be on the lookout for possible storm-related scams in anticipation of Helene.
by Dave Williams | Sep 25, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Several Georgia Democrats filed a lawsuit Wednesday to force Gov. Brian Kemp to order a hearing on allegations that three Republican members of the State Election Board (SEB) violated the law.
State Sen. Nabilah Islam Parkes of Duluth, Randal Mangham – a former state representative now running for the Senate – and Cathy Woolard, a former chair of the Fulton County Board of Elections, claim the three “rogue” SEB members have pushed through a series of controversial changes in election rules that will let local election officials delay or refuse to certify election results.
The Democrats say that could sow chaos and uncertainty following the Nov. 5 elections and let former President Donald Trump capture Georgia’s 16 electoral votes, even if Vice President Kamala Harris has won more of the state’s popular vote.
“The governor works for the people of Georgia, not the national Republican Party or Donald Trump,” Islam Parkes said Wednesday. “He has an obligation to uphold the law.”
While Republican Attorney General Chris Carr has questioned the legality of some of the rules changes, the state’s top lawyer also declared in a written opinion this month that Kemp is not legally obligated to convene a hearing on the charges Democrats have made against GOP board members Janice Johnston, Janelle King, and Rick Jeffares.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday came two days after those same board members voted to instruct SEB Executive Director Mike Coan to investigate allegations that local election boards in eight mostly Democrat-led counties are thwarting citizen activists’ challenges of thousands of voter registrations, and one day after civil rights groups filed a suit challenging a new state law making it easier to mount such challenges.
The lawsuit targets a provision in Senate Bill 189, which the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed this year, that allows private citizens to challenge the registration of voters whose address is determined to be “nonresidential.” A second provision under fire requires homeless Georgians to use their county registrar’s office as their mailing address.
“Ill-conceived laws like Georgia’s SB189 are a bad solution in search of a non-existent problem,” said Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a plaintiff in the case.
“This law threatens the integrity of our democratic process by creating unnecessary barriers that will likely disenfranchise eligible voters from historically excluded communities, including students, nursing home residents, and people experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity. The people of Georgia, especially its most vulnerable, deserve better.”
Woolard said calling out the State Election Board is not a partisan issue, pointing to a lawsuit a Georgia-based advocacy group headed by former Republican state Rep. Scot Turner has filed suit seeking to block the election rules changes.
“We can disagree on policy issues,” she said. “But we have to uphold the law.”
by Dave Williams | Sep 25, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Creative thinking could help offset the growing impact of solar farms in rural Georgia, a state environmental regulator told a state Senate study committee Wednesday at a hearing in Moultrie.
Jim Cooley, director of district operations for the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD), outlined a series of alternatives for siting solar farms in locations other than productive farmland.
Cooley’s list included solar projects on rooftops and at industrial parks, brownfields, closed landfills, closed coal-burning power plants, and reclaimed surface mines.
For example, Georgia Power is currently installing solar panels at Plant McIntosh in Rincon, Cooley said.
“This is a really good idea for reuse,” he said. “You’re already at the power plant.”
While solar farms are eating up far less productive farmland in Georgia than residential encroachment, the number of large solar farms cropping up across the state has raised concerns. The Houston County Commission this month rejected a proposed 4,000-acre solar farm near the state-owned Oakey Woods Wildlife Management Area, citing environmental issues.
The study committee was formed this year to look for steps the state could take to preserve Georgia’s farmland.
Cooley said a particularly creative way solar project developers could help offset the impact of solar farms is to co-locate them with farms, a concept known as “agrovoltaics.” Solar panels could be built on pastureland to shade livestock or on farmland to shade crops, he said.
“It’s a different way of looking at farming and solar as a symbiotic relationship,” he said. “This might be a way to supplement income on a farm to keep the farm going.”
Cooley said the EPD isn’t currently tracking the number of solar farms in Georgia or the acreage they take up, which surprised the study committee members.
“We need to know how many solar acres we’ve got and how many are coming down the line,” said Sen. Russ Goodman, R-Cogdell. “It’s hard to make policy if you don’t have accurate information.”
by Dave Williams | Sep 25, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – For the seventh year in a row, Georgia public-school students outperformed their counterparts in the nation’s public schools on the SAT, the state Department of Education reported Wednesday.
Georgia public-school students recorded a mean score of 1030, 35 points higher than the national average for public-school students of 995.
Georgia’s public-school class of 2024 recorded a mean score of 527 on the Evidence-Based Reading and Writing (ERW) portion of the test and a mean score of 503 on the math portion. That beat the averages of 507 and 488, respectively, for students in the nation’s public schools.
“I am so proud of the class of 2024 and their teachers, parents, families, and the communities who supported them,” state School Superintendent Richard Woods said.
“We continue to see Georgia students outpacing the national average on the SAT and ACT and that’s a testament to the work we’ve done in Georgia to invest in our students’ academic recovery post-pandemic and create opportunities in our public schools that prepare every child for life.”
On the down side, Georgia students’ mean score in 2024 was down from 1045 last year. The national mean score also decreased from 1003 in 2023.
Participation in the SAT in Georgia increased, which sometimes leads to moderate drops in performance. The participation rate of 52% of the class of 2024 who took the test at some point during their high school career was down from 50% last year.
by Dave Williams | Sep 24, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency in Georgia Tuesday with Tropical Storm Helene expected to make landfall along Florida’s Gulf Coast as a Category 3 hurricane Thursday night.
The fast-moving storm is expected to travel northeast into Georgia late Thursday or early Friday, producing damaging winds, four to eight inches of rain, and flooding across significant parts of the state.
Kemp’s executive order calls for deploying up to 500 Georgia National Guard troops to help with preparation, response, and recovery efforts.
Federal rules and regulations limiting operating hours for commercial truck drivers will be suspended to let an uninterrupted supply of goods and services be dispatched to areas in need of assistance.
The executive order also prohibits price gouging on any goods or services needed for preparation, response, and recovery operations, including gasoline and diesel fuel.
The emergency declaration will run through Wednesday, Oct. 2, unless Kemp renews it.
