by Dave Williams | Sep 20, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The Republican-controlled State Election Board Friday approved a controversial change in election rules requiring counties to hand-count the number of ballots cast at polling places on Election Day.
The proposal passed 3-2 despite objections from the Georgia attorney general’s office, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, local election officials, Democrats and voting-rights groups.
Many counties hand-counted the number of ballots cast in the 2020 election without any complaints, said Sharlene Alexander, a former assistant poll manager in Fayette County. Hand-counting without actually tabulating the results can be done without taking a lot of time, Alexander said.
“I don’t understand why this big uproar is going on,” she said.
But opponents argued that changing the hand-count rule so close to this year’s election is part of a concerted effort by Republicans in Georgia to sow chaos and confusion, potentially delaying the results and helping former President Donald Trump secure the state’s 16 electoral votes whether or not he wins the popular vote in the Peach State.
“Counting thousands of ballots by hand will be incredibly tenuous, expensive and possibly error-prone process,” said Kristin Nabers, state director for All Voting is Local Action, a group that advocates expanding voter access. “Any human errors can be exploited by election deniers to sow distrust and decrease confidence in our elections.”
Senior Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Young questioned the State Election Board’s statutory authority to make such a rules change.
“These proposed rules purport to amend provisions to allow for hand-counting ballots at the precinct level, which would appear to occur prior to submission to the election superintendent and consolidation and tabulation of the votes,” Young wrote in a letter to board Chairman John Fervier dated Thursday. “However, the statutes upon which these rules rely do not reflect any provision enacted by the General Assembly.”
Raffensperger, who has called the State Election Board a “mess,” also has warned that changing election rules so close to the start of early voting next month and Election Day Nov. 5 could delay the tabulation of results.
“Attorney General Chris Carr has stated that these rules would not withstand a legal challenge, and I have worked every day to strengthen Georgia’s election law to ensure our elections remain safe, secure, and free,” Raffensperger said following Friday’s vote.
The Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials weighed in this week with a letter to board members objecting to changing the rule on hand-counting ballots, citing its potential to “delay results, set fatigued employees up for failure, and undermine the very confidence the rule’s author claims to seek.”
“The pro-Trump Election Board’s newest changes passed today seem meant to create a fail point in our system — it’s a perfect illustration of the MAGA operation’s strategy to sow doubt and chaos, and upend the 2024 election,” added Lauren Groh-Wargo, CEO of Fair Fight, a voting rights group founded by two-time Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams.
“But it won’t work. We the people of Georgia have the power to stop them. By turning out in huge numbers too big to cry fraud, we can protect our freedom and ensure the choice of the voters, not the election deniers, prevails.”
But board member Janice Johnston, one of the three Republicans on the board who supported the rules change, dismissed arguments that it’s coming too close to the election. She cited past instances where the board approved rules changes close to Election Day.
Janelle King, another GOP board member who voted for the proposal, said getting a correct count is worth any delays at the precinct level on Election Night.
“I don’t want to see a precedent where we’re OK with speed over accuracy,” she said.
by Dave Williams | Sep 20, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A Georgia hemp industry that has been manufacturing and selling hemp products virtually unfettered since Congress legalized it six years ago is about to get some significant regulation.
Legislation the General Assembly passed this year that takes effect Oct. 1 will prohibit retailers from selling hemp products to anyone under the age of 21 and impose labeling, packaging, and testing requirements on manufacturers.
“[Congress] left it pretty open-ended,” said state Sen. Sam Watson, R-Moultrie, who introduced Senate Bill 494. “There’s no regulatory environment around it. … It’s a consumer-protection bill.”
The bill, which the legislature passed overwhelmingly in March, requires hemp growers, manufacturers, and retailers to obtain licenses and pay a licensing fee. Violators will be subject to criminal misdemeanor charges and civil penalties.
The new law prohibits the sale of any hemp products containing more than the legal limit of 0.3% of THC, the psychoactive drug that gets users high.
That means retail stores may continue to sell gummies, tinctures – generally cannabis-infused alcohol or oils administered orally – and non-alcoholic CBD beverages. But anything smokable and food products will no longer be permitted.
“A lot of these facilities are scrambling to get rid of inventory and replace it with compliant products,” said Gary Long, CEO of ONE59, which sells a line of hemp-derived, over-the-counter products from Botanical Sciences LLC, one of two companies awarded a Class One license to grow, manufacture, and sell low-THC cannabis oil to eligible patients under Georgia’s medical cannabis program.
“We saw this as an opportunity, with our expertise, and knowhow, to create a separate line of products that could be sold over the counter.”
Tom Church, an Atlanta lawyer who represents hemp retailers, said having to get rid of smokable hemp and food products poses a serious threat to some of the businesses.
“Legislators were uncomfortable legalizing something that looks like cannabis and smells like cannabis,” he said. “[But] for some stores, that’s their bread and butter. It’s not infeasible that some businesses may have to shut down because of this bill.”
But Watson said hemp products like peanut butter cups that are attractive to children shouldn’t be legal.
“It scares me as a parent,” he said. “If you’re using this stuff for medical purposes or a sleep issue, why do you need a candy bar for that?”
Church said some parties may file lawsuits challenging the restrictions on which hemp products can be sold, but he hasn’t heard of any as yet.
by Dave Williams | Sep 20, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Allowing canoes and kayaks only on Georgia rivers and streams deemed navigable would ruin an outdoor recreation industry that brings in billions of dollars, outfitters and paddling enthusiasts told a legislative study committee Friday.
“Tourism is a significant economic driver in Georgia,” Amanda Dyson-Thornton, executive director of the Georgia Association of Convention and Visitors Bureaus, told members of the House Study Committee on Navigable Streams and Related Matters during a hearing at the Unicoi State Park & Lodge near Helen. “Public access to Georgia’s rivers and streams is crucial to sustaining Georgia’s outdoor recreation economy.”
The study committee was formed this year as the next step in a process aimed at guaranteeing Georgians the right to hunt and fish in the state’s navigable rivers and streams without violating private property rights.
Fishing rights Georgians have enjoyed for generations came into question last year when a property owner on the Yellow Jacket Shoals portion of the Flint River banned fishing there and sued the state to enforce it. When the Georgia Department of Natural Resources entered into a consent decree promising to enforce the ban, Gov. Brian Kemp and lawmakers moved quickly to pass a bill codifying public fishing rights into state law.
After some waterfront property owners complained that a provision in the 2023 bill containing a legal concept known as the “public trust doctrine” could take away their private property rights, the General Assembly revisited the issue this year by passing a second bill removing the public trust doctrine from the law.
The study committee’s task is defining which rivers and streams in Georgia are navigable and, thus, open to fishing and paddling, and which are off limits.
Several North Georgia outfitters who testified Friday said they operate their businesses on streams with far less flow than the 400-cubic-feet-per-second standard the state Department of Natural Resources has suggested to define a stream as navigable.
“A kayak can float in two to three inches of water,” said Andrew Bruce, owner of Toccoa River Outfitters. “If we start restricting what we’ve had before, we’re doing an injustice.”
Both outfitters and riverfront property owners urged the committee to maintain the current status quo rather than impose new restrictions that could put outfitting companies out of business.
“We’re just asking to float through,” said Tim Brenner, owner of Wildwood Outfitters in Cleveland. “We don’t want to trash anyone’s property.”
“Ninety percent of the paddlers we have no issue with,” added Joe Rose, who owns property along the Toccoa River in Fannin County.
But Brad Coppedge, board president of the Soque River Watershed Association, warned that any rush to reclassify non-navigable streams as navigable would damage efforts to protect and restore the Soque, a tributary of the Chattahoochee River.
“If it is reclassified as a navigable waterway … overnight, the Soque becomes the Chattahoochee River running through Helen, Georgia … a recreational playground of tubing, boating, and open fishing, a new deposit area for trash and debris,” Coppedge said.
The resolution that created the study committee set a Dec. 1 deadline to complete its work.
by Dave Williams | Sep 19, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The General Assembly should take a carrot-and-stick approach to reducing gun violence in Georgia, a panel of pediatricians told members of a legislative study committee Thursday.
Tax credits to incentivize Georgians to buy safe firearm storage devices and a law requiring safe storage of guns with penalties for violators were among the recommendations members of Georgia Clinicians for Gun Safety delivered to the state Senate Safe Firearm Storage Study Committee during a hearing at the Georgia Capitol.
Firearms are the leading cause of death for young people in Georgia, said Dr. Sofia Chaudhary, a pediatric emergency medicine physician and chair of the GA American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Chapter Injury And Violence Prevention Committee.
“This is a public health crisis,” Chaudhary said. “Georgia’s children deserve to grow up in an environment free from gun violence.”
While mass school shootings such as occurred at Apalachee High School near Winder this month draw the lion’s share of media coverage, teen suicides and unintentional shootings also are on the rise.
Dr. Kiesha Fraser Doh, also a pediatric emergency medicine physician affiliated with the AAP, said toddlers and teenagers are the most frequent victims of accidental shootings involving young people.
“Unintentional firearm injuries are preventable,” Doh said.
Tax credits to encourage Georgians to buy safe firearm storage devices such as gun safes and trigger locks were among recommendations state House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, made last week in the aftermath of the school shooting in Barrow County.
Another Republican, State School Superintendent Richard Woods, this week called for state funding to provide a school resource officer and a crisis alert system in every Georgia school.
But for the most part, Georgia Republicans have been reluctant to back measures requiring adults to storage firearms in safe locations where children can’t get to them or a “red flag” law allowing the temporary seizure of firearms from a person deemed a danger to themselves or others.
But several witnesses who testified Thursday said gun violence also could be addressed through steps other than legislation.
Jessie Ojeda, state policy attorney for Giffords, a nonprofit founded by former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords of Arizona after she was shot in an assassination attempt in 2011, said the states of Tennessee, Texas, and Utah have launched public education campaigns using radio, TV, social media, brochures, and flyers to raise awareness of the need to keep firearms stored safely.
“Safe storage is not just a recommendation,” Ojeda said. “It is a necessity to protect our families and communities from preventable tragedies.”
Sen. Emanuel Jones, D-Decatur, the study committee’s chairman, said the panel will hold a final meeting next month before formulating recommendations to the full Senate. Jones said his goal is to develop specific legislation for the General Assembly to consider during the 2025 session starting in January.
by Dave Williams | Sep 19, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia’s unemployment rate rose in August for the fourth month in a row, the state Department of Labor reported Thursday.
The state’s jobless rate of 3.6% last month was up two-tenths from July’s 3.4% but still six-tenths lower than the national unemployment rate. However, Georgia continued to set workforce records in August.
“Georgia’s growing labor force and business-friendly economy have kept us at the top as the best to do business for 11 straight years, but our work is far from over,” state Commissioner of Labor Bruce Thompson said Thursday.
“Bold action is needed to ensure every Georgian can benefit from the opportunities created by our job creators. By working together with our business community, we can turn today’s challenges into tomorrow’s successes.”
The number of jobs in Georgia increased last month to an all-time high of nearly 5 million. The sectors with the most over-the-month job gains were health care and social assistance, which added 2,900 jobs; private educational services, which increased by 1,700 jobs; and the information sector, including the motion picture and sound recording industries, which added 1,500 jobs.
The labor force also rose to a record high of more than 5.4 million. The labor force participation rate held steady at 61.8%.
On the down side, the number of employed Georgians declined for the first time since last November, to just more than 5.2 million. The number of unemployed increased to 192,612, the highest level since July 2021.
Initial unemployment claims were down by 4,067 in August to 23,198.
