by Dave Williams | Aug 19, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – University System of Georgia Chancellor Sonny Perdue is asking the U.S. Department of Education to delay processing federal student aid applications because of the botched rollout of a simplified application website.
The simplified website for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) was launched last December following a two-month delay supposedly to fix glitches. But when the new system finally went online, students and their families quickly found flaws, including limited hours of availability and the loss of saved information.
“By almost all accounts, the launch of the simplified FAFSA can only be categorized as an abject failure,” Perdue wrote in a letter to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona dated last Friday.
“It has had unprecedented levels of ongoing and new issues that will delay aid and negatively impact students and campuses in ways we do not yet fully know. It has stretched our campus financial aid offices to the limit. … What upsets me most, however, is the impact this failure is having on thousands of students here in Georgia and across the nation who have done absolutely nothing wrong.”
Perdue is asking the feds to extend a reporting deadline for schools to July 1, 2025, and to delay the release of the 2025-26 FAFSA “until all component systems and services are fully functional and ready to be delivered.”
“I commend the actions of Congress to simplify the financial aid process for students,” Perdue continued. “However, given the issues with the launch, to expect institutions to continue to operate, serve students and families and fulfill their core mission in this environment is unreasonable, unfair and wrong.”
by Dave Williams | Aug 16, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia’s forestry industry is a victim of its own success.
Advanced genetics leading to fast-growing trees and a favorable climate have combined to make Georgia the No.-1 forestry state in the nation, a $42 billion industry responsible for 143,000 jobs.
But with pulp and paper mills going out of business in large numbers due to intense foreign competition, demand for timber is on the decline. As a result, prices for wood are down to levels not seen since the 1970s.
Those are the dynamics behind a push to find new markets for Georgia’s oversupply of wood in innovative clean energy industries ranging from cleaner aviation fuel to mass-timber building construction to electric-vehicle batteries.
“Georgia is uniquely positioned,” Marshall Thomas, president of F&W Forestry Services in Albany, told members of a state Senate study committee Aug. 13. “We can add jobs and tax base and position Georgia as a leader in the transition to a green economy.”
The Senate Advancing Forest Innovation in Georgia Study Committee was formed this year to look for ways the state can encourage investment in sustainable forest products that will generate demand in the future.
Senate President Pro Tempore John Kennedy, R-Macon, the committee’s chairman, said he saw one of those options on a state-sponsored trade mission to France last year: sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), a biofuel that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions up to 85% compared with conventional petroleum-based jet fuel.
The European Union will require commercial aircraft to burn at least 6% SAF by 2030, a percentage that will increase gradually each year until it reaches 70% in 2050.
One company active in Georgia, Lanzajet, is already producing 120 million gallons of SAF per year, Andres Villegas, president and CEO of the Georgia Forestry Association, told the study committee.
But much more is needed. Villegas said a supply of 3 billion gallons of SAF will be needed to replace fossil fuels in commercial aircraft by 2030, and 35 billion will be required by 2050.
Another innovative use of wood in its infancy is mass timber construction of either multi-family residential or office buildings made with wood to replace more carbon-intensive materials like concrete and steel. The first commercial building in Georgia constructed with mass timber is at Atlanta’s Ponce City Market, made from southern yellow pine timber grown in rural Georgia.
“These types of projects allow us to connect urban and rural,” Villegas said.
Researchers also are exploring ways to convert southern pine into anodes for electric-vehicle batteries, important components of battery cells. The state has invested $3 million into that research, said Tim Lowrimore, executive director of the Georgia Forestry Commission, a state agency that works to protect and conserve the state’s forest resources.
The study committee will consider how the state could help foster innovative uses for wood products over the course of several meetings this summer and fall.
The General Assembly has become more reluctant in recent years to approve tax credits aimed at supporting various industries because of the loss in tax revenue. But tax credits offer an opportunity to open up innovative markets that would support new forestry jobs, said Sen. Russ Goodman, R-Cogdell, a member of the study committee and chairman of the Senate Agriculture and Consumer Affairs Committee.
“We’re growing 50% more trees than we’re utilizing,” Goodman said. “We’ve got to create markets.”
Lowrimore said the state could be doing more to promote mass timber construction by embracing the technology for construction of public buildings.
“Why isn’t every public facility at least evaluating (mass timber)?” added Larry Spillers, chairman of the Georgia Forestry Commission’s board of directors, a tree farmer who owns 2,000 acres primarily in Crawford County.
Spillers said state policy makers shouldn’t forget about existing industries operating in the forestry space in the rush to foster innovative uses of Georgia’s wood. For example, pulp mills can be retrofitted to produce sustainable aviation fuel, he said.
“We can support our existing businesses,” Lowrimore told study committee members. “But we also have the capacity to do more. … To get where we want to be, you as state leaders have to be committed to make it happen.”
The committee is due to report its findings to the full Senate by Dec. 1.
by Dave Williams | Aug 16, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr has hired a former Cobb County assistant district attorney to head the first statewide Organized Retail Crime Unit.
Timothy Ruffini will oversee a team of prosecutors and investigators targeting criminal networks engaged in recurring thefts and acts of violence against Georgia businesses.
“Tim is a talented prosecutor whose knowledge and experience will prove essential as we work to combat organized retail crime throughout our state,” Carr said Friday.
“With our new statewide Organized Retail Crime Unit, we will continue to serve as a force multiplier by working with all levels of law enforcement to dismantle these increasingly violent and brazen networks once and for all.”
The new unit will be housed in the attorney general’s Prosecution Division, which also includes units aimed at gangs, human trafficking, and white collar and cyber crime.
Georgia businesses lose more than $3 billion a year to retail theft. A national study released in 2021 showed that nearly 76% of retailers reported physical assault against an employee as a result of organized retail crime, while 41% reported attacks involving a weapon.
In Cobb County, Ruffini was assigned to the Marietta, Cobb, and Smyrna Organized Crime Task Force Narcotics Unit. Before that, he served as an assistant district attorney in Chatham County.
The fiscal 2025 state budget includes $1.4 million to launch the new retail crime unit.
by Dave Williams | Aug 16, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Private contractors working for government agencies are subject to Georgia’s Open Records Act, the state Supreme Court ruled this week.
The high court’s unanimous decision overturned a lower court’s dismissal last August of an open records lawsuit filed against a Georgia Tech professor for failing to respond to an open-records request for information concerning his service to the university as a private contractor.
The professor had argued that the legal obligation to produce public records lies solely with a public agency, not with an individual employee or private contractor.
The Georgia First Amendment Foundation filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the court to overturn rulings of both the Georgia Court of Appeals and, before that, a Fulton County trial court.
“The Georgia Supreme Court is a welcome confirmation of Georgia’s commitment to open access to public records,” said Sarah Brewerton-Palmer, vice president of the foundation’s board of directors.
“Government contractors are often the only ones who have copies of the records they create during their work. Forcing the public to go through a government agency to get those records would in many cases mean that the records are never actually provided.”
The Georgia Supreme Court sent the case back to the trial court for further proceedings.
by Dave Williams | Aug 16, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp has extended the state of emergency in parts of Georgia in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Debby until Tuesday, Aug. 20.
The lingering effects of last week’s storm were still being felt Friday in southeastern Georgia in the form of floodwaters after Debby dropped more than 10 inches of rain in already saturated areas. The Ogeechee and Canoochee rivers overflowed their banks.
Several provisions in Kemp’s original emergency declaration have not been extended and were allowed to expire at midnight Thursday. The governor lifted a temporary suspension of federal rules and regulations that allowed commercial truckers to drive unlimited hours and increased weight, height and length restrictions on vehicles involved in relief efforts.
Kemp also rescinded his call for up to 2,000 Georgia National Guard troops to assist in response and recovery efforts. Several hundred troopers participated in the response at the height of the storm.
Debby made landfall Aug. 5 in the Big Bend region of Florida as a Category 1 hurricane, then cut a swath across Georgia and into the Carolinas during the next several days as a tropical storm. It was then downgraded again to a tropical depression as it moved up the East Coast.
