ATLANTA – The state is launching an in-depth assessment of Georgia’s prison system to identify steps needed to improve safety, Gov. Brian Kemp announced late Monday.
The governor’s announcement came one day after a food-service employee was shot and killed at Smith State Prison in Glennville. An investigation discovered that a personal relationship existed between the Aramark worker and inmate Jaydrekus Hart, and a suicide note was found that appeared to have been left by Hart, according to a statement issued by the state Department of Corrections.
More than 3,500 assaults between inmates occurred in state prisons between 2021 and last year, according to state prison data, while 98 inmates were killed during that time.
“Keeping Georgians safe continues to be my top priority,” Kemp said Monday. “By ensuring our correctional facilities have the funding, technology, infrastructure, and operations to fulfill their mission, this comprehensive assessment is the next step in achieving a safer, stronger Georgia for all who call the Peach State home.”
The corrections department will partner with Chicago-based Guidehouse Inc., a consulting firm with expertise in conducting assessments of prison system in all 50 states, to conduct the assessment of Georgia prisons.
During the next year, Guidehouse will visit multiple state prisons while working with corrections personnel to develop an assessment using evidence-based research. The company then will develop and begin to implement actionable recommendations.
“When Governor Kemp appointed me, he gave me the clear mandate to keep Georgians safe by improving our corrections system,” Commissioner of Corrections Tyrone Oliver said. “We’ve done just that by improving retention levels, removing approximately $7 million worth of contraband from our prisons, shutting down the largest contraband trafficking ring in the country, and more.
“But we know we have a lot more room to grow, which is why I’m thankful Guidehouse will provide a thorough review of our facilities and policies that will guide the next phase of … improvements.”
ATLANTA – Mail processing at the United States Postal Service’s (USPS) regional facility in Palmetto is getting better, but Georgians are continuing to suffer delays sending and receiving mail.
That was the upshot of an exchange Monday between Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga.
In response to an update Ossoff requested last week, DeJoy reported that 64.5% of first-class mail between May 18 and May 24 was delivered on time, up from a mid-March low of just 35.8%. In addition, 82.9% of first-class mail during that period was delivered within one day of on time, DeJoy wrote in a letter to Ossoff.
“Our 640,000 postal workers deserve the infrastructure to help them deliver mail six and seven days a week,” DeJoy wrote. “However, as a result of over a decade-long consequence of terrible congressional legislation and the resulting regulation, our infrastructure and work environment in the Atlanta area has deteriorated to an embarrassing and unworkable condition.”
Ossoff first raised the issue of delays in mail processing at the Palmetto center during a Senate committee hearing in mid-April.
DeJoy told the committee the delays were the result of problems encountered during the rollout last winter of a restructuring plan aimed at making the postal service economically self-sufficient. The plan was first implemented at the processing center in Palmetto and at a second center in Richmond, Va.
The postmaster general has responded by pausing the restructuring plan nationwide until at least the beginning of next year, adding more than 100 personnel from other centers to the Palmetto facility, and revising transportation schedules between Palmetto and other local mail processing centers.
“For months, I have sustained relentless pressure on USPS management to fully resolve disastrous performance failures impacting my constituents in Georgia,” Ossoff said Monday. “I’m still hearing from Georgia families and businesses about the difficulty they continue to face sending and receiving their mail. I will not rest until my constituents are well and fully served by the U.S. Postal Service.”
In his letter to Ossoff, DeJoy announced that as of May 31, 85.4% of packages – rather than mail – were being delivered on time, while 95.4% of packages were being delivered within one day of on time. Those numbers include prescriptions as well as business supplies and products, he wrote.
DeJoy also noted that the May 21 primaries took place without reported delays of mail-in ballots.
Vice President Kamala Harris (Photo Courtesy of The White House)
ATLANTA – The Biden administration has taken important steps to help Black Americans achieve home ownership and start small businesses, Vice President Kamala Harris said Friday.
But more needs to be done to make them aware of those opportunities, Harris said during a forum at the 38th annual conference of the mentoring organization 100 Black Men of America in Atlanta.
“This is a room full of people who can help get the word out on what is available,” she said.
Harris’ stop in Atlanta was the fifth in her nationwide Economic Opportunity Tour touting the Biden administration’s work to create jobs, make housing more affordable, and erase student loans and medical debt.
She and Biden have been actively courting Black voters, a demographic Democrats often have taken for granted, at a time the president’s polling numbers are slipping particularly among Black men and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is aggressively seeking Black support. In a case in point, Biden served as the keynote speaker during last month’s graduation ceremonies at Morehouse College.
Harris said Black Americans have a lot to overcome if they are to gain equal access to business opportunities enjoyed by whites. She said only 2% of venture capital investment goes to Black-owned businesses, while Blacks are three times less likely to apply for loans from the U.S. Small Business Administration, which she attributed to their fear of being disappointed when they’re rejected.
Harris said the solution likes in stepping up federal investment in community banks. She pointed to $12 billion Congress appropriated to community banks for small business startup loans while she was a member of the U.S. Senate.
“Putting the money into community banks is about putting it into a place where people can walk in with a sense of dignity that is respected and actually be able to have access to capital,” she said.
On the housing front, Harris said the difficulty Black Americans encounter obtaining loans to finance down payments goes back to the post-World War II era, when Black men returning from overseas were discriminated against when they tried to take out housing loans through the GI Bill.
She said the Biden administration is proposing a plan to give Americans who are the first in their family to seek homeownership a $25,000 credit for a down payment and $400 per month to help with mortgage payments.
“Homeownership is probably one of the most effective, efficient, and fastest ways to grow inter-generational wealth,” she said.
Harris also touted the administration’s recent order providing nearly $160 billion in loan forgiveness to nearly 4.6 million student borrowers. The offer will go not only to students who have obtained degrees but to those who haven’t graduated but still owe on their loans, she said.
To help Americans saddled with expensive medical bills, Harris said the Biden administration has proposed a new rule that would eliminate medical debt from Americans’ credit scores.
Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political advocacy group, released a statement Friday criticizing Harris’ appearance in Atlanta as a “campaign tour highlighting the supposed successes of ‘Bidenomics.’ “
“Despite multiple visits from administration and campaign officials, we have one message for Vice President Harris: the Biden-Harris administration’s reckless spending and ham-fisted regulations are directly responsible for the economic hardships facing Georgians,” said Tony West, the group’s Georgia state director. “We will continue to advocate for sensible policy solutions that foster economic opportunity and growth.”
ATLANTA – Georgia is the largest state east of the Mississippi River, with eight million acres of prime farmland.
Yet, there’s so much concern over the spread of solar farms eating up huge portions of that acreage with vast fields of solar panels that the state Senate has formed a study committee to explore what can be done to save the most fertile land for farmers.
“We’ve lost a little over two and a half million acres of farmland in the last 40 years,” said Sen. Billy Hickman, R-Statesboro, who will chair the Senate Study Committee on the Preservation of Georgia’s Farmlands. “We’ve got to make sure to protect our farmland.”
Other factors are playing a role in the rapid shrinkage of farmland in Georgia, including the construction of housing subdivisions to accommodate population growth, warehouse-distribution centers and – most recently – data centers.
But solar projects also have cropped up across the state during the last decade, including some rooftop installations on individual homes and businesses but mostly the larger “utility-scale” deployments of fields of solar panels known as solar farms.
The industry operates on two models. Farmers lease their land to solar companies, which build and operate the solar farms for a set period of time. In other cases, a solar company owns the land and sells the power to utilities.
For example, Nashville, Tenn.-based Silicon Ranch sells the electricity generated at the solar farm sites it owns and operates to Green Power EMC, the renewable energy supplier for 38 of Georgia’s electric membership cooperatives. Green Power EMC has more than 40 community and utility-scale solar projects spread across about 10,000 acres.
As of last year, Georgia ranked seventh in the nation in total installed solar capacity, producing 5,936 megawatts, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. One megawatt of electricity is enough to power 750 homes. The 250 solar companies currently operating in Georgia have invested $6.5 billion and created 5,382 jobs.
Solar companies have found willing partners in Georgia farmers because they offer security in an agricultural industry plagued by uncertainty, said Jeff Clark, president of Advanced Power Alliance, a clean-energy industry trade association active in Georgia and 10 other states.
“(Farmers) are getting killed by big corporate farms and overregulation … commodity prices, and fluctuations in the weather,” he said. “For them, it’s an opportunity to diversify and have a steady source of income. … That’s why I think it’s really taking off.”
“For the farmers, it’s a hard opportunity to turn down because the financial opportunities are so great it may allow them to continue to farm other parts of their properties,” added Will Bentley, president of the Georgia Agribusiness Council.
The downside to the spread of solar farms is the huge amount of farmland they take up.
“Southwest Georgia is largely prime farmland,” said Bryan Tolar, who preceded Bentley at the agribusiness council and now runs his own government affairs firm. “Are we going to take away prime farmland?”
Bentley said his chief concern over solar farms is what happens to the land solar farms occupy when the leases farmers enter into with solar companies expire, typically after 20 years.
“Is the land returned to production or left a mess?” he asked.
The General Assembly sought to address that issue this year by passing legislation requiring solar companies that lease property for solar farms to restore the land to its natural state after the lease expires.
Restoration activities include removing the foundations of solar arrays from the ground to a depth of at lease three feet, filling holes that have been dug to accommodate solar panels, and removing cables and overhead power and communications lines.
House Bill 300, which takes effect July 1, also requires the companies to provide financial assurance at least equal to the estimated cost of removing solar arrays and returning the property to its natural state.
“At the end of a solar project’s life, that family gets the land back, and the project is removed,” Clark said.
The Senate study committee will hold its first meeting next month in Statesboro, with subsequent meetings to take place in Cornelia and two locations in Southwest Georgia yet to be chosen. The panel is due to make recommendations to the full Senate by Dec. 1.
“We won’t have all the answers, but hopefully we’ll learn a lot more,” Hickman said. “It’s probably going to be more about raising an awareness of the need to preserve farmland.”
ATLANTA – Georgia tax collections continued to fall last month, dropping 1.1% compared to May of last year, the state Department of Revenue reported Friday.
With just one month remaining in the current fiscal year, tax revenues are down by 1.2% compared to the first 11 months of fiscal 2023. However, that doesn’t account for the fact the state wasn’t collecting sales taxes on gasoline and other motor fuels during the first half of the last fiscal year.
As a result, the 11 months that ended May 31 saw a net decrease in tax revenues of 4.3% from fiscal 2023.
Individual income tax receipts for May were down 3.3% compared to the same month last year, driven largely by a 32.9% decline in individual tax return payments.
Net sales tax collections rose slightly last month, increasing by 0.4% compared to May a year ago.
Corporate incomes taxes fell by 35.1% percent in May due to the combination of a 23.1% decline in payments and a huge increase of 497.5% in refunds issued by the revenue agency.
With the state likely to show tax revenues down at the end of fiscal 2024 June 30, Gov. Brian Kemp has been warning of leaner times ahead. However, the $16 billion budget surplus the state has built up during the last three years should provide ample cushion to avoid major spending cuts.
