by Dave Williams | Feb 18, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Legislation that would create a statewide music office to promote the industry in Georgia cleared a state House committee Tuesday.
The House Creative Arts & Entertainment Committee approved House Bill 353, which would establish the Georgia Music Office within the state Department of Community Affairs. The measure also would create a Music Ready Communities program to help local governments develop strategies for promoting music as an economic development tool.
The statewide music office would serve as a hub for coordinating efforts to build on Georgia’s rich musical history, Rep. Devan Seabaugh, R-Marietta, told members of the committee before Tuesday’s vote.
“While our talent is undeniable, the infrastructure to support, grow, and brand our music industry is missing a key piece,” he said. “We have an opportunity to cement Georgia’s status as a music powerhouse.”
The committee approved similar legislation two years ago, based on the work of a joint House-Senate study committee that held several hearings in 2022. But the bill never made it to the House floor for a vote.
Another effort in 2023 to renew a music industry tax credit aimed at luring music producers to Georgia also fizzled, and the credit expired at the end of that year.
House Bill 353 is modeled after a statewide music office created by lawmakers in Texas.
“We’ve seen it work in places like Austin, Texas, and Asheville, N.C.,” Seabaugh said. “Georgia has just as much musical heritage and potential if not more. (But) we lack a central office to advocate for, promote, and protect our musicians, venues, and industry professionals.”
Brian Hudson, a lobbyist representing Georgia Music Partners, the state’s leading music industry advocacy organization, said a statewide music office would work to attract studios, production facilities, and performance venues that could keep Georgia graduates with music degrees from moving to Nashville or other music hubs to pursue their careers.
“We have so many great artists from Georgia, but they leave,” he said. “We could potentially keep these students in Georgia.”
Seabaugh said the music office could be launched with about $2.5 million in state funds, including the salary of a director who would head the office.
The bill heads next to the House Rules Committee to schedule a floor vote.
by Dave Williams | Feb 17, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Albany-based Phoebe Putney Health System and Atlanta’s Morehouse School of Medicine agreed Monday to enter a partnership aimed at improving health-care access in an area suffering from a shortage of medical providers.
Southwest Georgia’s largest and most comprehensive health system and the historically Black medical school signed a memorandum of understanding to participate in multiple education, research, and community benefit initiatives.
The agreement will establish a regional Morehouse School of Medicine campus at the main Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital and provide clinical training to Morehouse students and residents at hospitals and clinics throughout the Phoebe system.
“Morehouse School of Medicine is committed to increasing and diversifying the health-care workforce, especially in historically underserved rural and urban communities throughout Georgia, the nation, and the world,” said Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, president and CEO of the Morehouse medical school. “That includes creating opportunities for young physicians to receive exceptional training in communities where they can have the most meaningful impact.”
“There is a nationwide shortage of physicians that is particularly acute in small urban and rural areas like Southwest Georgia,” added Scott Steiner, the Phoebe Putney system’s president and CEO. “We must be better at growing our own by providing more opportunities for physicians with a connection to Georgia to train in our part of the state.”
Phoebe and Morehouse already have built a strong relationship. For years, Morehouse medical students have completed elective rotations at Phoebe.
The two institutions have also worked together in programs providing free prostate cancer screenings and pairing Phoebe nurses with first-time mothers before and after delivery.
Phoebe and Morehouse will establish an executive committee to oversee the partnership and a steering committee that will meet monthly to track progress toward shared goals.
by Dave Williams | Feb 17, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia cities, counties and school districts are scrambling to meet a March 1 deadline for deciding whether to opt out of offering a property tax break the state’s voters approved last fall in a constitutional amendment.
But legislation pending in the Georgia House of Representatives would extend that deadline by four years.
The constitutional amendment, which Georgians ratified with 63% of the vote, prohibits local governments from raising residential property assessments in a given year by more than the annual rate of inflation, even if a home’s market value has gone up more.
Last year’s legislation gave cities, counties and school districts until March 1 to opt out of the measure. To do so, they must file an opt-out resolution with the Georgia secretary of state’s office and hold at least three public hearings.
House Bill 92, which cleared the House Ways and Means Committee nearly two weeks ago, would extend that deadline to March 31, 2029.
Those additional four years could slow what has been a rush by local governments – particularly school districts – to opt out of the tax break in order to protect a key revenue source funding their operations, committee Chairman Shaw Blackmon, R-Bonaire, the bill’s chief sponsor, told committee members before the Feb. 5 vote advancing the measure.
“Many of the conversations that I have had with local governments have indicated that if there was some sort of test period or trial period … they might be more inclined to try this out,” he said.
But Clint Mueller, executive director of the Association County Commissioners of Georgia, said no trial period is going to sway a local government that has initially opted to offer the tax break to later opt out because to do so would in effect be lifting a cap on homeowners’ tax liability.
“Can you imagine the political fallout of opting out if you’ve already given something?” he said. “That would be political suicide.”
Mueller said local governments’ fears of a looming property tax relief measure depleting their coffers are overblown.
“They can still make up lost revenues through the millage setting process,” he said. “This whole the-sky-is-falling mentality doesn’t wash.”
Rep. Trey Kelley, R-Cedartown, a cosponsor of House Bill 92, called it the most “taxpayer-friendly” legislation he has seen in the last two years.
“I don’t understand how any elected official in the state of Georgia who care about taxpayers could opt out of this legislation,” he said.
The bill now heads to the House Rules Committee to schedule a floor vote.
by Ty Tagami | Feb 14, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A former Macon area poll worker pleaded guilty in federal court Friday to mailing a bomb threat to a local elections office and admitted lying about it to the FBI.
Nicholas Wimbish, 25, of Milledgeville, pleaded guilty to conveying false information about a bomb threat and making hoaxes, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Georgia. He faces up to five years in prison followed by three years of supervised release plus a fine of up to a quarter million dollars.
Wimbish worked at the Jones County Elections Office in Gray. After a disagreement with a voter in October, he wrote and then mailed a bomb threat to the polling place pretending to be that voter, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said, adding that Wimbish admitted he intended the letter to appear as if it had come from the voter as a threat to himself and his fellow poll workers.
The typewritten letter contained phrases such as “young liberal woke idiot” and “woke liberal fraudsters,” saying the author knew where the poll workers lived and that the men would get a “beatdown” and a “firing squad” in a fight while the women would be subjected to “rage rape,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Wimbish handwrote a note at the bottom that said a “boom toy” was in an early voting place and later admitted that he knew the term was slang for a bomb, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
In addition to his own admissions, investigators found the letter on Wimbish’s computer, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. He pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Marc Treadwell and is scheduled for sentencing on May 13.
by Dave Williams | Feb 14, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A Massachusetts-based electric vehicles supplier has abandoned plans to build a manufacturing facility in Bulloch County.
Aspen Aerogels Inc., which makes thermal barriers that insulate the batteries on electric cars from fires, announced Thursday in an investor call that instead of building a second plant near Statesboro, it will increase production capacity at it East Providence, R.I., plant.
Gov. Brian Kemp announced the Statesboro project back in 2022. At the time, the company was planning to invest $325 million in the plant and create more than 250 jobs. Production had been expected to start late in 2023.
“In early 2023, pre-empting a reset in EV demand expectations, we decided to right-time the construction of our planned second aerogel manufacturing facility in Statesboro, Georgia, and subsequently ramped up our external manufacturing capacity,” Ricardo Rodriguez, Aspen Aerogel’s chief financial officer and treasurer, wrote this week in a news release.
“(However), in this most recent quarter, the external manufacturing model has fully demonstrated its ability to efficiently increase aerogel supply. We are confident that a capital-light and modular capacity plan provides the most efficient path to creating value.”
Demand for electric vehicles hasn’t grown as much in recent years as EV manufacturers expected, resulting from a combination of factors including high sticker prices, an insufficient number of charging stations, and government policies that have discouraged car buyers from purchasing EVs.
The Trump administration recently froze a $5 billion program aimed at funding the construction of EV charging stations.
