by Ty Tagami | Jul 17, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Judge Benjamin A. Land will step up from Georgia Court of Appeals to fill a state Supreme Court vacancy that opened in March with the resignation of Chief Justice Michael P. Boggs.
Gov. Brian Kemp said Thursday he decided to appoint Land to the high court because of his commitment to fairness and impartiality, his work ethic, his integrity and his background.
“His extensive experience as a former litigator and judge will make him a valuable addition to the Supreme Court as he continues his service to the people of our state,” Kemp said.
Kemp had already appointed Land once, to the Appeals Court in 2022. Land then won a six-year term during statewide elections in 2024. Then-Gov. Nathan Deal launched Land’s judicial career with an appointment to the Superior Court for the Chattahoochee Circuit in 2018.
Before that, Land focused on civil litigation as an attorney for a quarter century, playing key roles in nationwide class action lawsuits.
He served as president of the Chattahoochee and Columbus Bar associations and volunteered on boards of community organizations, including the Columbus Area Habitat for Humanity and the Pine Mountain Trail Association.
Land earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Georgia and clerked for the state Supreme Court.
Chief Justice Nels S.D. Peterson welcomed Land to the high court.
“His background and experience, including years as a state appellate judge, trial court judge, and litigator, position him well to serve on the state’s highest court,” Peterson said.
by Ty Tagami | Jul 17, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — The proposed Ocmulgee National Park just grew by 136 acres thanks to a land donation by the Georgia Department of Transportation.
The agency recently inked a deal to transfer the land along Interstate 16 southeast of Macon, Eric Duff, the agency’s environmental administrator, told the State Transportation Board Wednesday.
The property is mostly a thriving wetlands area. The DOT acquired the Bibb County property in 1998 as wetlands mitigation for a freeway in nearby Twiggs County.
“It’s a continuation of the work that we do every day to improve the relationships with our tribal partners, with the National Park Service,” Duff said.
The handoff is the latest sign of progress in a bipartisan effort to promote the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park into a national park and preserve.
It would be a simple name change with major implications for tourism and development.
While the United States has 63 national parks, the vast majority are out West. Georgia has none, but four neighbors — South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Florida — either share one or have one of their own.
Ocmulgee is among 370 lesser properties overseen by the National Park Service. It draws around 160,000 a year, but national park status could increase that nearly tenfold to almost 1.4 million annual visitors within a decade, advocates say. Studies indicate this would generate thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in annual economic activity.
National park status would also promote recognition of a painful chapter in American history when Native Americans were driven from their ancestral lands in Georgia.
The Ocmulgee Mounds area was continuously inhabited for at least 12,000 years, beginning with the Ice Age, says the National Park Service. During the Mississippian Period, starting in the 900s, native peoples constructed mounds for their elite, landmarks that endure as a central attraction.
The desire to promote Ocmulgee to national park status has been in circulation since at least 1933, when the Macon Historical Society and Junior Chamber of Commerce pitched it. The next year, the local congressman, Democratic Rep. Carl Vinson, introduced legislation for a national park. He wound up with a lesser designation, but the dream for top-tier status lived on.
Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle have been collaborating to make the promotion a reality, with nearly every member of the Georgia delegation on board. And the Muscogee Nation, whose ancestors were forcibly moved to Oklahoma by the U.S. government in 1836, is working on the promotion. The tribe would have a role in guiding the new national park’s management.
Seth Clark, the Macon mayor pro tem and current leader of the grassroots force behind this movement, said he expects the congressional committee process to begin in a couple of months. It was underway last year but got derailed by bigger issues, such as the federal budget. Clark, who is executive director of The Ocmulgee National Park and Preserve Initiative, told the transportation board that he expects the mission to be complete during this Congress, which ends in January 2027.
The current historical park would anchor the national park. Proponents would raise money to buy another 7,100 acres, expanding the attraction to about 10,000 acres. The addition would be a federally managed preserve with fishing and hunting.
The Georgia DOT land donation, inked in April but revealed at Wednesday’s transportation committee meeting, expands the core park. The transaction concludes a process that started more than a dozen years ago.
The National Park Service asked Georgia DOT in 2012 if it was interested in including the land as part of a national park feasibility study. The state agreed. Then, at the start of this decade, the federal government asked for the land. In 2023, the state sent a letter of intent to transfer it.
“This gift is more than acreage,” said Jacob Collins, a Park Service tribal liaison at Thursday’s DOT board meeting. “It represents the preservation of sacred grounds.”
by Dave Williams | Jul 16, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., is calling attention to months-long delays by state and federal agriculture agencies to deliver relief to farm communities devastated by Hurricane Helene last September.
In a letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins and Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture Tyler Harper dated Wednesday, Ossoff asked why a federal block grant agreement still hasn’t been finalized more than nine months after the storm struck and more than six months after Congress appropriated disaster aid.
“Although some funds have been made available at the national level through USDA (the U.S. Department of Agriculture), many of Georgia’s farmers and producers who were most affected by Hurricane Helene are not eligible for this assistance and tell me they are instead counting on a block grant,” Ossoff wrote.
“The failure of USDA and the state of Georgia to conclude the block grant agreement has left many Georgia farmers and producers in limbo.”
Ossoff pressed the federal and state agriculture agencies to provide an update on the timetable for completion of the block grant agreement within one week.
The massive hurricane roared through South Georgia and north through the Augusta area in late September, killing 34 and causing heavy rainfall and widespread flooding as well as extensive power outages.
The General Assembly approved $862 million in disaster relief for victims of the storm during this year’s legislative session.
Harper’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
by Dave Williams | Jul 16, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The “Big Three” bond rating companies again have given Georgia the highest rating of AAA, praising the state’s commitment to fiscal responsibility and record of economic growth and job creation.
“The ‘AAA’ long-term rating reflects our view of Georgia’s demonstrated resilient budgetary performance across credit cycles, coupled with responsible fiscal management that has enabled the state to make timely adjustments to general fund expenditures,” wrote S&P Global Ratings, which gave Georgia its highest credit score along with Moody’s and Fitch Ratings.
“The rating also incorporates our view of the state’s favorable population growth trends, and ability to attract diversified business developments and expansion within Georgia’s already large and diverse economic base, and our expectation that the state’s annual growth rates will match or be slightly above that of the nation.”
Sitting on a bulging budget surplus, Gov. Brian Kemp and Georgia lawmakers for the second year in a row were able to fund building projects with cash rather than general obligation bonds.
“Georgia continues to be a safe and stable bet for job creators,” Kemp said Tuesday. “That’s why we continue to see record investment and economic development, and it’s one of the many reasons we are well-positioned to save Georgia taxpayers millions of dollars with low-interest borrowing rates in the years to come.”
However, storm clouds are looming on the horizon in the form of the federal budget bill the Republican majorities in Congress passed two weeks ago, which slashes spending by about $1.5 trillion to help offset the revenue hit of a $4 trillion tax cut.
With states potentially facing huge losses in federal assistance, Kemp ordered state agencies last week to maintain current levels of spending in both their fiscal 2026 mid-year and fiscal 2027 budget requests.
by Dave Williams | Jul 15, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Clean-energy advocate Peter Hubbard captured the Democratic nomination for a seat on Georgia’s energy-regulating Public Service Commission (PSC) Tuesday.
Hubbard defeated former Atlanta City Councilwoman Keisha Sean Waites with 58.2% of the vote to 41.8% for Waites in Tuesday’s runoff election, according to unofficial results. He will face incumbent Republican Commissioner Fitz Johnson in November in PSC District 3, which covers Fulton, Clayton, and DeKalb counties.
Waites was the top vote-getter in a three-way race in last month’s Democratic primary, with Hubbard coming in second. While neither candidate received the 50%-plus-one vote margin needed to win the primary outright, third-place finisher Robert Jones, a former utility executive, was eliminated.
Hubbard is an advocate for the nonprofit Georgia Center for Energy Solutions. In that role, he has served as an intervenor calling for reducing the use of fossil fuels in the production of electricity, which is expensive, pollutes the air and harms human health.
Waites served three terms in the state House of Representatives before being elected to the Atlanta City Council in 2021. Before entering city and state politics, she spent 15 years working in the federal government, with the Small Business Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The nonprofit group Georgia Conservation Voters congratulated Hubbard Tuesday night on his victory.
“We endorsed Peter because he knows how to bring bills down,” said Connie Di Cicco, the group’s political director. “When we talk to voters about a candidate, they ask two questions: Are they qualified, and will they fight for me? With Peter, the answer to both is yes.”
Gov. Brian Kemp appointed Johnson to the commission in 2021 to fill a vacancy, so this year will mark the first time he has faced Georgia voters.
Both the 2022 and 2024 PSC elections were postponed pending the outcome of a lawsuit that challenged the way commissioners are elected. Voting rights advocates argued that choosing members of the PSC statewide rather than by districts dilutes Black voting strength in violation of the 1965 federal Voting Rights Act.
A federal appeals court ruled against the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, leaving the system of statewide PSC elections intact.
Two seats on the commission will be on the ballot this fall. Besides the District 3 contest, incumbent Republican Commissioner Tim Echols is seeking reelection in District 2 against Democratic challenger Alicia Johnson. District 2 stretches from Atlanta’s eastern and southeastern suburbs to Savannah.
