by Dave Williams | Jan 24, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Lt. Gov. Burt Jones announced a new round of legislation Friday aimed at helping small businesses by reducing government regulation.
The Red Tape Rollback Act of 2025 is a follow-up to legislation the General Assembly passed last year. The 2024 bills included three measures easing license requirements for veterinarians, hair stylists and qualified veterans seeking certification as a nurse aide, paramedic, cardiac technician, emergency medical technician, or licensed practical nurse.
Another 2024 bill in Jones’ package eliminated state boards and commissions that are inactive.
Most of the 2024 measures received overwhelming support from minority Democrats as well as the General Assembly’s Republican majorities.
Bills that will be introduced into the state Senate this year, where Jones serves as the presiding officer, would require all state agencies to complete a thorough review of all agency rules and regulations every four years, require agencies to consider the economic impact of all proposed rules, and allow legislators to request an economic impact analysis of any legislation affecting small businesses.
“Last year, we made positive changes to combat burdensome and costly regulations on behalf of workers and business owners all over Georgia,” Jones said Friday. “As a business owner, continuing our efforts to promote deregulation and free our businesses from harmful government red tape will continue to be a priority.”
Hunter Loggins, state director for the National Federation of Independent Business, said his organization will push for passage of Jones’ 2025 package.
“Main Street businesses are under tremendous economic pressure right now,” Loggins said. “Inflation continues to drive up the cost of doing business, and employers are still struggling to fill vacant positions. The Red Tape Rollback Act of 2025 would bring even more common-sense reforms to state government and make it easier for our members to own, operate, and grow their businesses.”
by Dave Williams | Jan 24, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The Georgia Board of Education has adopted a requirement aimed at ensuring cooperation between local school systems and public safety experts in the design of school safety policies and infrastructure.
Under an amended rule the state board approved, local boards of education must consult with their municipal or county law enforcement officials, or with emergency management agencies when designing new facilities to house public school students.
“The safety of our students is our highest priority,” State School Superintendent Richard Woods said Friday. “By setting the expectation that all local school systems collaborate with law enforcement and emergency management professionals, we are taking an essential step toward ensuring that our schools are designed with safety in mind from the ground up.”
The amended rule is expected to allow local school systems to incorporate such security measures as secure entry points, effective surveillance systems, and safe school evacuation routes.
Gov. Brian Kemp is asking the General Assembly to provide an additional $50 million in state grants to improve security in Georgia schools. The added funding would bring the total for the current fiscal year to $158 million.
School security has taken on a greater sense of urgency in Georgia since last September’s mass shooting at Apalachee High School near Winder killed two students and two teachers. A 14-year-old student at the school, Colt Gray, was arrested at the scene and charged in the murders.
by Dave Williams | Jan 23, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A deer shot by a hunter in South Georgia has tested positive for Chronic-Wasting Disease (CWD), the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) reported Thursday.
The two-and-a-half-year-old male white-tailed deer, shot on private property in Lanier County, is the first case of CWD detected in Georgia.
Chronic-Wasting Disease is a fatal neurological disease that occurs in deer, elk, and moose caused by infectious proteins called prions. While there are no current treatments or preventative vaccines, there has been no known transmission of the disease to humans.
“I want to assure our hunters that deer hunting will continue to thrive in Georgia, despite this current discovery,” DNR Commissioner Walter Rabon said Thursday. “Working together with our hunters and all Georgians, we will manage CWD and maintain healthy deer herds.”
The DNR has put a response plan into effect establishing a CWD Management Area, which includes Lanier County as well as Berrien County, which is within a 5-mile radius of where the diseased deer was found.
The agency also is working to determine how far the disease has spread and what percentage of deer in the area have CWD. That is being accomplished by working with landowners through “cluster sampling” in the immediate area.
While CWD doesn’t appear to be a threat to humans, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that hunters harvesting a deer, elk, or moose from an area where the disease is known to be present have their animal tested for CWD before consuming the meat.
by Dave Williams | Jan 23, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia energy regulators voted Thursday to put some guardrails around the proliferation of power-hungry data centers cropping up across the state.
The state Public Service Commission (PSC) unanimously approved a rule that allows new large-load Georgia Power customers using more than 100 megawatts of electricity to be billed based on the risks associated with their projects.
Data centers would pay the transmission and distribution costs incurred as construction of data centers progresses.
Also, any new Georgia Power contracts with such large-load customers must be submitted to the PSC for review.
Consumer advocates have complained that the rapid growth of data centers in Georgia is driving up electric rates paid by residential and small business customers.
“The amount of energy these new industries consume is staggering,” PSC Chairman Jason Shaw said Thursday. “By approving this new rule, the PSC is helping ensure that existing Georgia Power customers will be spared additional costs associated with adding these large-load customers to the grid.”
“We want to keep Georgia the best place to do business, but data centers will need to bear the cost of their electricity acquisition,” commission Vice Chairman Tim Echols added.
Commissioner Lauren “Bubba” McDonald said data center power usage will be among the issues addressed when Georgia Power files a new Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) later this month. IRPs, typically updated every three years, outline the mix of energy sources the Atlanta-based utility intends to rely on for power generation during the next two decades.
by Dave Williams | Jan 23, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A lawyer for the state of Georgia Thursday defended congressional and legislative maps the Republican-controlled General Assembly drew in 2023 in a lawsuit charging the new districts violate the Voting Rights Act.
Georgians have elected Republican majorities in the state legislature and Georgia’s congressional delegation based on party affiliation rather than race, Georgia Solicitor General Stephen Petrany argued before the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. GOP candidates have been winning their elections whether they are Black or white, Petrany said.
“That’s just partisan politics,” he said. “(The plaintiffs) have to show the majority is voting differently somehow connected to race.”
Five Georgia voters are appealing a ruling by U.S. District Judge Steve Jones in December 2023 that upheld new legislative and congressional maps Georgia lawmakers had drawn during a special session a few weeks earlier.
The special session was called following a decision Jones handed down in October 2023 ordering the General Assembly in October 2023 to redraw congressional and legislative district lines after voting rights and civil rights groups filed lawsuits claiming the maps violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
While the maps created a new Black-majority district in western portions of metro Atlanta and some new Black-majority districts in the Georgia House and Senate, lawyers for the plaintiffs argued Thursday that the maps didn’t go far enough.
“Racial polarization is leading to dilution of minority voting strength,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project. “There is less opportunity for minority voters.”
Petrany pointed to the two election victories by U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., in 2021 and 2022 as evidence that Black candidates can win statewide in Georgia.
But Abha Khanna, another lawyer for the plaintiffs, said Warnock’s statewide victories were an anomaly and that few Blacks have won statewide elections in Georgia. She noted that of the five Black members of the state’s congressional delegation, four represent Black-majority districts.
“Secretary (of State Brad Raffensperger) says Black voters have done enough winning in Georgia,” she said. “That’s wrong.”
