ATLANTA — State Rep. Lynn Smith, one of the longest-serving representatives in the Georgia House, plans to retire after 30 years focused on environmental issues.
Smith, R-Newnan, is the chair of the House Natural Resources and Environment Committee, which is responsible for bills dealing with pollution, water safety, and waste.
Smith said she championed legislation that protected water resources, dedicated funding to outdoor areas, and established Chattahoochee Bend State Park in her district.
“I’m incredibly proud of how we’ve worked to improve Georgia’s prosperity and quality of life while also protecting the state’s beauty, history, and environmental legacy,” Smith said in an announcement of her retirement Monday.
Smith was first elected to the Georgia House in 1996, and she plans to complete her term, which ends after November’s elections.
“Chairwoman Smith has established a legislative legacy that will safeguard the environment and natural treasures across our state for future generations to cherish,” said House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington.
ATLANTA — Lt. Gov. Burt Jones can no longer raise millions of dollars for his gubernatorial campaign through a special fundraising committee, a setback in his race for the Republican nomination.
A federal judge ruled Friday in favor of a Republican rival, Rick Jackson, whose lawsuit alleged that Jones gained an unfair advantage through WBJ Leadership Committee, which state law exempts from the same campaign contribution rules that apply to other candidates.
The decision is a blow against Jones’ use of a Georgia fundraising tool called leadership committees that allow a handful of powerful politicians, including the lieutenant governor, to avoid campaign finance limits under a state law passed in 2021.
Unlike Jones’ leadership committee, which can raise unlimited funds, all other candidates for statewide offices this year are only permitted to raise $8,400 per donor for primary and general elections and $4,800 per donor for runoffs.
Jackson, a billionaire health care executive whose surprise candidacy shook up the race this month, praised U.S. District Judge Thomas Thrash’s order granting a temporary restraining order.
“A federal court today made clear that Burt Jones doesn’t get his own rulebook,” said Dave Abrams, a spokesman for Jackson’s campaign.
The court ruling granted Jackson’s request to stop WBJ Leadership Committee from raising or spending money for Jones’ campaign, and to cancel campaign ads purchased since Feb. 10.
WBJ Leadership Committee, which is led by Jones, had a $15.9 million balance as of Jan. 31, according to a campaign finance filing. Jones’ regular campaign committee had $3.3 million on hand.
Leadership committees have been stopped by courts in the past. Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican David Perdue won similar lawsuits against Gov. Brian Kemp in 2022.
“We’re not surprised Rick Jackson is taking a page from Stacey Abrams’ playbook, using lawfare to target President Trump’s endorsed candidate for governor. Georgia Republicans have already rejected that strategy — and they’ll reject it again,” said Kayla Lott, a spokeswoman for Jones’ campaign.
Attorney General Chris Carr, another Republican contender for governor, had previously lost a court challenge to Georgia’s leadership committees based on different legal arguments.
“This is a significant shift in the landscape of this race,” said Carr’s campaign. “That leadership committee has been the primary vehicle holding and deploying Burt Jones’ financial resources. With it now shut down, his campaign has lost its primary source of spending power.”
Jackson, Carr, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger aren’t allowed to have leadership committees in their campaigns for governor. Under Georgia’s leadership committee law, they’re only permitted for the governor, lieutenant governor, Democratic and Republican nominees for those offices, and legislative leaders of each party.
Raffensperger’s campaign had a nearly $5.4 million balance as of Jan. 31, and Carr’s campaign had almost $3.2 million, according to their campaign finance disclosures. Jackson hasn’t yet reported contributions since he launched his campaign earlier this month.
The judge hasn’t ruled on what will happen to the money held by Jones’ leadership committee. Jackson’s lawsuit said contributions should be refunded to Jones’ donors.
ATLANTA — Taxpayers, rural drivers and the mentally ill were among the winners in the mid-year budget adopted by the Georgia Senate on Friday.
Financially distressed college students and metro Atlanta drivers were not exactly the losers, but they would get less than initially proposed in the Senate’s version of the $42.3 billion amended budget for the fiscal year through June.
The state House started the budget based on a blueprint from Gov. Brian Kemp. On Friday, it was the Senate’s turn to make some edits.
Both the House and Senate kept Kemp’s $1.2 billion rebate to taxpayers that would break down to $250 per single filer, $375 for heads of household and $500 for couples filing jointly.
But the House added more gravy with an $850 million property tax grant for homeowners, and the Senate liked that line item.
Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, discusses House Bill 973 on the Senate Floor at the Georgia Capitol on Friday, Feb. 20. This legislation is the amended fiscal year 2026 state budget (Ashtin Barker/Capitol Beat)
Several senators are running for higher office, and voters tend to appreciate tax breaks, especially in an election year when affordability is key.
The property tax rebate would work out to about $500 per homeowner in urban areas and $300 in rural areas, said Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia.
“We are laser focused on affordability,” said Tillery, who is running for lieutenant governor and, as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, helped craft the Senate’s budget.
What the Senate gives, the Senate can take away. Under its proposal, state employees would get a smaller bonus than Kemp wanted. He had put a $2,000 one-time pay supplement in the budget at a cost of over $600 million, but the Senate saved a couple hundred million by knocking the payment down to $1,250.
The Senate also kneecapped a new program for college students that Kemp had touted. Georgia is still on a path to give taxpayer dollars to a need-based scholarship fund called Georgia DREAMS.
But instead of the $325 million endowment allotted by Kemp, the Senate kept only $100 million.
The Senate also slashed Kemp’s idea for a $50 million grant to communities to address homelessness, trimming it to $10 million.
Senators needed the money for other priorities. They shifted $15 million to the Department of Veterans Service and put a whopping $409 million toward construction of a regional hospital for the mentally ill who often wind up housed in local jails by default.
The House had introduced money into the budget for the same project, but it was only $27 million to get it started.
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Republican running for governor, said all could agree that mental health services in Georgia were lacking.
“This is not a partisan issue,” he said. Judging by the 49-1 vote to pass the budget, or House Bill 973, he was right.
The Senate made several changes Kemp might appreciate. The governor had proposed $88 million for an aerospace building at Georgia Tech, but the House had pared that back to $15 million. The Senate’s budget restored the funding.
But there were some bumps in the road.
The Senate cut nearly $100 million from Kemp’s $2 billion in improvements to I-75 south of Atlanta and to state Route 316, from Gwinnett County to Athens.
Yet the Senate added back $15 million that the House had trimmed from Kemp’s $100 million to fix rural bridges, some dating to the 1940s, according to Tillery.
Senators also added $30 million for rural infrastructure projects, and they expanded the $35 million improvement program for natural gas infrastructure that had been pitched by Kemp and endorsed by the House.
In the Senate’s budget there is now $55 million to deliver methane to customers as a means of spurring economic development.
“There are areas across our state where gas capacity is so weak that we can’t even put another Burger King on the line,” Tillery said.
The House said later Friday that it did not like the Senate’s changes. So, the budget will now go to a conference committee where a handful of lawmakers will negotiate the finer details.
After they pass the mid-year amendments, they will look to the full budget for the fiscal year that starts in July.
ATLANTA — A fixture in the leadership of Georgia’s House of Representatives will step down when her term ends this year, declining to run for re-election after nearly a quarter century in office.
Rep. Jan Jones, R-Milton was first elected to the House in 2002. In 2010, her fellow representatives voted to make her the speaker pro-tempore then re-elected her to that post every term after. It made her second in command and the most powerful woman in a legislative body that has 180 members when all seats are occupied.
House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, said he and his wife count Jones as a friend, and he described her as an accomplished leader.
“Jan’s 16-year tenure in House leadership reflects the abiding faith and admiration her colleagues have for her,” Burns said in a statement Thursday. “She will close her career in the General Assembly with a long record of accomplishments but also a long list of great friends, including me and Dayle.”
Jones served as speaker pro tem under both Burns and former Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, who died in 2022. She served briefly as speaker after his death, until the House selected Burns for that role in 2023.
Jones developed a reputation as a detail-oriented tactician who could get key bills passed into law. She said in a statement that she will miss her colleagues and the work, adding that she was “incredibly proud” of educational policies enacted during her tenure.
Under Gov. Brian Kemp, the General Assembly restored recessionary cutbacks to public school funding and raised teacher pay. Jones also led on expanded access to pre-kindergarten, bolstering charter schools and putting more tax dollars into private school education.
Jones shepherded Senate Bill 233, The Georgia Promise Scholarship Act, through the House in 2024. It established $6,500 a year in direct state funding for each K-12 student who switches from a low-performing public school to a private school or home school.
The measure established what is commonly known as a voucher program. It faced concerted opposition from public school advocates who were concerned about the shift of state funding from public to private education.
It was so controversial that it failed on the House floor in 2023, when some Republicans allied with the vast majority of Democrats who opposed it. But Jones rallied and got the measured passed in a close vote the next year.
Jones was known as an advocate for “parent choice” in education, a position that she said had been good for the economy and would inform her legacy.
“Conservative leadership has given Georgia the best business climate in the country,” she said, “and these investments in our workforce will keep us at the top for years to come.”
ATLANTA — A Republican activist and former employee of a family-run financial firm accused of bilking mostly conservative investors out of millions of dollars could face criminal prosecution after the Georgia Secretary of State’s office referred his case to a local prosecutor Wednesday.
Edwin Brant Frost V, former chairman of the Coweta County Republican Party, was also fined $500,000 by the state agency in connection with his alleged actions at First Liberty Building & Loan.
Frost is the son of the firm’s founder, Edwin Brant Frost IV.
“First Liberty misappropriated investors’ funds by failing to use investor funds as it represented to investors,” said the order issued by an assistant commissioner for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
The agency referred its investigative file for potential prosecution to the Coweta County district attorney and sent it to the Georgia Office of the Commissioner of Insurance and Safety Fire, where Frost V holds an insurance agent license, according to the order.
Frost V’s lawyer, Christopher J. Huber, said his client denies the allegations.
“The Secretary of State did not provide him an opportunity to address his baseless accusations before rushing to judgment and to the press,” Huber said by email.
The Coweta district attorney’s office had no immediate comment. The insurance commissioner’s office did not immediately respond to queries about the case.
Frost V is accused of interacting with investors without the required registrations as a broker dealer agent and as an investment adviser representative. The secretary of state’s order also said he failed to disclose risk to investors and made unsuitable recommendations while personally profiting by investing in loan agreements that he then solicited to investors.
The order said he received $47,000 in bonuses and $88,000 in commissions and was receiving $4,000 a month from First Liberty by November 2023.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused First Liberty of operating a Ponzi scheme with investor funds, saying in a lawsuit last year that the company and Frost IV had raised at least $140 million from about 300 investors, funneling at least $5 million to the family and more than $570,000 to political contributions.
Raffensperger, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor, last year called on recipients to return campaign contributions from First Liberty and the Frost family.
