by Dave Williams | Aug 25, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia’s leading aerospace companies Monday announced the formation of a new statewide organization dedicated to advancing the state’s aerospace and defense industries.
The Georgia Aerospace & Defense Alliance (GADA) – being launched by Gulfstream Aerospace, Lockheed Martin, Rolls-Royce, FlightSafety International, and Pratt & Whitney – will be housed at Mercer University in Macon, with Ember Bishop Bentley as executive director and Jay Neely as its initial board chairman.
Bentley most recently served as chief of staff and vice president for external affairs at Middle Georgia State University in Macon, home to Georgia’s flagship School of Aviation. Neely serves as board chairman for the state Department of Economic Development.
Aerospace is Georgia’s second largest industry, with an annual economic impact of more than $57.5 billion and about 200,000 employees.
“Georgia has long been a national force in aerospace and defense,” Bentley said Monday. “Through GADA, we will bring together industry, education, and government to ensure we remain competitive, innovative, and forward looking in every aspect of this critical sector.”
The new alliance will work to sustain the aerospace and defense industries through coordinated advocacy, workforce development, and industrial collaboration.
by Dave Williams | Feb 3, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – PBS Aerospace, a designer and manufacturer of world-class small turbojet engines, will invest up to $20 million to establish its North American headquarters in Roswell, Gov. Brian Kemp announced Monday.
The new operation, including manufacturing and research and development components, will create at least 95 new jobs in metro Atlanta, growing the company’s presence in the Peach State.
“Aerospace is one of the Georgia’s top industries thanks to innovative companies like PBS Aerospace that call Georgia home,” Kemp said. “By preparing strategic, new ready-for-development sites and supporting workforce development initiatives in high-demand careers, we will keep building on our success and creating opportunities for hardworking Georgians.”
“Atlanta has proven to be an exceptional base for our operations, offering access to an excellent education system, skilled workforce, robust infrastructure, and a thriving business environment,” PBS Group Owner William Didden added. “The positive experiences and success in Atlanta have undoubtedly influenced our choice as they reflect Georgia’s ability to support our continued growth.”
PBS Aerospace’s footprint will include an existing, renovated building and a new facility that will be constructed in Roswell. Hiring is underway for open roles, with projections to meet full operations in April. Interested individuals can learn more and apply at www.pbsaerospace.com/career.
The Georgia Department of Economic Development’s Global Commerce team worked on the project in partnership with the city of Roswell, Select Fulton, Metro Atlanta Chamber, the Georgia Center of Innovation, Georgia Power, and the Technical College System of Georgia’s Quick Start program.
by Dave Williams | Aug 30, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – An energy supply resource generally considered renewable and in plentiful supply in Georgia is running into opposition from environmental groups.
Atlanta-based Georgia Power is seeking approval from the state Public Service Commission (PSC) to buy about 80 megawatts of electricity from three plants in South Georgia that burn wood pellets and other forms of biomass.
Most of that power – 70 megawatts – would come through a 30-year power-purchasing agreement (PPA) with Altamaha Green Energy LLC, which operates a mill in Wayne County. Two other 10-year PPAs with International Paper Co. would yield the rest of the biomass from mills in Port Wentworth and Macon County.
Georgia Power officials are pitching the proposal as a way to create jobs in rural parts of the state and give a forestry industry with an oversupply of trees another market for Georgia timber.
It’s an argument that resonates with members of the PSC, who have historically backed Georgia Power’s efforts to ensure a diverse portfolio of energy supply sources including coal, natural gas, nuclear, and solar.
“Biomass is produced in Georgia. The trees are grown in Georgia and transported by local trucks,” Commissioner Lauren “Bubba” McDonald said Thursday during a hearing on the plan. “I see that as part of the total picture.”
But environmental groups argue burning biomass spews harmful pollution into the atmosphere.
“Burning wood pellets releases more greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy than burning fossil fuels like gas, oil, or even coal, accelerating climate change,” the North Carolina-based organization Dogwood Alliance writes on its website. “We need to use low-carbon technologies like solar and wind to produce energy, not wood pellets or fossil fuels.”
However, Thursday’s hearing focused more on the cost of the three biomass projects than on pollution.
“Customers will be paying for more than three times the value of the energy they will be receiving,” said Aradhana Chandra, a lawyer for the Southern Environmental Law Center, which represents the environmental group Georgia Interfaith Power and Light in the case.
Georgia Power officials who testified Thursday conceded biomass is significantly more expensive than other sources of energy generation in the utility’s arsenal.
“Biomass is not the least expensive resource,” said Jeffrey Grubb, director of resource planning for Georgia Power. “I think everyone knows that.”
But Grubb said finding the least expensive way to generate electricity wasn’t the point of the Request for Proposals the company put out for the biomass projects.
“(The cost) doesn’t take into account the other things the commission will consider in this hearing, which is the economic development and forestry support aspects,” he said.
“It was not a price-driven evaluation,” added Harold Judd, president of New Hampshire-based Accion Group, who conducted an independent evaluation of the projects. “We did not have a price cap.
“There are different considerations here. There’s the cost issue. There’s also the issue of a determination by this commission whether it is a benefit not only to the state but to ratepayers to have diversified generation.”
Chandra also questioned the reliability of biomass. She said Georgia Power had 303 megawatts of biomass in its system when Winter Storm Elliott hit Georgia on Christmas Eve, 2022, setting record-low temperatures in many areas. However, 267 of those megawatts were unavailable, she said.
“Biomass didn’t perform very well during Winter Storm Elliott,” she said.
Chandra dismissed arguments that the storm was particularly ill-timed for utilities to respond, striking on a holiday weekend.
The PSC’s Public Interest Advocacy Staff has recommended that the commission certify the three biomass projects based both on the economic benefits they would bring to the forestry industry and the benefits of diversifying Georgia Power’s energy generation mix.
Judd, however, took no position on the plan.
The commission is scheduled to hold a final hearing on the projects Sept. 12 and vote on them Sept. 17.
by Dave Williams | Apr 26, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Delays in processing mail at a new regional distribution center in Palmetto aren’t just affecting individual Georgians trying to obtain vital prescription drugs or pay their monthly rents or mortgages.
Chronic failures to deliver the mail in a timely manner are being seen in some quarters as a threat to the underpinnings of American democracy: elections and the ability to ensure an informed electorate.
Mail-in absentee ballots played a critical role in the 2020 elections, with voters wary of venturing outside during a global pandemic either for in-person advance voting or to cast their ballots on Election Day. Many voters liked the convenience of mail-in voting, and the practice continued in 2022.
But this year, officials in charge of monitoring the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) are worried that delays in delivering mail processed at the Palmetto distribution center will jeopardize mail-in voting in Georgia.
“Voters and election officials must know the amount of time needed to deliver ballots,” Michael Kubayanda, chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, said April 16 during a hearing held by the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.
The delays began in February when the USPS opened the Atlanta Regional Processing and Distribution Center in Palmetto, part of a plan to make the postal service financially self-sufficient and better able to compete with private shippers including Federal Express and the United Parcel Service.
To staff the new center, the postal service consolidated 10 local mail distribution offices in the Atlanta region into the one Palmetto location, a move that involved nearly 10,000 employees.
A recent survey found that since the regional center opened, only 36% of inbound mail is being delivered on time.
“You are failing abysmally to fulfill your core mission in my state,” Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., told Postmaster General Louis DeJoy during the hearing.
Ossoff said he’s heard from constituents who can’t get their prescription drugs or make rent or mortgage payments.
Meanwhile, newspaper publishers across the state are taking their complaints directly to members of Georgia’s congressional delegation.
Patrick Graham, president of the Georgia Press Association, which represents 90% of the state’s newspaper subscribers, wrote in a letter to the delegation April 8 that many in-town and nearly all out-of-town subscribers are not receiving their newspapers
“I’m losing subscriptions,” said Chuck Southerland, publisher of the Hawkinsville Dispatch & News, a weekly with a little more than 2,000 subscribers. “It’s not unusual to get a call once or twice a month (from a subscriber who didn’t get their paper in the mail). Now, we’re getting two a day.”
Graham wrote that the disruption in deliveries not only threatens newspapers’ bottom lines but leaves the public uninformed on important issues.
“Newspapers are not only economic engines for their communities, in many places they are the only reliable sources of information for readers,” Graham wrote. “Cities and counties throughout Georgia rely on newspapers to provide news about local governments, community events, crime and other issues that affect their daily lives.”
The Newnan Times-Herald, which serves a broad swath of west-central Georgia, plans to file a formal complaint against the Newnan Post Office over the delays.
“Many of our customers have complained that their newspapers are not delivered the same day,” co-publishers Beth Neely and Clayton Neely wrote April 22 in an open letter. “In some cases, they are two or more days late, others as late as weeks.”
DeJoy attributed the delays in mail deliveries in Georgia and at a second regional USPS distribution center in Richmond, Va., to growing pains in an overhaul of the postal service that’s necessary to stem the flow of red ink from the agency.
“This is an organization that has not engaged in change for over 15 years,” DeJoy told the Senate committee. “We are taking longstanding broken practices and trying to transition from losing $137 billion over the last 15 years.”
In light of the delays at the Palmetto and Richmond centers, DeJoy said the postal service will hold off on implementing the planned overhaul in other parts of the country until the consolidations in Georgia and Virginia take hold.
“I expect Atlanta and Richmond to be stabilized coming into the summer,” he said. “We’re going to fix it. … We’ll get to where we need to be in 60 days.”
by Dave Williams | Nov 3, 2023 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Legislative Democrats and social services advocates have long complained that Georgia doesn’t spend enough money to meet the educational, health-care, and public-safety needs of a growing population.
But there’s something different about the latest fiscal numbers that prompted the left-leaning Georgia Budget and Policy Institute (GBPI) to release a 15-page report Oct. 31 calling for the state to loosen its purse strings.
The state was sitting on $16 billion in unspent funds at the end of the last fiscal year in June, including $11 billion in undesignated reserves.
“It’s uncharted territory,” said Danny Kanso, the GBPI’s fiscal analyst and the report’s author. “I don’t think it serves anyone to have $11 billion sitting there in an account with no plan for it.”
While news of that much tax money not going toward any purpose is sure to stir debate during the 2024 General Assembly session beginning in January, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and GOP legislative leaders are sticking with their determination to maintain fiscal discipline.
“The governor looks forward to working closely with the General Assembly on priorities for how the state’s one-time funds will be utilized in a strategically responsible way that does not commit short-term revenue gains to long-term obligations,” Garrison Douglas, a spokesman for Kemp, said back in July as initial word of a third straight year of large budget surpluses was surfacing.
“Everyone’s foaming at the mouth over $16 billion,” state Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, said Nov. 2. “They forget that’s only six months of revenue for the state. You have a rough time and that money will burn very quickly.”
The GBPI report attributes the huge pile of unspent dollars to “repeated underestimations of annual state revenue collections” that resulted in the state bringing in far more tax money than was being spent for three consecutive years. On the other side of the equation, state spending was failing to keep pace with inflation and population growth, according to the report.
“There are several unique areas in which surplus funds present a rare opportunity to address deficits built up over time and projected needs in the future – all while strengthening Georgia’s economy, supporting job creation, and benefiting families statewide,” the report stated.
Specifically, the report suggests the state use undesignated reserves to:
- create a $7.5 billion, self-sustaining Child Care Trust Fund to promote access to affordable, quality child care.
- modernize Georgia’s school bus fleet by making long-deferred investments to help cash-strapped local school districts maintain and replace aging buses.
- provide bonuses to state employees to help agencies providing vital services reduce turnover.
Kanso said the Child Care Trust Fund could pay for itself by being managed in the same way the state handles its teacher and employee retirement system funds. The balance of the fund would compound each year at a rate higher than the annual payout, the report said.
Kanso said one-third of the school buses plying Georgia highways are more than 15 years old because state funding for the buses has been cut significantly in recent years. His report recommends spending $850 million to $2.7 billion to modernize the school bus fleet.
“If we don’t address that, it’s going to be more and more costs for local school districts,” he said. “The state can help local school districts catch their breath.”
Kemp and the General Assembly already have provided targeted pay raises to employees of state agencies suffering high turnover rates, including $11,000 increases for state law enforcement officers during the last two years and $2,000 raises this year for other state workers, teachers, and university system employees. Altogether, teacher salaries have gone up $5,000 since Kemp took office in 2019.
Kanso’s report pointed to annual turnover rates of 25% in state agencies Georgians rely on for vital services as evidence the state still needs to do more.
The governor and legislature also have used surplus funds to provide state income tax rebates to Georgians during the last two years, while Kemp has suspended the state sales tax on gasoline to curb rising prices at the pump.
Kanso said those tax cuts are just scratching the surface of the huge pile of undesignated reserves the state could use to beef up investments in ongoing needs.
But Tillery said the General Assembly’s Republican majorities aren’t about to suddenly change course on spending.
“It’s not the state’s money. It’s taxpayers’ money,” he said. “Individuals who think the session is going to be a money-raining-from-heaven free-for-all are mistaken.”
