Newly elected Lt. Gov. Burt Jones in front of the Georgia Senate in January. (Photo credit: Rebecca Grapevine)
ATLANTA – Newly elected Lt. Gov. Burt Jones says he is “laser focused” on the well-being of Georgians.
The Jackson Republican and businessman ran for lieutenant governor after a decade as a state senator because he wanted a new challenge and thought he could help ordinary Georgians, Jones told Capitol Beat this week.
“I have always been of the mindset that you shouldn’t stay put for too long,” he said. “You either move up or move on.
“I saw an opportunity to lower our state income tax to put more money back into the pockets of hardworking Georgians, empower parents and teachers, and to make our communities safer.”
Jones beat out then-Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller in last May’s Republican primary and went on to defeat Democrat Charlie Bailey by 5 percentage points as part of the GOP’s November sweep of statewide constitutional offices.
Jones’ campaign was helped along by loans from his personal fortune. His father founded Jones Petroleum Company, a wholesale fuel distributor that also owns retail and fast-food outlets.
Besides being a businessman and lawyer, Jones’ father, William “Bill” Jones, served in the Georgia House of Representatives for four terms beginning in 1976 – as a Democrat.
The younger Jones, who was born in 1979, attended the University of Georgia, where he majored in history and served as captain of the 2002 SEC championship-winning football team after initially joining as a walk-on.
Jones went on to found J.P. Capital & Insurance, an insurance agency in Jackson, and won his first run for the Senate in 2012.
Now that Jones is firmly ensconced as head of Georgia’s upper chamber, he is concentrating on workaday issues such as public safety and growing the state’s workforce.
He called addressing gang violence in Georgia “a top priority for my office.” This week, he announced his strong support for a bill that would institute mandatory minimum sentences for those convicted of gang recruitment.
Jones also wants to fix Georgia’s workforce challenges. He is backing a Senate bill that would make it easier for state agencies to hire people who do not hold college degrees.
“I want to increase Georgia’s workforce by taking a holistic approach to increase the number of Georgians all types of business can hire, immediately and long term,” he said.
Jones wants to make Georgia “the most affordable place to adopt a child.” And he supported the creation of the new Senate Committee on Children and Families, which has already held an in-depth hearing on problems in the foster-care system.
Two issues likely to draw heated debate this session are abortion rights and whether the state can pre-empt local control of housing regulations.
When it comes to abortion, Jones said he stands by the abortion regulations outlined in the “heartbeat law.” Passed in 2019, the law prohibits abortions in most cases after about six weeks of pregnancy, although it allows exceptions for rape, incest and to protect the life of the mother. The law is currently in effect in Georgia but faces a legal challenge, with the state Supreme Court expected to hear arguments on the matter next month.
“We’re going to have a wait-and-see mode on that front as [the law] moves through the court system,” Jones said.
Local governments’ control over housing regulations is also likely to draw controversy this session as lawmakers consider how to increase the supply of affordable housing around the state.
“I am not against local control,” Jones told Capitol Beat. “Like any other issue, I think it deserves to be heard and go through the legislative process. I look forward to seeing how this shapes up.”
One of the lieutenant governor’s main responsibilities is managing the day-to-day workings of the Senate. Jones said he is committed to allowing debate in the Senate chamber.
“I believe in allowing … robust and open debate,” Jones said. “I’m not going to shut down the conversation if a senator brings an issue forward because they have legitimate issues that may address the needs of their district or constituency.”
Jones’ past support for former President Donald Trump drew criticism during his election campaign.
Jones was the sole Trump-endorsed statewide candidate to win both primary and general elections last year. The endorsement came after years of support for Trump, which culminated in Jones’ participation in efforts to form an alternate slate of Georgia electors in an attempt to reverse the former president’s loss in the November 2020 election.
Now that he has taken office, Jones is distancing himself from the maelstrom of national political controversy.
“Right now, I’m solely focused on being a really good lieutenant governor for the people of Georgia,” Jones said. “I am laser focused on the future and doing all that I can to ensure our state continues to move in the right direction.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, sponsored the fist bill to gain Senate approval this legislative session.
ATLANTA – The state Senate Wednesday passed a bill that would allow the Georgia Bureau Investigation (GBI) to independently investigate a wide range of terrorism cases.
The first bill to make it to the Senate floor this session – the “Georgia Fights Terrorism Act”— passed handily, with 49 senators voting for the bill and only three voting against it.
The bill would allow the GBI to open investigations of terrorism independently instead of solely at the request of government agencies or officials, as is typically the case now.
“This bill simply allows the Georgia Bureau of Investigation the ability to proactively, either independently or with our other agencies, both local and federal, go after and investigate crimes related to terrorism, nuclear, biological, chemical, cyber and domestic,” said Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, the bill’s chief sponsor.
Under the bill, the GBI could open such investigations if the agency’s director finds that doing so “would not compromise the successful completion of cases.”
The GBI provides a number of services to the state, including forensic analysis, autopsies, investigations of serious crimes and tracking of crime statistics.
Though the bill breezed through the Senate, some advocates say the bill is unnecessary.
“Our main concern …. is that a lot of the conversations around protesting, around some of the complaints and issues that communities have … are starting to slowly be called things like domestic terrorism,” said Isabel Otero, Georgia policy director for the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund.
“We’re seeing this trend of trying to push the law in ways that make it a little bit easier to go after communities when they disagree with what it is that leaders have come up with,” Otero added. “I don’t think there’s been an issue with the GBI being left out of an important investigation … and so this seems like a sort of superfluous additional bill.”
The bill will now be taken up by the state House of Representatives.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia lawmakers want to increase the sentence for gang recruitment activities as part of a tough-on-crime push under the Gold Dome this legislative session.
A new state Senate bill would increase the penalties for recruiting someone to join a gang or participate in gang activity through mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines that judges would have to follow in most cases.
Sponsored by Sen. Bo Hatchett, R-Cornelia, Senate Bill 44 has the backing of Gov. Brian Kemp and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones.
“This bill is one piece of the overall approach to reaffirm that Georgia will not tolerate gang activity or recruitment,” Jones said. “Senate Bill 44 will enact powerful new tools to combat the violent street gangs operating across our state.”
The bill requires judges to impose at least a five-year prison sentence for violation of the law. If the person who has been recruited to the gang is under 17 years of age or has a disability, the mandatory minimum penalty is steeper – at least 10 years for the first offense.
The legislation provides some exceptions to the mandatory minimum sentences, including if the accused has not already been convicted of a felony or if the judge decides that “the interests of justice will not be served.” It also provides an exception to the minimum sentencing rules if the accused helps with identifying and convicting other gang members.
Not everyone agrees that the bill’s sentences for gang recruitment would help solve Georgia’s crime problem.
Senate Democrats would prefer to reduce the number of guns on the street in Georgia and increase community investments in mental health and violence-prevention programs, according to a legislative agenda released Tuesday.
“We will be tough on crime in a common-sense way: keeping guns away from people who will harm Georgians,” the agenda states.
In general, states have moved away from mandatory minimum sentencing requirements over the past few decades, said Kay Levine, a professor at the Emory University School of Law and an expert in criminal procedure.
Levine said leniency in sentencing is not a major problem in Georgia, and increasing penalties does not necessarily deter crime.
“All that we know about deterrence is that it is the likelihood of getting caught that affects people’s behavior… not the punishment,” she said.
Judges often view the minimum sentencing rules as legislative overreach into the judicial domain, Levine said.
“They’re like, ‘We have this job for a reason: we’re the ones who hear the evidence, we’re the ones who read the pre-sentence report, we’re the ones who have seen the defendant testify, we hear from the victim,” Levine said of how many judges think about such requirements. “’We are judges, we are here to exercise our judgement.’”
Despite such misgivings, the bill has a strong shot of success in what has been a slow start to the legislative session. Twenty-two Senate Republicans have signed on as co-sponsors.
“There is no place for gangs in Georgia,” said Hatchett, the bill’s main sponsor. “Passage of this vital legislation is a top priority.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA — As high-tech manufacturing plants – many in the electric vehicle and battery sectors – are lured to Georgia, affordable housing for workers is emerging as a key challenge.
“The transformational projects, good paying jobs, and new investments are worth little if there aren’t options for hard-working Georgians to live where they work,” Republican Gov. Brian Kemp noted Jan. 25 in his annual State of the State address.
To address the problem, Kemp has proposed $35.7 million in the amended fiscal 2023 budget to create a rural workforce housing fund. If the governor’s budget recommendation is approved, those funds would be reallocated from existing spending items.
The program would be focused on helping local governments finance the infrastructure needed for building new housing developments, said Christopher Nunn, commissioner of the state Department of Community Affairs (DCA).
“We look forward to launching Georgia’s program, which will leverage [DCA] subject matter expertise in infrastructure to partner with local governments as well as developers,” Nunn said.
“Of course, we hope that this infusion will also beget additional rural housing investment to meet the needs of a growing workforce. This is a pervasive issue across states [that] few states have figured out how to address.”
The new fund, though, is just a small step toward addressing Georgia’s housing shortage.
Augusta is short by 8,600 housing units per year, while Columbus faces a 3,800-unit deficit and Savannah is short by 9,300 units, John Hunt, president of MarketNsight, a housing market research firm, told a state House study committee that focused on the issue last fall.
Many developers and other free-market advocates believe local regulations imposed by city and county governments drive up the cost of housing.
“Our work on this issue has established that government regulations, taxes and fees represent a sizable portion of the cost of a new home,” said Kyle Wingfield, president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, a think tank that advocates free-market solutions to public policy issues.
“At a time when Georgia needs hundreds of thousands of additional housing units … we can’t afford these artificial barriers to building more housing supply.”
But local governments oppose state laws that would preempt local regulation of zoning, building designs and control over the construction of build-to-rent projects.
“I think it’s rather disingenuous of certain groups to blame [high housing costs] solely on local government regulations,” said Todd Edwards, deputy director of governmental affairs for the Association County Commissioners of Georgia (ACCG). “The affordability of housing is a very complex issue.”
Edwards pointed to a wide variety of factors that contribute to the cost of housing, including supply chain issues, labor shortages, inflation, and interest rates. If local governments cannot impose regulations around housing, the houses are likely to be built to “the lowest common denominator” and quickly sold to institutional investors, he said.
The ACCG and the Georgia Municipal Association are currently developing recommendations to increase the affordable housing supply in Georgia without preempting local control, Edwards said.
The Georgia Planning Association also opposes such preemption proposals.
“Local residents and local leaders know how to solve local problems because we live with them every day and we see them up close,” Whitney Shephard, the association’s president, told the House study committee. “When we work together to come up with local plans and codes, we rely on the state to help us — not strike those codes down because special interests told you to, especially when it comes to our homes.”
State preemption laws have failed to garner legislative support in the past few General Assembly sessions.
For example, during last year’s session, bills championed by Rep. Dale Washburn, R-Macon, and Sen. Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega, that would have stopped local governments from prohibiting build-to-rent subdivisions stalled out in committee.
But Washburn continued the push for state legislation that would limit what local governments can regulate as chairman of the House study committee that focused on the issue last fall.
“If there is excessive regulation that restricts the free market from working efficiently, it must be identified and corrected,” the committee’s report concluded. “The Georgia General Assembly has the authority, and it should consider legislation that will make it easier for the free market to meet the housing needs of Georgians.”
House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, said earlier this month he is keen to work with local governments on the affordable-housing issue.
“The House will respect our local partners, whether it be the cities and the counties,” Burns said. “That’s where decisions are made on zoning. … Certainly, we will respect their decisions.”
At the same time, Burns appeared to leave the door open for consideration of preemption laws, though he did not outline any concrete plans.
“We do not want to stifle private investment in this state when it comes to housing,” he said.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Former state official and foster parent Mike Dudgeon tells lawmakers about problems he faced navigating the state’s foster-care insurance plan.
ATLANTA – A legislative hearing about the “hoteling” of foster children in Georgia zeroed in the problems children in state custody face in getting health care.
So far this fiscal year, more than 400 children have spent the night in hotels or state offices because appropriate placements could not be found for them, Audrey Brannen, a complex care coordinator at the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) told lawmakers Wednesday.
The reasons behind the hoteling problem are complex, but one major contributor is lack of access to appropriate health care, Brannen said during the joint hearing convened by the state Senate’s newly created Children and Families Committee and the Senate Health and Human Services Committee.
“We are here to protect children from their caregivers who may be maltreating them,” she said. “We cannot do that when so many of our resources, both staff and financial, are trying to plug the holes in our health-care system. It’s like using your index finger to stop the leak on the Titanic.”
Care coordination services for foster children are often lacking, Statesboro pediatrician Dr. Michelle Zeanah told lawmakers. She said she has a hard time getting information about a child’s needs and treatment history from Amerigroup, the state’s contracted insurance plan for children in foster care.
Another problem is that many children who end up in hotels have autism, but there aren’t enough clinicians to diagnose and treat autism in Georgia and reimbursement rates for autism evaluation are too low. This leads to long waits for diagnoses and care, Zeanah said.
“If we reimbursed providers that are serving children who are in foster care at a higher rate, then providers would be highly motivated to serve those children,” she said.
Zeanah also questioned whether contracting with a private insurance company really helps Georgia children and youth in foster care. Amerigroup is owned by Elevance, formerly known as Anthem, a large, for-profit company.
“The goal of managed care is cost savings,” Zeanah said. “Why can’t foster children be started with the goal of creating access instead of the goal of reducing cost?”
Mike Dudgeon, a foster-care parent and a former policy director in the lieutenant governor’s office, echoed that call. He suggested returning health care of foster children to the older “fee-for-service” model, where the state pays directly for medical services, or putting foster children on the State Health Benefit Plan, which insures teachers and other state employees.
“If it’s good enough for our employees, it should be good enough for our foster kids,” said Dudgeon, also a former state representative from Forsyth County.
Dudgeon noted that he and his wife sometimes paid for health-care services for children they were fostering out of their own pockets because they could not find a provider that accepted the Amerigroup plan.
He said he had trouble getting data about the insurer’s financials and performance when he worked in state government.
“We were stonewalled for months and months and months … and this is with the weight of the lieutenant governor’s office and the weight of the Senate Budget Office behind it,” Dudgeon said. “All I can tell you, there’s a lot of smoke there that this money is not being appropriately spent. … We need rabid transparency.”
The problems around accessing health care for foster children have spurred DFCS to establish a special legal team dedicated to appealing insurance denials.
“Every day, my office will review all medical treatment denials, and we will file appeals if we determine that such treatment is medically necessary for the child or the youth,” said Brian Pettersson, the lawyer who leads the new team.
“Not only is the current system detrimental to the health-care needs of the foster children, but the current system does not benefit the citizens of the state of Georgia. … It increases [the Georgia Department of Human Services’] overall expenses that are used to expand and fill the gaps in coverages that taxpayers already paid for.”
Representatives from Amerigroup, the insurance plan under fire, also testified.
“We’ve been doing this since 2014,” Amerigroup President Mel Lindsey said. “I’ve never made a decision about how to treat anyone, particularly a foster-care kid, that was related to cost. And I never will.”
Lindsey and other officials from Amerigroup said they want to improve the care they deliver, but there are some factors they cannot control, such as shortages of treatment facilities in Georgia.
“We know there are opportunities for improvement in the system of care and certainly what we do as well,” Lindsay said. “We are deeply committed to working … to improve the way we serve.”
“One thing that we have accomplished today is to raise awareness and to make sure that everybody understands this is a front-burner issue,” added Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, R- Marietta, who chairs the Children and Families Committee. “These kids didn’t ask for this and they should be going to the front of the line, however we can get them there.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
