by Dave Williams | Sep 12, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – It’s been nearly a year since Hurricane Helene tore through a large swath of South Georgia during the last week of September, killing 37 and causing widespread flooding and power outages.
While blocked roads have long been cleared and power restored, Georgia farmers and foresters are still waiting for a full measure of disaster relief to replant crops and trees lost to the storm.
But Georgia elected officials say help is finally on the way. The state Department of Agriculture is working with its federal counterpart on a block grant that should go a long way toward putting farmers, ranchers, and timber owners on the road to recovery.
“It seems like it’s down to the attorneys dotting the ‘i’s’ and crossing the ‘t’s’ ” said Will Bentley, president of the Georgia Agribusiness Council.
Georgia’s ag industry needs a lot of relief. Helene wreaked at least $5.5 billion in damage to crops, ranches, poultry houses, orchards, and timberland.
“At that time of year, cotton was close to being picked,” Bentley said. “The pecan industry was devastated. … We lost hundreds of poultry houses. It’s been hard to build back.”
Congress moved quickly by its usually plodding standards, passing a bipartisan relief package last December that earmarked $21 billion in relief to farmers who suffered losses from Helene in Georgia and other affected states. The federal package also was in response to other natural disasters across the country.
At the state level, Gov. Brian Kemp redirected $100 million from a capital projects fund to provide financial support for farmers affected by the storm and debris cleanup for owners of damaged timberland. Then in March, the General Assembly set aside $867 million for disaster relief as part of the fiscal 2025 mid-year budget.
But farmers and timber owners still are far from being made whole. U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., complained in a letter in July to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture Tyler Harper that the block grant was taking too long to negotiate.
“Although some funds have been made available at the national level through USDA, 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.
On a separate front, Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., pushed back against Trump administration efforts in March to cut some disaster recovery programs Warnock said were particularly critical following Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, which rampaged through Florida less than two weeks after Helene.
“When Hurricane Helene struck Georgia, my office got to work helping our communities recover by delivering supplies at the local level and advocating for support at the federal level,” Warnock said Thursday. “It has been a particular priority to advocate for our farmers and foresters who have been devastated by worsening storms.”
Harper said the block grant process has been slow in part because federal and state negotiators had to start from scratch.
“The whole purpose of the block grant is to cover things that aren’t usually covered,” Harper said Friday. “We’ve had to create new programs in a short period of time and justify the amount we’re asking for.”
At the same time, Harper said the pace of relief following Helene compares favorably to disaster aid efforts after Hurricane Michael hit South Georgia in 2018.
“This is the fastest aid has ever been distributed after a hurricane,” Harper told an audience of political and agribusiness leaders last month at the annual Ag Issues Summit at the Georgia National Fairgrounds in Perry. “We’re still nine months ahead of Hurricane Michael.”
Harper told members of the Georgia House Rural Development Committee meeting in Douglas Wednesday that his agency has hired staff to work with farmers who want to apply for federal relief funds once the block grant has been finalized.
“We’re ready to press the go-button,” he said. “We’re going to do everything we can to push this out so individuals know where they can sign up and what the application process looks like. … Time is of the essence.”
by Dave Williams | Sep 11, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Valdosta State University President Richard Carvajal is stepping down to take a position as president of California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt.
Carvajal will remain at VSU through the end of the current semester before taking up his new job on Jan. 20, the university announced Wednesday.
Carvajal brought stability to Valdosta State when he took the reins there in 2017 as the university’s seventh president in eight years.
“Dr. Carvajal has led Valdosta State with a focus on student success and strengthening the university’s ties to the community,” University System of Georgia Chancellor Sonny Perdue said. “His steady leadership and deep commitment to South Georgia have made a difference, and I’m grateful for his service as we wish him and his family our best.”
“This decision has not been easy,” Carvajal added. “VSU has been my home for almost a decade. Serving alongside our incredible students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community partners has been among the greatest honors of my life. … While I now feel called to return to my first home in northern California, Valdosta State will always remain a part of me.”
Carvajal presided over a series of campus renovations during his tenure at VSU, while construction of a new $39 million performing arts center is well underway. Valdosta State also surpassed 3,000 in graduate student enrollment for the first time.
Before coming to Valdosta, Carvajal served as president of Bainbridge State College and co-led the consolidation of Darton State College and Albany State University.
“I have always believed that leaders should have the goal of leaving places better than they found them,” he said. “Working together with so many, we have most definitely made VSU and South Georgia better, and I know that the best is yet to come.”
by Dave Williams | Sep 10, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The impact of International Paper’s decision to close two pulp and paper mills in Coastal Georgia at the end of this month will spread far beyond those workers directly affected, state Commissioner of Agriculture Tyler Harper said Wednesday.
“This is more than 1,100 jobs,” Harper told members of the Georgia House Rural Development Committee meeting on the campus of South Georgia State College in Douglas. “This is tire shops, truck dealerships, mom-and-pop restaurants.”
But most affected by the impending shutdown of mills in Savannah and Riceboro will be Georgia’s timber industry, still reeling from the devastation of Hurricane Helene nearly a year ago and a longer-term drop in demand for wood due to foreign competition, increased use of recycled wood, and technological innovations that have led to lighter wood products.
“Four and a half million tons of Georgia-grown timber lost a home with these announcements,” said Devon Dartnell, forest utilization chief for the Georgia Forestry Commission. “That equates to about 70 logging crews in Georgia that don’t have a place to take wood. They probably won’t make payroll next month.”
International Paper announced the mill closures on Aug. 21, just weeks after Georgia-Pacific shut down its containerboard mill in the Southwest Georgia community of Cedar Springs. The closures are reducing the state’s supply of paper mills from 11 – down from a peak of 18 in 1977 – to eight.
Harper said state officials were caught off-guard by the news that International Paper, a giant factor in the coastal economy for decades, was pulling up stakes.
“As good as the state of Georgia has been to these companies, to close their doors in such a way … was a disservice to the industry, a disservice to the communities it impacts, and a disservice to those employees,” he said.
The rural development committee spent much of Wednesday’s daylong hearing talking about short- and long-term approaches economic development officials and industry leaders can take to mitigate the impacts of losing the mills.
The most immediate response is coming in Savannah and Riceboro. International Paper was sponsoring a jobs fair for laid off workers in the smaller Liberty County community on Wednesday, to be followed by a jobs fair in Savannah set for Thursday and Friday.
“This is a skilled workforce that is valuable,” said Bert Brantley, president and CEO of the Savannah Area Chamber of Commerce. “These folks will be in high demand.”
Along similar lines, the Georgia Association of Manufacturing is launching a website to help those out of work interact directly with employers via social media.
Stephanie Scearce, vice president of workforce innovation for the trade association, compared the platform to LinkedIn, but just for manufacturers.
“This is the missing piece bridging the gap between our manufacturers, education partners, and the general public,” she said.
Over a longer term, several speakers called for a more aggressive effort by the state and the timber industry to push converting wood into biomass. There’s a huge demand for wood pellets in Europe, which are burned to generate electricity there, while researchers are developing alternative fuels from biomass for use in aircraft and ships.
“We’ve got to deal with this stigma about biomass,” said Jason Shaw, chairman of the state Public Service Commission. “It’s not carbon-free … but it’s a whole lot cleaner than a lot of things that have powered this country.”
Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns cautioned committee members that any solutions they might come up with must be both economically and politically possible. But Burns, R-Newington, injected a note of optimism to the work ahead.
“The solutions we craft are about our future,” he said. “We can make an impact on this industry.”
by Dave Williams | Sep 9, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Environmental advocates and community activists Tuesday supported a proposal to add data centers to the list of large development projects subject to state review.
But they also called for the Georgia Department of Community Affairs (DCA) to lower the threshold for projects that fall under the agency’s definition of “developments of regional impact” (DRIs).
The DCA is proposing new rules that would create a category of DRIs called “technological facility” to include data centers, as well as two other new categories for solar power generating facilities such as solar farms as well as truck stops.
The DCA acted after officials from regional planning commissions across the state asked the agency to add data centers to its DRI rules to help guide local governments in processing developers’ applications for the growing number of data centers springing up in Georgia. Data centers use massive amounts of electricity and water, prompting worries that they will suck up finite resources.
Some local governments have responded to the wave of data centers by restricting them or banning them outright. The Atlanta City Council voted in June to prohibit data centers from setting up in some neighborhoods and require developers to seek a special-use permit for construction.
In May, the Coweta County Commission approved a moratorium on data centers after a developer proposed Project Sail, a massive 13-building data center on more than 800 acres along U.S. 27 near Newnan.
“We need some type of protection at the state level,” Wanda Mosley, a community organizer from the city of South Fulton, said Tuesday during a public hearing on the new rules hosted by the DCA.
The proposed rules would require developers of data centers to disclose information about each project’s energy and water needs.
In cities and suburbs, the rules would apply to data centers covering more than 300,000 square feet. Data centers in rural areas would not come under the rules unless they cover more than 500,000 square feet.
But on Tuesday, Amy Sharma, who chairs the nonprofit Georgia Water Coalition’s data center committee, suggested the DCA lower the threshold of data center projects that would fall under the new rules to those that cover more than 250,000 square feet, regardless of whether they’re in cities, suburbs, or rural communities.
Others who spoke during Tuesday’s public hearing complained that data centers generate a lot of noise in the neighborhoods where they’re sited, create few local jobs, and result in permanent rezonings that remove land from agricultural use.
Data center supporters have countered that they produce valuable property tax revenue, particularly in rural communities with inadequate tax bases.
The DCA is accepting public comment on the proposed rules through Friday. The agency’s board will vote on them Nov. 20.
by Dave Williams | Sep 9, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A federal judge has upheld a portion of a controversial 2022 Georgia election law dealing with absentee ballots.
In a 50-page ruling Monday, U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee declared that the state had a “compelling governmental interest” in restricting the distribution of absentee ballot applications by third-party voting rights activists. He ruled that the state was justified in enacting restrictions aimed at “reducing voter confusion, enhancing voter confidence and increasing electoral efficiency.”
The absentee ballot restrictions were part of a broad overhaul of Georgia election procedures the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed in 2021 after Democrat Joe Biden carried the Peach State’s 16 electoral votes in the 2020 presidential election. GOP President Donald Trump, nearing the end of his first term in the White House, claimed widespread voter fraud in Georgia, allegations that were never proven.
Senate Bill 202 also placed limits on the number of absentee drop boxes, imposed an ID requirement for voters casting absentee ballots, and prohibited volunteers from providing food and water to voters waiting in line at the polls.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger praised Monday’s decision.
“This ruling proves what we’ve said all along – Georgia has the best elections in America,” he said. “SB202 is about common sense: protecting voters from confusion, making sure every vote counts once, and keeping our elections free, fair, and secure.”
Representatives of the voting rights groups that brought the lawsuit vowed to continue pursuing the case.
“In the context of increasing government overreach into our elections, the court’s decision to limit advocacy at the expense of the right to free speech is deeply concerning,” said Tom Lopach, president and CEO of the nonprofit Voter Participation Center and Center for Voter Information. “We will continue to fight to protect programs that we know help eligible Georgia voters.”
In a related case, the Justice Department dropped its lawsuit against SB202 after Trump took office for his second term as president.
