ATLANTA – The Georgia House of Representatives gave final passage Tuesday to legislation letting a recently created oversight board for prosecutors set its own rules.
The bill cleared the Republican-controlled House 97-73 primarily along party lines. The state Senate, where the legislation originated, passed it early last month, also in a party-line vote.
Senate Bill 332 is a follow-up to legislation the General Assembly passed last year creating the Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission to investigate complaints lodged against local district attorneys.
The panel will have the power to remove prosecutors it deems guilty of a variety of offenses including mental or physical incapacity, willful misconduct or failure to perform the duties of the office, conviction of a crime of moral turpitude, or conduct that brings the office into disrepute.
The commission has been stalled since the state Supreme Court ruled in November that it does not have the authority to review the rules the commission adopts, as the 2023 bill provided. Instead, the new bill gives that authority to the commission itself.
“The commissioners are all in place,” Rep. Joseph Gullett, R-Dallas, the bill’s chief sponsor, said on the House floor Tuesday. “It’s ready to get to work.”
But Rep. Stacey Evans, D-Atlanta, said taking away the state Supreme Court’s authority to set the commission’s rules would leave a panel of unelected commissioners appointed by Georgia’s Republican governor, lieutenant governor, and House speaker able to make partisan decisions on prosecutors unchecked.
“We are creating an oversight commission without oversight,” she said.
Evans and other Democrats also argued an oversight commission for prosecutors is unnecessary because they already must answer to the Georgia Bar Association, judges, and – ultimately – local voters.
“I trust Georgia voters to vote in their best interests,” said House Minority Whip Sam Park, D-Lawrenceville.
Republicans countered that the legislation is needed to rein in “rogue” district attorneys around the state who are refusing to prosecute criminal suspects. Several GOP lawmakers cited instances in Athens, Paulding County, and the infamous failure by the Glynn County district attorney originally assigned to the Ahmaud Arbery murder case to prosecute the suspects.
“There have been deliberate decisions to ignore whole sections of the Georgia code,” said Rep. Matt Reeves, R-Duluth. “We can’t afford to have any (judicial) circuit not enforcing the law for the sake of public safety.”
The legislation now goes to Gov. Brian Kemp, who is expected to sign it.
Six candidates signed up Monday to seek retiring U.S. Rep. Drew Ferguson’s seat
ATLANTA – Nine of Georgia’s 14 members of the U.S. House of Representatives signed up to seek another two-year term Monday on a busy opening day of Qualifying Week at the state Capitol.
But not surprisingly, the only race that doesn’t feature an incumbent drew the most interest. With Republican Rep. Drew Ferguson of West Point leaving office, four Republicans and two Democrats qualified to run for the open 3rd Congressional District seat.
The field for the May 21 GOP primary includes several familiar names. Former state Sens. Mike Dugan of Carrollton and Mike Crane of Newnan qualified on Monday, along with former state Rep. Philip Singleton of Newnan. Retiree Jim Bennett of Carroll County also signed up to seek the seat Ferguson is vacating.
Democratic candidates qualifying in the 3rd District include retired physician Val Almonord of Columbus and Maura Keller of Fayetteville, a nuclear medical technologist.
The incumbent members of Georgia’s congressional delegation who qualified Monday are Reps. Sanford Bishop, D-Albany; Hank Johnson, D-Stone Mountain; Nikema Williams, D-Atlanta; Lucy McBath, D-Marietta; Rich McCormick, R-Suwanee; Austin Scott, R-Tifton; Barry Loudermilk, R-Cassville; Rick Allen, R-Augusta; and David Scott, D-Atlanta.
McBath and McCormick essentially are flipping districts in the wake of the new congressional redistricting map the Republican-controlled General Assembly adopted last fall.
McCormick, who currently represents the 6th District, is moving to the 7th District after it was redrawn to take in Republican-friendly turf in Forsyth, Dawson, and Lumpkin counties as well as portions of Cherokee and Hall counties. McBath, now representing the 7th District centered in Gwinnett County, is running in the 6th District, which has been shifted into heavily Democratic central and southern Fulton County, South Cobb, eastern Douglas County, and northern Fayette County.
Non-incumbent candidates qualified Monday in five congressional districts. In the 6th District, Republican Jeff Criswell, a roadside service provider from Cobb County, signed up to challenge McBath. In the 10th District, Democrat Jessica Fore, a realtor-musician from Athens, is looking to challenge incumbent Republican Rep. Mike Collins of Jackson.
Business owner Antonio Daza, a Democrat from Woodstock, signed up to take on Loudermilk in the 11th District. Democrat Daniel “DJ” Jackson, a military retiree from Evans, is challenging Allen in the 12th District. And in the 14th District, Democrat Shaun Harris of Cedartown, another military retiree, signed up to face Republican incumbent Marjorie Taylor Greene of Rome.
While there is no U.S. Senate race this year in Georgia, all 14 congressional seats are up for grabs, as are all 236 seats in the state House and Senate. Qualifying continues through noon Friday.
ATLANTA – Low-income tenants of subsidized housing in Georgia shared harrowing stories of horrendous living conditions ignored by landlords with a U.S. Senate subcommittee Monday at a hearing in Roswell.
“My unit flooded constantly with raw sewage … floating pieces of fecal matter, eaten food and toilet-paper debris,” Miracle Fletcher, a former tenant at Trestletree Village Apartments in Atlanta, told the Senate Human Rights Subcommittee meeting at Roswell City Hall.
“The everyday smell of the foul odor of feces that would normally cause one to cringe after smelling it became the dreadful smell we endured daily.”
The subcommittee, chaired by Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., launched inquiries last fall with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) into alleged mistreatment of tenants by landlords in Georgia and nationwide.
“We’ve heard from families who live in apartments plagued by severe mold and pest infestation, who lack basic plumbing, or whose floors were so rotten they collapsed,” Ossoff said at the start of Monday’s hearing.
“When many of these tenants asked their landlords for help, that help never came. And worse, they sometimes reported facing retaliation or eviction.”
Fletcher and other Georgia tenants of subsidized housing talked about similar experiences they have had when they complained to landlords.
Latysha Odom said she moved into Heritage Heights Apartments in Griffin in 2019 and soon discovered , her bedroom ceiling was leaking every few days.
“Each time, the management company told me it wasn’t a leak,” she said. “They blamed my upstairs neighbor, saying she was letting the toilet overflow or didn’t have a shower curtain.
“After consistent leaks, my ceiling actually collapsed. … The only thing the management company ever did was replace the ceiling panels, but that didn’t actually fix the problem. … No one came and actually fixed my ceiling until 2023.”
Esther Graff-Radford, a lawyer who represents tenants living in subsidized housing, said landlords receiving millions of dollar in government subsidies often ignore complaints from tenants forced to live in appalling conditions.
“These landlords are supposed to be providing housing that is kept up to a basic repair standard,” she said. “The sad truth is subsidized landlords in Georgia who are getting government rent money are not providing the basic housing we taxpayers are paying for.”
Graff-Radford said tenants who complain not only get nowhere with landlords, but HUD inspectors often take landlords’ word that repairs have been made.
“There’s no real consequence for the landlord,” she said. “People outside the metro-Atlanta area are often just out of luck when it comes to finding legal representation or alternative housing.”
Ayanna Jones, another lawyer who represents low-income tenants, said the federal government should do a better job enforcing laws against shoddy housing, starting with stepping up funding for inspections,
“Nobody’s going to change their behavior if there are no consequences,” she said. “There has to be more teeth behind these consequences.”
The Macon Mega Rail Terminal at the Port of Savannah
ATLANTA – The Port of Savannah set a record for rail traffic last month at the port’s Mason Mega Rail Terminal, the Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) announced Monday.
The rail terminal handled 46,890 containers in February, an increase of 39% compared to the same month last year.
The ports authority’s Appalachian Regional Port in Northwest Georgia also set a February record, moving 3,825 containers, up 23% over February of 2023.
Altogether, rail accounted for 19% of the ports authority’s container trade last month, with the remainder moving by truck.
“GPA has made significant investments in rail infrastructure,” said Griff Lynch, the ports authority’s executive director. “That’s going to play a key role in capturing our next growth target – a greater share of the market in locations such as Dallas, Memphis, and beyond.”
Meanwhile, overall traffic in containerized cargo at Savannah was up 14.4% in February compared to the same month last year.
Lynch welcomed two consecutive months of growth after a difficult start to the current fiscal year last summer and fall. He said he expects the improving volumes to carry the GPA to a stronger second half of fiscal 2024, which ends June 30.
ATLANTA – The second of two additional nuclear reactors being built at Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle has begun generating electricity and connecting to the electric grid for the first time.
Connecting to the grid is part of ongoing startup testing for Unit 4 at the nuclear plant south of Augusta. Next, operators will continue raising power at the reactor to 100%.
Vogtle Unit 3, the first of the new reactors, went into commercial operation last summer. Unit 4 is expected to go online during the second quarter of this year.
The latest progress update on the project, which Georgia Power announced last Friday, follows the Feb. 14 announcement that Unit 4 had safely reached initial criticality, a key step during startup testing that shows operators have safely started the reactor.
The state Public Service Commission (PSC) voted in December to let Georgia Power pass on to customers almost $7.6 billion of its costs in building the two additional nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle, the first in the United States since the 1980s.
The project was originally expected to cost $14 billion when the PSC approved it in 2009 but has more than doubled due to a series of cost overruns and delays in the construction schedule. The project will increase the average monthly residential customer’s bill by $8.95.
