ATLANTA – Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is referring the cases of 17 Georgians suspected of having voted twice in 2022 to district attorneys in nine counties where those voters live.
These voters are suspected of voting once in Georgia in the November 2022 general election and again in another state.
“One illegal vote cast is too many,” Raffensperger said Tuesday. “Georgians deserve to have their voice heard fully, not have it diluted by bad actors.”
The allegations came to light as a result of Georgia’s membership in the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a network of 24 states and the District of Columbia that share data on voters.
The cases of double voting came from Barrow, Chatham, Cobb, Douglas, Fannin, Forsyth, Fulton, Morgan, and Tift counties.
Voter turnout in Georgia has been on the upswing in recent election cycles. Georgia saw the largest increase in turnout of any state in the 2018 midterm election, and set turnout records in 2020 and 2022.
ATLANTA – An ad hoc committee of Georgia House lawmakers is recommending smaller class sizes, higher teacher pay, and more money for operating and capital costs to beef up the state’s pre-kindergarten program.
With few changes in state support to the lottery-funded program since its inception 30 years ago, pre-kindergarten enrollment in Georgia has fallen from a high of 82,868 students in 2012 to 73,462.
A report released by the House Working Group on Early Childhood Education Tuesday blames the decline on an inability to find teachers willing to work at state-funded salaries and inadequate state funding for opening and operating classrooms.
“We know when our children start fast in school, educational outcomes are improved dramatically,” said House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, who formed the ad hoc committee last spring. “One of the best predictors of educational success is having a strong pre-kindergarten program.”
“This is very much a workforce development issue,” added Speaker Pro Tempore Jan Jones, R-Milton, who chaired the committee. “The more children have access to pre-k, the more parents can reenter the workforce.”
The committee is recommending reducing the average pre-kindergarten class size from 22 – a move the state made during the budget crunch the Great Recession brought on more than decade ago – to 20.
The report also proposed raising the salaries of assistant teachers in the pre-k program from $20,190 per year to $25,700, which would align their pay with K-12 paraprofessionals, and increasing pay for lead pre-k teachers to the state’s salary schedule for K-12 public school teachers.
“There’s no substitute for equalizing salaries, to recognize the great important work these folks are doing,” Burns said.
The committee also is recommending updating the pre-k formula for operations from the current $8,000 per pre-k classroom per year, which has not been changed since 2004, to $30,000. Both public schools and private pre-k providers for the first time would get state funding for construction of pre-k classrooms.
The various recommendations in the report would cost just more than $100 million per year, funds that would come from the Georgia Lottery Corp.’s healthy budget reserves.
Jones said the goal is to put the state in a position to offer pre-k to every parent in Georgia who wants to enroll their 4-year-olds in either a public or private pre-k program.
The percentage of children enrolled in pre-k varies widely across the state. Some counties have waiting lists as high as 339, with 2,714 youngsters statewide on a waiting list. Statewide, only 53% of eligible children are enrolled in pre-k.
“I’m hopeful we will see a more robust offering of public pre-k,” Jones said. “I’m confident we can change what has been happening over the last few years.”
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp is talking up Georgia to foreign business and political big wigs for the second January in a row.
Kemp is spending the week in Switzerland attending the World Economic Forum, meeting business executives and political leaders and taking part in discussion panels.
“We get a lot of value being able to see, talk to, and pitch a lot of people in one place,” Kemp told Capitol Beat Tuesday in an exclusive interview from Davos, Switzerland. “The exposure we get is really helpful selling the state.”
The trip includes meetings both with executives from companies with an existing presence in Georgia and those that might be interested in setting up shop in the Peach State.
On Tuesday, the governor met with officials from Korean automaker Hyundai, which is building a massive electric vehicle manufacturing plant west of Savannah, and multinational technology company Cisco, which has offices in Midtown Atlanta. Tomorrow, the state will host a luncheon reception for 25 companies.
Kemp also participated in a panel discussion on the EV industry, which has become a major player in Georgia with both the Hyundai plant and a manufacturing facility Rivian is building east of Atlanta along the Interstate 20 corridor.
The governor will lead Georgia’s delegation to meetings elsewhere in Switzerland later this week before heading back home on Saturday.
Kemp, a potential candidate for the U.S. Senate after his second term as governor expires in 2026, dismissed the notion that he’s out to burnish his own national and international profile by going to Davos.
“My No.-1 goal is selling our state,” he said. “That’s the reason I came to the forum.”
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp and the General Assembly’s budget writers vowed Tuesday to continue a cautious approach toward spending, despite the huge surplus the state has built up during the last several years.
Kemp kicked off three days of legislative hearings on the budget proposals he outlined last week by touting $5 billion in tax relief he has steered through the General Assembly and pitching his plan to accelerate additional tax cuts that took effect this month.
“We chose a smart fiscally conservative path,” Kemp told lawmakers in a remote video hookup from Switzerland, where he is attending the World Economic Forum. “We need to stay on that path.”
“There are a lot of needs around our state, but revenues are not as strong as they’ve been in the past,” added Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia. “We need to be sure we’re prudent with the state’s money.”
State Economist Robert “Bob” Buschman said the nation is likely to suffer a mild recession during the first half of this year, with the U.S. Gross Domestic Product expected to decline by 0.1% during the first quarter and 0,7% during the second quarter.
While Georgia continues to fare better than the nation as a whole in key economic indicators including inflation and unemployment, Buschman noted that much of the state’s revenue growth of the last few years was fueled by capital gains. He said he expects a significant drop in capital gains this year due to an economic slowdown.
“In a down cycle, these gains can drop very quickly,” he said.
Buschman said a mild recession likely would lead to rising unemployment in Georgia, which in turn would affect the state’s tax collections. The trend already has started, with the state reporting declining tax revenues during the first half of the current fiscal year.
But Buschman said Georgia’s unemployment rate is likely to remain below the national rate, which is projected to hit 4.3% later this year.
Kemp said the pay increases he is recommending for state and university system employees as well as public school teachers should help serve as a buffer against recession.
“With the pay raises and the jobs we’re creating, that keeps people working,” he said. “We’ll be in good shape.”
ATLANTA – Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has broken her silence over allegations she was involved in an improper relationship with the special prosecutor she hired in the election interference case against Donald Trump.
Speaking Sunday at the Big Bethel AME Church in Atlanta, Willis defended the qualifications of Nathan Wade for the post, numerous media outlets reported. Willis didn’t mention Wade by name or refer specifically to the allegations surrounding her relationship with the prosecutor.
The allegations surfaced last week in a motion filed on behalf of Michael Roman, one of the defendants charged in the indictment of Trump and 18 associates last August for allegedly working to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia that saw Democrat Joe Biden carry the Peach State.
The motion seeks to have the case dismissed because Willis and Wade were engaged in an “improper, clandestine personal relationship.” It goes on to claim Willis and Wade took vacations together using public funds Wade’s law firm received from Fulton County.
Trump and his Republican allies have cited the allegations in arguing the case against the former president in Fulton County should be dropped.
“While we pointed out the naked politics of the case brought by D.A. Willis from the beginning, these new revelations raise new and important questions about why these indictments were issued in the first place,” Georgia Republican Chairman Josh McKoon said last week.
“Clearly, there is an urgent need for all criminal proceedings in these cases to be halted until a complete and thorough investigation can be conducted regarding the specific allegations of misconduct, and perhaps even criminal conduct, on the part of D.A. Willis and Nathan Wade, along with any others that aided them in this alleged scheme.”
Willis has said she will answer the specific allegations in a court filing. But she did speak out on Sunday, defending her decision to hire Wade. Without naming Wade, she described him as an excellent lawyer with “impeccable credentials.”
Willis also talked about the personal toll the case has taken on her, including repeated death threats.
Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee is expected to hold a hearing on the motion next month.
