by Dave Williams | Jan 7, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp and the Georgia Department of Corrections asked state lawmakers Tuesday for $372 million to improve a prison system the Justice Department criticized last fall in a scathing report.
Most of the additional investments would go toward hiring more correctional officers and pay raises aimed at gaining parity with neighboring states.
In a 94-page report following a multi-year investigation, the Justice Department accused the state prison system of violating inmates’ constitutional rights by failing to protect them from widespread violence.
“We want to make sure our prisons are safe for our employees, safe for our inmates, and safe for the public,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, said Tuesday during a joint meeting of House and Senate subcommittees formed last summer to explore funding levels needed to improve safety inside the state prisons.
Many of the spending recommendations Georgia Commissioner of Corrections Tyrone Oliver outlined Tuesday came from Chicago-based Guidehouse Inc., a consultant the state hired last June after an inmate at Smith State Prison in Glennville shot and killed a food-service worker before turning the gun on himself.
“Public safety is the No.-1 priority of state government, and that is why we have taken a comprehensive and deliberate approach to strengthening law enforcement and improving our corrections system,” Kemp said Tuesday. “I want to thank the teams at Guidehouse for their diligent and detailed work over the past several months, as well as the Department of Corrections personnel who have been helpful at every step of this process and who face incredible challenges each day to keep violent criminals behind bars.”
The spending recommendations include providing 4% pay raises for correctional officers as well as education, chaplain, food service and maintenance personnel. Behavioral health counselors would receive 8% salary increases.
The corrections agency also wants to hire 330 additional correctional officers to improve staff-to-inmate ratios.
The spending plan also calls for $40 million to plan and design a new prison and $93 million in additional funds for sitework and construction associated with four 126-bed modular correctional units.
Another $2.8 million would go to develop a statewide marketing initiative to recruit new correctional officers and $900,000 to update the officer training curriculum.
Tuesday’s presentation was highly unusual in that Georgia governors historically don’t present budget recommendations to the General Assembly until the first week of the annual legislative session. Lawmakers won’t convene the 2025 session under the Gold Dome until next week.
“It shows the emphasis (Kemp) and us are putting on this issue,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin. “This has been studied and studied. It’s time to get something done.”
by Dave Williams | Jan 7, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan has been expelled from the Georgia Republican Party for endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president last year.
“By his pattern of conduct, Duncan has forfeited any claim to being even a nominal ‘Republican,’ ” the state GOP’s executive committee wrote in a resolution its members passed unanimously on Monday.
While the resolution doesn’t mention it, Duncan first fell into disfavor with Georgia Republicans by refusing to support former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. President Joe Biden became the first Democratic presidential nominee to carry the Peach State since Bill Clinton in 1992.
Subsequently, Duncan endorsed Biden’s reelection bid, then supported Harris when Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
Toward that end, he made numerous speeches on behalf of the Harris campaign and served as a political commentator on CNN during the months leading up to the November election.
The resolution also accused Duncan of working against the candidacies of Republicans Burt Jones for lieutenant governor and Herschel Walker for the U.S. Senate. Jones was elected lieutenant governor in 2022, while Walker lost to incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock.
Duncan responded Monday on social media, asserting Georgia Republicans should have more important concerns.
“Hard to believe this is a good use of time for a party that’s only got a limited amount of time to figure out mass deportations, world peace and global tariffs,” he wrote. “Learn how to take a victory lap not light another dumpster fire.”
The resolution prohibits Duncan from qualifying to run in future races as a Republican. It also bans him from “all property owned or leased by the Georgia Republican Party and all events held by or under the authority of the Georgia Republican Party.”
After serving three terms in the state House of Representatives, Duncan was elected lieutenant governor in 2018. He opted not to seek a second term in 2022.
by Dave Williams | Jan 4, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Former President Jimmy Carter’s contributions to his country will be remembered next week at a national funeral in Washington, D.C.
But on Saturday, it was Georgians’ turn to remember and honor their native son, as mourners lined streets and highways from Americus to Atlanta to say goodbye to the 39th president, who died Dec. 29 at age 100.
Saturday’s start to a six-day celebration of the life of Jimmy Carter was dedicated specifically to the leaders and staff of the Carter Center who will carry on the work he began there after his presidency in 1982.
Grandson Jason Carter, a former state senator and gubernatorial candidate now serving as the Carter Center’s board chair, thanked those staffers during a service Saturday afternoon at the center in Atlanta.
“Many of you have devoted decades to his legacy,” Jason Carter said. “Your expertise, your track record will continue to drive a world where people can participate in free, fair, and credible elections, a world where the rule of law and human rights are respected and enjoyed, not just by some people but by everyone, a world where kids don’t go blind from preventable diseases.”
Earlier Saturday, the late president’s flag-draped casket was transported from Americus, the seat of his home county of Sumter, past his hometown of Plains and the farm in nearby Archery where he spent his boyhood along U.S. 280 and Interstate 75 north to Atlanta. The motorcade paused outside the Archery home, where a National Park Service ranger saluted Carter by ringing the historic farm bell 39 times in honor of the nation’s 39th president.
The motorcade also stopped outside the Georgia Capitol in downtown Atlanta, where Gov. Brian Kemp, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, state House Speaker Jon Burns, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, and other city and state dignitaries observed a moment of silence.
At the Carter Center, a military honor guard bore Carter’s casket inside while a military band played “Hail to the Chief” and “America the Beautiful” and the Morehouse College Glee Club sang “The Lord’s Prayer.”
Chip Carter, the former president’s eldest son, was among the family members who traveled behind the hearse bearing Carter from Americus to Atlanta.
“There was a lot of love on the side of the road,” he said. “Every overpass had people on it. … It gave you goosebumps just to sit in the van and see the reactions of the people of Georgia.”
Chip Carter, choking back tears, paid tribute not just to his father but to his mother, Rosalynn Carter, who died in November 2023 at the age of 96. The two were married for 77 years.
“He was an amazing man, and he was held up, propped up, and soothed by an amazing woman,” Chip Carter said. “And the two of them together changed the world.”
Carter’s remains will lie in repose at the Carter Center until Tuesday morning, when he will be flown to Washington, D.C., to lie in state inside the U.S. Capitol Rotunda until Thursday’s funeral at the National Cathedral. A private funeral service and burial will take place in Plains later that day.
by Dave Williams | Jan 3, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The Justice Department has entered into a consent decree with Fulton County calling for a series of improvements at the county jail aimed at ending violations of prisoners’ constitutional rights, the federal agency announced Friday.
The feds launched an investigation into conditions at the Fulton County Jail in July 2023 based on complaints that jail employees were engaging in a pattern of inhumane – and frequently violent – treatment of prisoners. The jail also was accused of housing prisoners awaiting formal charges or trials in filthy and unsanitary living conditions in violation of the 8th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
The investigation began following the death in 2022 of Lashawn Thompson, a prisoner at the Fulton jail found dead covered in bed bugs and insects.
“The proposed consent decree is a critical step toward correcting the dangerous and dehumanizing conditions that have persisted in the Fulton County Jail for far too long,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Friday. “We are encouraged that local officials have agreed to a plan that will begin to address the inhumane, unconstitutional conditions that were reflected in Lashawn Thompson’s horrific death.”
“Our findings regarding the Fulton County Jail identified serious and life-threatening violations of the Constitution and other laws,” added Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “Detention in the Fulton County Jail amounted to a death sentence for dozens of people who have been murdered or who died as a result of inhumane conditions inside the facility.”
The consent decree, which still must be approved by the court, requires the county to develop plans to keep incarcerated people safe from violence, including a pest management system to keep the jail clean, sanitary and free of pests.
The agreement also calls for improving jail supervision and staffing, protecting prisoners from risk of suicide, providing adequate medical and mental health care, and ending the practice of housing vulnerable people in isolation.
The consent decree also provides for an independent monitor to keep track of the required improvements. The monitor will issue public reports on the jail’s progress every six months.
by Dave Williams | Jan 3, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) will move forward with a plan to expand the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge the swamp’s supporters hope will help sink a proposed titanium mine, the federal agency announced Friday.
The planned expansion of about 22,000 acres got an enthusiastic reception during a 55-day public comment period. The agency received about 30,000 comments generally supportive of the proposal from all 50 states and 36 countries.
“The response received during the public comment period is a testament to just how special Okefenokee is, not just to our local community, but to people all over the nation and around the world,” said Michael Lusk, the refuge’s manager. “This minor expansion will help further conservation efforts for the swamp along with the threatened and endangered species that inhabit it.”
Alabama-based Twin Pines Minerals (TPM) is seeking state permits to mine titanium dioxide on Trail Ridge, the Okefenokee’s eastern hydrologic boundary.
While company executives have said the project would not harm the swamp, scientific studies have concluded the proposed mine would significantly damage the largest blackwater swamp in North America by drawing down its water level and increasing the risk of drought and fires.
Josh Marks, president of Georgians for the Okefenokee, said expanding the refuge’s boundary is a “critical development” in efforts to protect the Okefenokee from mining.
“As someone who fought DuPont’s massive strip-mining proposal in the 1990s and helped add part of the DuPont property to the refuge, I know firsthand the vital role that land acquisition has and must play in safeguarding this world-class resource,” Marks said.
“The spotlight now shines even brighter on Gov. (Brian) Kemp, who should deny the permits for TPM’s dangerous project along the swamp’s southeastern edge, which will in turn incentivize TPM to follow DuPont’s lead and donate or sell its property for conservation.”
The Fish and Wildlife Service unveiled the planned expansion in October, which will allow the agency to negotiate with owners of the land who are willing to either sell their property to the federal government or establish a conservation easement.
Lewis Jones, a lawyer representing Twin Pines Minerals, wrote the Fish and Wildlife Service last month that it would not oppose the boundary expansion.
“We will take FWS at its word that its sole effect (is) to allow FWS to acquire property from willing sellers, that it will not have any effect on the permitting process … and that FWS will not use the expanded boundary as a basis to assert control over private property it is unable to acquire,” Jones wrote.
Expanding the boundary will allow the agency to potentially offer such priority public uses as hunting, fishing, wildlife watching, and education to the refuge’s more than 400,000 annual visitors, boosting a growing ecotourism economy in southeastern Georgia.
Friday’s announcement follows last month’s announcement that the refuge will be nominated to join UNESCO’s World Heritage List. If designated, the refuge would join more than 1,200 cultural and natural sites around the world, including the Grand Canyon and the Great Wall of China.
