by Dave Williams | Jan 28, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Calvin Smyre made history as the longest-serving member of the Georgia House of Representatives, and now his likeness will grace the state Capitol for years to come.
Lawmakers unveiled his official portrait Tuesday, the seventh of a Black person to be mounted on the walls of the Gold Dome. It’s an honor usually reserved for the dead.
“I am grateful beyond words to see this happen in my lifetime,” Smyre said after his former colleagues spent more than hour sharing praise and humorous and endearing stories about him on the floor of the state House.
Moments later, he helped pull the cover off the portrait, which hangs next to a passage to the chamber.
Smyre represented Columbus, and hometown artist Steven Tette painted his portrait using several photographs. The painting depicts Smyre seated in a dark suit, his hands clasped in front of him, a slight smile crossing his face. The crowd was pleased.
Smyre was 26 in 1974 when he was elected as a Democrat to the state House. He served 48 years until 2022, stepping down at age 74. He’d planned to serve 50 years, but President Joe Biden had nominated him as U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic.
Smyre would not take that post though. The U.S. Senate never confirmed his nomination, nor did it confirm him when the Biden administration switched the posting to the Bahamas.
Biden’s State Department named him in 2023 to serve as the U.S. representative to the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Smyre also was tapped to join Biden’s Intelligence Advisory Board.
Smyre rose to prominence in the Georgia House, helming the powerful Rules Committee before Republicans took control of the chamber in 2004. He also chaired the House Democratic Caucus.
His colleagues gave him a reverential nickname, calling him “Dean Smyre.”
He played a key role in high-profile legislation, such as making Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a state holiday, replacing the 1950s-era state flag and its Confederate battle symbol, passing a hate crimes law, and repealing Georgia’s 19th-century citizens arrest law after the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. That last, Smyre said, was a personal request by Arbery’s mother.
Smyre also was active in national Democratic politics, co-chairing Bill Clinton’s Georgia presidential campaigns in 1992 and 1996 and serving as a deputy of the 2000 Al Gore campaign.
Despite his partisan loyalties, colleagues from both sides of the political aisle praised Smyre as a bridge builder.
“I believe Calvin puts people in two groups: friends and future friends,” said Rep. Butch Parrish, R-Swainsboro, the current chairman of the Rules Committee.
Speaker Jon Burns, a Republican from Newington, called Smyre a mentor.
Among the high-ranking political figures who came to pay their respects were former Gov. Roy Barnes, a Democrat, who spoke as former Gov. Sonny Perdue, a Republican (and the current chancellor of the state university system) watched from the House floor.
A friend of Joe Frank Harris, another former Democratic governor, read a letter that was signed, “with deep love.”
by Dave Williams | Jan 28, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The Georgia Ports Authority is reporting a strong first half to the current fiscal year.
The Port of Savannah handled more than 2.8 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of containerized cargo from July through December, an increase of 11.4% over the same period the previous year.
The Port of Brunswick, one of the nation’s busiest ports for cars and trucks, moved 443,763 units of Roll-on/Roll-off cargo during the first half of fiscal 2025, up 7.5% over the first six months of the previous fiscal year.
The growth was aided by the Appalachian Regional Port in Northwest Georgia, which saw an increase of 13.5% in TEUs compared to the first half of fiscal 2024.
Meanwhile, ports authority officials reported the Blue Ridge Connector, a second inland port in Gainesville, is 50% complete and plans to open next year. Also, an expanded U.S. Customs inspection facility financed by the authority will open in March, which will support faster service at Savannah’s Garden City Terminal.
“We continue to focus our infrastructure renovation efforts on getting all our facilities into top shape for customers and their long-term needs,” authority board Chairman Kent Fountain said Tuesday.
The ports authority completed $262 million in improvements at the Port of Brunswick last year, adding new warehousing and processing space as well as 122 acres of Ro/Ro cargo storage. Construction has begun on a new railyard on Colonel’s Island, while a fourth Ro/Ro berth is in the engineering phase.
by Dave Williams | Jan 28, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia Chief Justice Michael Boggs used his annual State of the Judiciary address to members of the General Assembly Tuesday to plug two bills raising the salaries of superior court and statewide judges.
“An independent judiciary must be able to attract and retain qualified jurists,” Boggs told a joint session of the Georgia House and Senate.
House Bill 85 and House Bill 86, which contain the proposed pay hikes, were due to get their first airing Tuesday afternoon in the House Judiciary Committee.
Boggs also praised lawmakers for passing a Senate bill last year aimed at improving security for judges by shielding their personal information such as addresses and phone numbers from the public. He cited a recent increase in threats to Georgia judges, including bomb threats last month that forced the closure and evacuation of the Muscogee County Courthouse.
“It is crucial that our courtrooms are secure and those who work within them can perform their duties without fear,” Boggs said. “This means not only upgrading our physical security measures but also implementing comprehensive training so that security situations can be handled effectively, or better yet, prevented altogether.”
Boggs gave a shout-out to Justice Shawn Ellen LaGrua, who is chairing a committee that developed training sessions last year to help both judges and lawmakers understand how to better protect themselves and their families from security threats.
The chief justice also updated legislators on efforts to gauge the impact of artificial intelligence technology on the state’s legal system, allow trial judges to address a shortage of court reporters by using a digital recording system, and encourage more lawyers to practice in rural counties where legal help is scarce.
Boggs singled out Cobb County’s Veterans Accountability and Treatment Court program launched in 2014 to improve outcomes for veterans in Georgia’s criminal justice system.
And he asked lawmakers to support legislation to end partisan judicial elections in the few remaining probate and magistrate courts across the state that haven’t switched to nonpartisan elections.
“The moment judges stop interpreting and applying the law as it is written and start making decisions based on their own policy preferences – or when the public starts believing that’s what judges are doing or should be doing – our democratic system of government becomes irreparably damaged,” he said.
“Simply put, an independent judiciary with respect for the rule of law keeps us from becoming a society in which the guy with the biggest stick is in charge.”
by Dave Williams | Jan 28, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The Georgia Supreme Court Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit challenging the creation of the city of Mableton inside the borders of Cobb County.
In a unanimous ruling, the justices rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that the 2022 state law creating Mableton and providing a charter for the new city violated the “Single Subject Rule” in the Georgia Constitution prohibiting the General Assembly from passing legislation involving more than one subject.
The Cobb residents who filed the suit argued that a provision in the law establishing more than one community improvement district (CID) within Mableton violated the Single Subject Rule.
In Tuesday’s ruling, Justice Carla Wong McMillian wrote for the court that the Single Subject Rule only applies when provisions in a state law include two or more subjects that are “incongruous” or “unrelated” to the underlying bill.
“Not only is the legislature exercising similar powers in chartering a city and creating CIDs, but in this case, the legislature is exercising its powers in connection with the creation of a single municipality,” McMillian wrote. “The purpose of those CIDs is to allow Mableton to finance certain infrastructure and improvements in the same way that the charter provides for Mableton to exercise other power to finance its operations.”
Voters approved the creation of the new city in November 2022.
by Dave Williams | Jan 27, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – State prisons chief Tyrone Oliver asked Georgia lawmakers Monday for $10.4 million to hire an additional 330 correctional officers during this fiscal year to staff a prisons system the U.S. Justice Department harshly criticized in an audit last fall.
The additional staffing is part of a plan to phase-in 880 more guards by the end of calendar 2025 to improve staff-to-inmate ratios from one officer for every 14 inmates to one officer for every 11.
In a 94-page audit report following a multi-year investigation, the feds accused Georgia’s prison system of violating inmates’ constitutional rights by failing to protect them from widespread violence.
Early this month, Gov. Brian Kemp proposed to address the problems identified in the audit with $372 million in new funding for the Department of Corrections, a combination of adding staff and upgrading deteriorating prison infrastructure.
On Monday, state Rep. Al Williams, D-Midway, said the public has lost confidence in the prison system because of chronic short staffing.
“People don’t have faith in our ability to fix the prison system,” Williams told his colleagues on the House Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over public safety.
Oliver said the system currently has 2,600 vacant positions, too many to fill in a single year.
“We didn’t get here overnight,” he said. “We won’t get out of it overnight. … (But) these budget recommendations are a step in the right direction.”
Williams also was skeptical about a request for $96 million to design and build four 126-bed modular correctional units to house inmates who must be moved out of brick-and-mortar prisons slated for renovation projects.
“A modular unit isn’t going to be as solid as brick and mortar,” he said. “There’s no way it’s going to last 30 years.”
But Oliver said the modular units the corrections agency plans to use – manufactured by Galveston, Texas-based ModCorr LLC – shouldn’t be confused with modular homes.
“They’re not like modular units,” he said. “These are hardened prefab fortresses.”
While the modular units slated for prison use can be fixed or mobile, Oliver said the state plans to put them in permanent long-term locations . Specific sites for the units have yet to be selected.
Oliver also asked for $35 million for drone detection equipment to target a problem that has become rampant in the prison system: drones that drop contraband including cellphones inside prison walls for inmates to retrieve and use.
Oliver said inmates, including members of prison gangs, use cellphones to order hits on rival gang members inside and outside of prison walls as well as to smuggle illegal drugs into prison.
“Cellphones are considered a deadly weapon inside prisons,” he said. “They’re a very lucrative business.”
The subcommittee will send its recommendations on public safety spending to the full House Appropriations Committee to consider along with the rest of Kemp’s $40.5 billion fiscal 2025 midyear budget, which covers state spending through June 30.
