ATLANTA – The two Republicans seeking Georgia’s 9th Congressional District seat agreed Sunday on many of the most pressing issues facing the federal government.
But state Rep. Matt Gurtler and gun store owner Andrew Clyde tore into each other’s political and business records during a debate sponsored by the Atlanta Press Club.
Meanwhile, the two Democrats in the race – actor and Army veteran Devin Pandy and business owner Brooke Siskin – agreed with each other often during their 30-minute debate but drew a sharp contrast with the two Republicans.
The winners of the two Aug. 11 runoffs will square off in November for the right to succeed U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, R-Gainesville, who is leaving the House to run for the U.S. Senate.
The Republicans
Gurtler and Clyde supported Gov. Brian Kemp’s decision not to impose a statewide mask-wearing mandate on Georgians to discourage the spread of coronavirus.
“A lot it this has to come down to personal responsibility,” Gurtler said.
Clyde said requiring people to wear masks would violate their constitutional rights.
“There’s no pandemic exception in the Constitution,” he said.
The two also agreed on President Donald Trump’s determination to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico to deter illegal immigration.
But Clyde attacked Gurtler’s record in the Georgia House, while Gurtler targeted Clyde’s business dealings with the Internal Revenue Service.
Clyde took Gurtler to task for missing a vote last month on a bill aimed at protecting police officers from bias-motivated crime. Gurtler said he was meeting with constituents during a lengthy recess prior to the vote on the legislation and couldn’t get back in time to vote on it.
“I fully support law enforcement,” he said. “It’s wrong to paint and smear me in the campaign that I don’t.”
When Gurtler’s turn came to go on the attack, he accused Clyde of hypocrisy because his business entered into contracts with the IRS after Clyde successfully sued the taxing agency for wrongly confiscating more than $940,000 from his company.
Clyde said the contract his business has with the federal General Services Administration requires him to serve every federal agency, including the military and Secret Service.
“We can’t discriminate,” he said. “Every branch of government has the right to use that contract.”
The two Republicans did display a shade of difference on illegal immigration.
Clyde said no exception should be made for the so-called Dreamers, children who were brought to this country illegally by their parents.
“You need to come here legally,” he said.
But Gurtler said there should be an exception for the Dreamers.
“I don’t think we should be blaming the children for the sins of the fathers and mothers,” he said.
The Democrats
Siskin and Pandy drew sharp distinctions between themselves and Republicans on several issues, including masks.
“We are not wearing enough masks in this country, which is causing further spread of the virus,” Siskin said.
Pandy criticized Trump for imposing steep tariffs on Chinese imports of U.S. goods, which he said continue to impact farmers in the mostly rural 9th Congressional District.
“We have to realize tariffs do not hurt the country they’re on as much as our own people,” he said.
While neither Democratic candidate has held elective office, Pandy touted his experience of more than 20 years in the U.S. Army, including leading troops on the battlefield.
“My deployments have led me to a place where I have liaisoned with foreign governments,” he said.
Siskin said her “real-world” experience as a business owner would help prepare her to serve in Congress, as would her activism on behalf of victims of domestic violence. She was arrested in Gwinnett County earlier this month for refusing to comply with a court order to turn over guns and ammunition in her possession.
During Sunday’s debate, she said she owns one gun for protection against her ex-husband.
“Every day, women live in fear of their ex-husband or husband coming after them, and they have no protection,” Siskin said. “I have a right to own a gun to protect myself.”
Siskin called for universal health care in America as a right rather than a privilege.
Pandy said he supports former Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s call for a “wealth” tax on the top 1% of American income earners to raise the revenue necessary to pay for universal health coverage.
The two debates, which were live streamed on Sunday, will be broadcast Tuesday on GPB-TV. The Republican debate will air at 7 p.m., followed by the Democratic debate at 7:30.
Georgia’s 9th Congressional District covers Northeast Georgia from Gainesville and the northern end of Athens north and east to the South Carolina and North Carolina lines.
The U.S. Senate could take up coronavirus relief legislation next week.
ATLANTA – A diverse quartet of leaders representing cities and counties, schools, health-care workers and businesses across Georgia are calling on Congress to include local governments in a new economic stimulus package.
Legislation the U.S. House of Representatives passed in May includes $1 trillion for state and local governments suffering a huge loss in tax revenues resulting from the pandemic’s economic impact.
In a media call Friday, a Georgia mayor, school superintendent, health-care executive and business owner urged the U.S. Senate to take up the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act (HEROES) Act when Congress reconvenes Monday following the July Fourth holiday recess.
“Union City has been hit and hit hard by the public health and economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic,” said Vince Williams, mayor of the Fulton County city of 20,000 residents.
Williams, who also serves as incoming president of the Georgia Municipal Association, said the first economic stimulus package Congress passed in March included aid for 36 U.S. cities with populations of 500,000 or greater, including Atlanta. But smaller cities were left out, he said.
“What do we do about small-town America?” he asked. “We need to provide public services to our residents.”
Allen Fort, superintendent of the Taliaferro County School District in Crawfordville, said schools need federal aid if they are to reopen classrooms safely.
Fort said getting back to in-person instruction is critical in rural school districts that lack adequate internet coverage. He said 60% of Taliaferro County lacks internet connectivity.
“If [students] are not at school, they’re not receiving the education they need,” he said. “But bringing them to school in this situation is not the answer.”
Zach Robinson, senior manager at the Emory Heart and Vascular Center, said more public funding is needed to help hospitals that are losing money because they have had to cancel elective surgery in order to treat an influx of coronavirus patients
He said budgetary red ink is forcing hospitals to furlough and lay off employees at a time they’re most needed to serve on the front lines of the fight against COVID-19.
“We must build up our public infrastructure,” Robinson said. “Healthy employees make a healthy economy.”
While stimulus money for local governments doesn’t go to the private sector, more federal aid could benefit private businesses indirectly, said Chris Hart, who owns a home décor and gift store in Thomasville with his wife.
He said businesses can’t function in communities ravaged by coronavirus.
“If we don’t beat the virus, we simply can’t open the economy safely,” Hart said. “We’re going to need bold action from Congress to ensure our businesses can survive.”
ATLANTA – An environmental organization is urging Gov. Brian Kemp to veto a bill the General Assembly passed overwhelmingly that would reserve a permanent spot in the state budget for freight rail.
The Georgia chapter of the Sierra Club supports stepping up investments in freight rail to relieve some of the truck traffic on the state’s highways.
But House Bill 820 should be vetoed because it could be used to steer state funding to privately owned “short-line” freight railroads, not just those owned by the state, Mark Woodall, chairman of the Georgia Sierra Club’s legislative committee, wrote in a letter to the governor. Allowing public money to go to private rail carriers would violate the Georgia Constitution’s “gratuities clause,” Woodall wrote.
“The short-line railroads that are owned by the state and leased to operators should not be competing with profitable private carriers for limited state funds,” he wrote. “Legislation on this topic must be explicit in prohibiting such misuse of these monies.”
Georgia has the longest network of active rail lines in the Southeast, covering more than 4,600 miles.
Both House Bill 820 and an identical measure introduced in the Georgia Senate passed the Senate unanimously during this year’s legislative session and cleared the state House of Representatives with just one “no” vote.
While the state has helped support maintaining short-line railroads on an intermittent basis, there is no ongoing line item in annual state budgets for freight rail.
“We’ve got to look for ways to get this freight off of our interstates and state highways,” said Sen. Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega, the Senate bill’s chief sponsor. “There’s a role for the state in infrastructure investment.”
But in light of the state’s current budget crunch, the $25.9 billion fiscal 2021 budget lawmakers adopted last month does not include any funding for freight rail. The General Assembly cut state spending by $2.2 billion to help offset the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, leaving little room for new appropriations.
“[The legislation] creates a placeholder in the budget so that, as funding is identified, they have a place to start in the budget,” Josh Waller, director of policy and government affairs for the Georgia Department of Transportation, told members of the State Transportation Board Thursday.
Gooch said the two bills address the concerns brought up in the Sierra Club letter. He pointed to a provision in the measures requiring the Georgia commissioner of transportation to make sure any state funding of freight rail is for “a substantial public benefit” in compliance with the state constitution.
“Anything we do would have to pass the legal test,” Gooch said.
Waller said he doesn’t anticipate encountering any opposition from Kemp to signing the freight rail bill or any of the other DOT-requested legislation the General Assembly passed this year.
ATLANTA – Georgia’s two U.S. senators are urging the Internal Revenue Service to fix persistent problems that are causing delays in the distribution of the economic stimulus checks Congress authorized last March.
“We are continuing to hear from eligible constituents who have not received their payments due to what appears to be glitches in the Internal Revenue Service’s processes,” Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loefller wrote in a letter this week to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and IRS Commissioner Charles Retting.
“We urge you to take steps to continue to improve your online tool to ensure that eligible individuals can promptly receive their payments or create additional outlets for them to receive information on the status of their payments.”
Perdue and Loeffler cited instances where constituents used the “Get my Payment” tool online and were told they were eligible and that the IRS had their direct deposit information. But the payments have not come.
In other cases, the IRS informed constituents they needed to send their direct deposition information in order to receive payment. But when they tried to use the “Need More Information” tool online, they received an error message saying they were not recognized on the website.
The senators also blamed delayed payments on a huge backlog that began piling up when some IRS offices closed or started operating in a telework setting.
“We also implore you to make use of the IRS Office of the Taxpayer Advocate in addressing concerns with Economic Impact Payments to help alleviate the backlog, since the office is not currently being utilized for this purpose,” the senators wrote.
Perdue and Loeffler also asked for a briefing on the progress the IRS is making toward reducing the backlog of inquiries from Americans who have not received stimulus checks.
ATLANTA – Georgia’s state-financed venture capital fund has been left with only operating money for the foreseeable future, a victim of the deep budget cuts the General Assembly approved last month.
Invest Georgia, which received allocations of $10 million in each of the last four fiscal years, is being hit with a $9.75 million reduction for fiscal 2021, which began July 1. The cut came as lawmakers were casting a wide net to find $2.2 billion in spending reductions to help offset the fiscal impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
The VC fund has enough leftover capital from fiscal 2020 to continue investing in Georgia-based growth and early-stage companies through the end of this calendar year, Knox Massey, Invest Georgia’s executive director, said this week. But the fund’s future beyond that is uncertain.
“The cut was a surprise, and it’s disappointing,” Massey said. “But there was a lot of pressure on the state to generate revenue wherever they could.”
Invest Georgia was created in 2013 as a priority initiative of then-Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle.
Since then, it has invested in 10 private-equity funds, most recently in Atlanta’s early-stage VC firm Tech Square Ventures. Invest Georgia partnered with Cox Enterprises and Georgia-Pacific in a $25 million investment announced early this month.
“A huge portion of our funds go to Georgia companies, which create jobs,” Massey said. “We consider ourselves part of the solution.”
Cagle’s successor as lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan, who formed a task force of political, business and academic leaders in January to look for ideas on how to make Georgia a technology center, believes Invest Georgia has an important role to play in achieving that goal, spokeswoman Macy McFall said.
“The lieutenant governor has always been a supporter of Invest Georgia and the work they do to fund innovation and entrepreneurship across our state,” she said. “It is [his] sincere hope that the economic outlook for our state quickly improves and that adjustments can be made in January to restore some of the funding in this area, and he hopes that Invest Georgia will be among the far-reaching public-private partnerships that will take us towards the goal of being the best technology state on the East Coast.”
