ATLANTA – More than 30 national, state, and local organizations have joined forces to oppose a proposed titanium mine near the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.
The Okefenokee Protection Alliance includes the Sierra Club, Georgia Conservancy, Georgia River Network, the Southern Environmental Law Center and St. Marys EarthKeepers.
Alabama-based Twin Pines Minerals is seeking a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a demonstration mining project on about 900 acres in Charlton County near the southeastern edge of the largest black water swamp in North America.
Opponents have raised concerns the mine could damage adjacent wetlands and permanently affect the hydrology of the entire 438,000-acre swamp.
“The new Okefenokee Protection Alliance is the first collaborative effort to have an exclusive focus on the protection of what is arguably our country’s healthiest remaining wetland of significance,” said Christian Hunt, Southeast program representative for Defenders of Wildlife, another member of the coalition.
“Everyone came together because of Twin Pines’ permit application, but by design we intend to be active over the long-term and address the present threat that we are dealing with today, as well as future threats that stand to compromise the Okefenokee.”
The alliance has introduced a new website (protectokefenokee.org) urging concerned citizens to write Gov. Brian Kemp asking him to protect the swamp.
“Just as we have reached out to folks to call on the Corps, we are reaching out to folks to call on Governor Kemp because it is not just the Corps that has a say,” said Rena Peck, executive director of the Georgia River Network. “We want Governor Kemp to stand with his constituents and all the citizens in Georgia who are concerned about the mine and ask the Corps for an environmental impact statement.”
Over the course of two recent public comment periods, the Corps received more than 60,000 comments, the vast majority urging the agency to deny Twin Pines’ permit application.
ATLANTA – Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law has a history of racism and encourages civilians lacking law enforcement training to take the law into their own hands, civil- and human-rights advocates said Monday.
“Law enforcement has resources to handle these kinds of things,” Christopher Bruce, political director for the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, told members of a legislative committee. “We should encourage citizens to look to law enforcement.”
The Georgia House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee took the first step with Monday’s hearing toward fulfilling House Speaker David Ralston’s pledge to follow up on the General Assembly’s recent passage of a hate-crimes law by considering additional criminal justice reforms.
The state’s citizen’s arrest law became a focus of attention following the fatal shooting earlier this year of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man gunned down while jogging near Brunswick. Two white men, a father and son, charged with murder in the case have claimed they were trying to make a citizen’s arrest because they suspected Arbery had committed a burglary.
The law was put on the books in Georgia during the Civil War, a time when white slaveholders were trying to prevent runaway slaves from joining the Union Army, said the Rev. James Woodall, president of the NAACP’s Georgia chapter.
“This law was literally written to keep Negroes as slaves,” he said.
After the war, vigilante mobs used the law to justify the lynching of blacks, Woodall said.
Both the ACLU and NAACP are recommending that the General Assembly repeal citizen’s arrest as an outdated law that is no longer necessary in an era when law enforcement agencies have sufficient resources to handle criminal complaints.
But some of the committee’s Republican members questioned whether doing away with the citizen’s arrest law would leave Georgians unprotected from home invasions or shopkeepers with no recourse to detain shoplifters.
Rep. Bert Reeves, R-Marietta, said a police officer can’t always be present.
“Can I detain somebody not authorized to be in my home or car?” he asked.
Marissa McCall Dodson, public policy director for the Southern Center for Human Rights, said the citizen’s arrest law could be repealed while maintaining the ability of shopkeepers to detain shoplifting suspects. Homeowners would still be protected by the legal right to self-defense, she said.
“Citizen’s arrest and self-defense are not the same,” she said.
Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter, who also testified Monday, said the cases of citizen’s arrests he has encountered in his decades as a prosecutor typically don’t go well because civilians attempting to make citizen’s arrests lack legal training.
“I’m personally not in favor of citizens arresting one another,” Porter said. “They usually turn out badly with someone’s misinterpretation of the law.”
However, Porter urged lawmakers to consider the potential consequences of abolishing homeowners’ ability to make a citizen’s arrest during a home invasion, leaving them with only the legal protection of self-defense.
“You incentivize a homeowner to kill someone rather than detain them under the citizen’s arrest law,” he said.
ATLANTA – Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms ordered all but essential businesses closed late Friday as coronavirus cases in the city and across Georgia hit record levels.
Bottoms placed Atlanta back under Phase 1 stay-at-home guidelines just two days after imposing a mask-wearing mandate requiring people in the city to wear masks in all public places.
“Based upon the surge of COVID-19 cases and other data trends, pursuant to the recommendations of our Reopening Advisory Committee, Atlanta will return to Phase I of our reopening plan,” Bottoms said in a news release. “Georgia reopened in a reckless manner and the people of our city and state are suffering the consequences.”
Under Phase 1, which was in effect in Atlanta this spring until early May, residents are to make only essential trips such as going to the grocery store or pharmacy. Businesses such as restaurants and retail establishments are only allowed to provide curbside services.
Gov. Brian Kemp, who has not issued a mask-wearing order statewide, criticized the mayor on Wednesday for imposing restrictions beyond what the state is requiring and did so again following Friday’s order.
“Mayor Bottoms’ action today is merely guidance – both non-binding and legally unenforceable,” Kemp said in a prepared statement. “As clearly stated in the governor’s executive order, no local action can be more or less restrictive, and that rule applies statewide.”
Bottoms took action on the same day Georgia added more than 4,400 confirmed cases of COVID-19, a daily record. More than 111,000 Georgians have contracted the virus since the global pandemic began hitting the U.S. back in March.
As of 3 p.m. Friday, Fulton County had 10,021 confirmed coronavirus cases overall. The county had suffered 321 deaths from COVID-19 since the pandemic began along with 1,230 hospitalizations.
Despite the governor’s warnings that local mask-wearing requirements can’t be enforced, a growing number of Georgia cities have imposed them. The city of Augusta imposed a masking mandate on Friday, joining Atlanta, Savannah and East Point.
Also on Friday, Kemp announced plans to reopen the Georgia World Congress Center in downtown Atlanta for standby hospital beds and medical equipment to help handle the recent influx of COVID-19 hospitalizations.
ATLANTA – Georgia tax collections fell in June for the third month in a row but not as precipitously as the previous two months, the state Department of Revenue reported late Friday.
State tax revenues declined by 8.8% last month compared to June of last year. That marked a slight improvement over the 10.1% drop-off reported in May and a huge jump over the nearly 36% plunge in April at the height of the statewide economic lockdown brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.
Individual income tax collections were off only slightly in June, by 0.6% compared to the same month a year ago. Net sales taxes fell by 1.9% during the month.
Typically volatile corporate income tax receipts, however, fell sharply in June by 56.5%.
With the tax payment deadline delayed until July 15 this year because of COVID-19, corporate tax payments last month were down 53.9% from June of last year. On the other hand, corporate tax refunds rose by a steep 40.9%.
Falling tax revenues since spring resulting from the coronavirus-driven recession were the key factor driving $2.2 billion in state spending cuts the General Assembly imposed in the fiscal 2021 budget lawmakers adopted late last month.
Revenues didn’t drop quite as much as had been anticipated, allowing the legislature to avoid furloughing teachers and state employees. However, there wasn’t enough money to fund either the pay raises Gov. Brian Kemp had proposed in his original budget recommendations or to consider a second installment on a state income tax rate cut the General Assembly passed two years ago.
ATLANTA – Georgia House Speaker David Ralston is living up to his pledge to consider moving criminal justice reform beyond the hate crimes bill the General Assembly passed last month.
The House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee, which has jurisdiction over Georgia’s criminal laws, is scheduled to meet Monday to hear testimony on the state’s citizen’s arrest law.
As the legislature wrapped up its 2020 session late last month, Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, said legislation introduced by state Rep. Carl Gilliard, D-Garden City, aimed at eliminating citizen’s arrests in Georgia was worth serious consideration.
But the speaker said lawmakers didn’t have time during the final rush toward adjournment to go beyond the hate crimes bill the legislature passed during the final week of this year’s session. He promised to hold hearings on other criminal justice reform proposals in order to craft legislation for the General Assembly to take up during the 2021 session starting in January.
The right of Georgians to make a citizen’s arrest was at the heart of the fatal shooting last February of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man gunned down while jogging on a street near Brunswick. Three white men, including a father and son, were arrested and charged with murder after a video of the incident surfaced in April.
Gilliard’s bill was among more than a dozen criminal justice and policing reform measures that were filed last month when the legislature returned to the Capitol after lawmakers took three months off to discourage the spread of coronavirus.
During a news conference to call attention to his bill, Gilliard said the citizen’s arrest law is outdated and gives untrained civilians a reason to perpetrate violence in the name of law enforcement.
“We need to understand that citizen’s arrest is dangerous more often than not,” Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, D-Decatur, said at the time.
Other measures likely to get an airing in legislative committees this summer and fall include proposals to repeal Georgia’s stand-your-ground law, prohibit police officers from engaging in racial profiling and ban no-knock search warrants.
