by Dave Williams | Oct 9, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – About 50,000 Georgia electric customers were still without power Wednesday in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, as yet another massive storm – Hurricane Milton – was bearing down on Florida.
Most Georgians remaining without power are in rural areas served by the state’s electric membership corporations (EMCs), Gov. Brian Kemp said late Wednesday afternoon after meeting with Chatham County emergency management officials in Savannah.
“They have a lot of devastation,” Kemp said. “[But] they’re steadily going after it.”
The governor also reported the death toll in Georgia from Helene has reached 34. The huge storm tore through South Georgia and northeast through the Augusta area Sept. 27 before moving into the Carolinas, where some of the worst damage and the most deaths occurred in western North Carolina.
Now, with Milton expected to hit Florida’s west coast Wednesday night as a Category 3 hurricane, many of the Floridians in a huge evacuation zone were heading north into Georgia. Kemp said hotel rooms are filling up, but rooms remained available in Albany, Columbus, Macon, and Atlanta. State parks are open to RVs and campers, he said.
With so many Floridians fleeing Milton, traffic in South Georgia has been heavy, Kemp said.
“Just about every car on I-75 north had a Florida license plate,” he said. “[But] we’ve seen that in the past and know how to deal with it.”
While Hurricane Milton is expected to move quickly through Florida’s midsection from the Gulf Coast before heading out into the Atlantic Ocean, Georgia isn’t likely to escape the storm completely. Twenty counties in the southeastern portion of the state are expected to receive two to six inches of rainfall and tropical storm winds of up to 50 miles per hour starting early Thursday.
The six counties likely to get the most rain – Camden, Glynn, McIntosh, Brantley, Charlton, and Ware – could see flash flooding, according to the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency.
Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., has launched a bipartisan push for federal disaster relief to farmers affected by Hurricane Helene, working with U.S. Rep. Austin Scott, R-Tifton.
“There is the risk of not just deep but lasting damage to Georgia agriculture … if Congress fails to act swiftly,” Ossoff said.
Ossoff said estimates are that up to 35% of Georgia’s cotton crop and 10% to 30% of the state’s peanuts have been lost. At least 200 poultry houses were damaged in the storm, while up to 4 million acres of timberland and up to 50,000 acres of pecan orchards were destroyed, he said.
Ossoff said he wants Congress to act on disaster relief as soon as the dollar value of the losses has been assessed, a process that remains ongoing.
by Dave Williams | Oct 9, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A Fulton County Superior Court judge dismissed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to force Gov. Brian Kemp to schedule an administrative hearing on whether to remove three members of the State Election Board.
The ruling by Judge Ural Glanville sided with a legal opinion Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr released last month asserting that the plaintiffs in the case don’t have the legal authority to make such a demand.
State Sen. Nabilah Islam Parkes, D-Duluth; Cathy Woolard, a former chair of the Fulton County Board of Registration & Elections; and Democratic Senate candidate Randall Mangham filed suit after the board’s three Republican members – Janice Johnston, Janelle King, and former state Sen. Rick Jeffares – adopted controversial changes to state election rules that, among other things, would empower local election officials to delay or refuse to certify election results and require ballots to be hand counted on Election Night.
Democrats say the chaos and uncertainty such changes could create following the Nov. 5 presidential election could lead to former President Donald Trump capturing Georgia’s 16 electoral votes even if Vice President Kamala Harris has won more of the state’s popular vote.
Republicans have denied plotting to help Trump and have defended the rules changes as a way to ensure the election is fair and accurate.
After the lawsuit was filed, Kemp asked Carr for his opinion on whether the phrase “upon charges being filed” in state law means a citizen can present information about a state board member that might constitute formal charges.
“It is my official opinion that … the phrase … does not mean that a citizen can simply submit information to the governor and trigger the hearing process contemplated,” Carr wrote in response.
On Wednesday, Islam Parkes said she was disappointed with the ruling and vowed to appeal.
“For decades, prior governors have initiated hearings based on citizen complaints,” she said. “Governor Kemp should not be allowed to make up his own rules.”
Kara Murray, a spokesperson for Carr, defended the decision.
“The plaintiffs were legally, factually and constitutionally wrong,” she said. “While others may try to use our court system to gain headlines, we will continue to follow the law in our representation.”
by Dave Williams | Oct 9, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The University System of Georgia Board of Regents is asking two organizations that govern collegiate sports to ban transgender women from participating in women’s sports.
Tuesday’s unanimous vote came two years after the Georgia High School Association (GHSA) voted to require students to participate in high school sports based on their gender at birth.
The controversy over transgender women taking part in women’s sports erupted during the 2022 NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships held at Georgia Tech.
Lia Thomas of the University of Pennsylvania, who had posted respectable but not spectacular times while swimming for the men’s team, emerged into the national spotlight while transitioning to female through hormone replacement therapy, winning the 500-meter freestyle event.
Five former elite-level college women swimmers who took part in those championships testified before a state Senate committee in August that being forced to compete against Thomas was unfair. They also said they were uncomfortable having to share a locker room with Thomas.
“Biologically female student-athletes could be put at a competitive disadvantage when student-athletes who are biologically male or who have undergone masculinizing hormone therapy compete in female athletic competitions,” read the second paragraph of the resolution the Board of Regents adopted Tuesday.
The resolution urges both the NCAA and the National Junior College Athletic Association to make their policies toward transgender women in sports consistent with the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, which already bans transgender women from competing in women’s sports.
The issue was among the most controversial the General Assembly took up in 2022. Lawmakers considered a bill to ban transgender athletes from participating on school sports teams that align with their gender identity rather than their gender at birth.
However, the legislature stopped short of an outright ban, voting instead to leave it up to the GHSA’s executive committee, which approved a ban that spring.
Now, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who presides over the Georgia Senate, is vowing to revisit transgender women in sports during the 2025 legislative session with a bill that would ban them from participating in sports at Georgia’s public colleges.
“I want to thank the Board of Regents for taking action on an issue I have stressed as a priority and the Senate has led on in Georgia – protecting women’s sports,” Jones said following Tuesday’s vote. “The work female athletes put into competing should be protected at all cost, no matter the age. This action brings us one step closer toward achieving that ultimate goal.”
During the 2022 debate in the General Assembly, legislative Democrats, transgender students and their parents argued that banning transgender girls from participating in girls’ high school sports would discriminate against students who already suffer from prejudice. They cited above-average suicide rates among transgender teens.
by Dave Williams | Oct 8, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp issued a state of emergency Tuesday for 38 Georgia counties likely to be affected by Hurricane Milton, a massive storm expected to make landfall in west-central Florida Wednesday night.
Milton intensified rapidly Monday into a Category 5 hurricane, with winds topping 180 miles an hour. The storm is expected to weaken but only to Category 3 before making landfall, but as it weakens, it is likely to become wider.
In South Georgia and along the coast, the storm is expected to bring heavy rainfall and tropical storm wind gusts. The counties covered by Kemp’s emergency declaration range as far north as Bibb and Monroe counties and include the Columbus and Albany areas in Southwest Georgia, all six coastal counties, the Valdosta area, and Bulloch, Bryan, and Candler counties along Interstate 16.
With evacuation orders in effect in many parts of Florida, traffic volumes on Interstate 75 northbound Tuesday morning were 280% higher than normal from the Georgia-Florida line north to Macon. On I-95 northbound and along I-16, volumes were 89% above normal.
The Georgia Department of Transportation announced that the I-75 South Metro Express Lanes south of Atlanta will remain only to northbound traffic only through Tuesday to accommodate Floridians complying with evacuation orders. The toll lanes can be accessed by motorists using a Georgia Peach Pass, Florida Sun Pass, or E-Z Pass.
The state Department of Natural Resources has opened Georgia state parks to RVs and campers.
Kemp’s emergency declaration for Hurricane Milton co-exists with the state of emergency he declared late last month when Hurricane Helene was bearing down on Georgia. On Tuesday, Kemp renewed the earlier order to run through Oct. 16.
Unlike Helene, which did tremendous damage as it swept through Georgia and the Carolinas, Hurricane Milton is expected to move across Florida on Thursday and into the Atlantic Ocean Thursday night.
by Dave Williams | Oct 8, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia counties are systematically denying mass voter challenges brought by citizen activists instead of investigating them as the law requires, State Election Board Executive Director Mike Coan said Tuesday.
The Republican-controlled board instructed Coan last month to look into how challenges are being handled in eight counties and report back with his findings. The list of counties included Athens-Clarke, Bibb, Cobb, DeKalb, Forsyth, Fulton, Gwinnett, and Jackson counties.
“The challengers by and large have more sophisticated technology than our election departments. That’s where the problem is,” Coan told board members during a daylong meeting at the state Capitol. “Thousands of voter challenges have been dismissed arbitrarily. We need to address these things.”
Coan said local election officials are reluctant to investigate voter challenges for fear of being sued by Georgians removed from voter rolls.
Citizen watchdogs have become much more active bringing voter challenges in Georgia since the 2020 election. While Republicans say the mass voter challenges activists have been filing are aimed at ensuring election integrity, Democrats say they’re targeting heavily Democratic counties to get Democratic voters off the rolls.
“There are people who are sore losers who have brought frivolous challenges in Democratic counties,” said state Rep. Saira Draper, D-Atlanta. “That’s a nakedly partisan ploy.”
Daniel White, a lawyer representing the Cobb County Board of Elections, said counties were able to process voter challenges in the days when fewer were filed.
“The law has not been updated for people bringing 2,000 or 3,000 challenges at a time,” he said. “The legislature needs to deal with it.”
White accused Coan and the board of trying to “set a narrative” that counties are mishandling voter challenges rather than seriously investigating complaints.
But board member Janelle King, one of the Republicans on the board, denied playing partisan politics with the voter rolls. She said the counties the board asked Coan to investigate were based on complaints from citizens attending board meetings.
“I will not allow anybody to stand up here and mischaracterize what we’re doing,” she said.
Board Vice Chair Janice Johnston said the problem of voter rolls bloated with the names of voters who have died, moved out of the county where they registered, or moved out of state is real. Both statewide and in some counties, there are more registered voters than the voting-age population, she said.
Mark Davis, an election data specialist, said his research from 2020 showed 35,230 Georgia voters who had moved to another county cast ballots in their previous county, a felony offense. He suggested Georgia lawmakers enact a bill modeled after a Virginia law requiring residents to update their driver’s licenses after moving to another jurisdiction. Most Georgians register to vote through the state Department of Driver Services.
“The way to fix this problem is helping voters not become unqualified voters in the first place,” Davis said.
Johnston asked Coan to prepare a written report the board could use to develop uniform guidelines for handling voter challenges and recommend legislation to the General Assembly.
