by Dave Williams | Jan 8, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The U.S. House of Representatives has passed Republican-backed legislation named in honor of Georgia murder victim Laken Riley as the first act of the new Congress.
The Laken Riley Act requires detention of illegal immigrants charged with nonviolent crimes including theft and burglary. It cleared the House 264-159 on Tuesday, with 48 Democrats – including U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath of Marietta – joining majority Republicans in voting for the bill.
Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, was murdered last February while jogging on the campus of the University of Georgia. An illegal immigrant from Venezuela was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Jose Ibarra had previously been detained on shoplifting charges but was released from custody.
The Riley case became fodder for last year’s presidential campaign, with Republican former President Donald Trump raising her murder in his call for a crackdown on illegal immigration on his way to winning a second term in the White House. Trump will take the oath of office Jan. 20.
The four Democrats in Georgia’s House delegation other than McBath voted against the bill, while all nine Republicans voted in favor of it.
The House passed the legislation last year, but it failed to get through a then-Democratic controlled U.S. Senate. While the Senate is now in Republican hands, some Democrats still would have to support the bill to gain the 60-vote threshold needed to pass legislation in the 100-member Senate.
by Dave Williams | Jan 7, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The celebration of the life of former President Jimmy Carter moved from Atlanta to the nation’s capitol Tuesday, with a day full of pageantry capped by a memorial service inside the Capitol Rotunda.
The nation’s top political leaders praised the many accomplishments of Georgia’s only president thus far not only during his four years in the White House in the late 1970s but during more than four decades after leaving office when he founded the Carter Center and built houses for the poor as a volunteer with Habitat for Humanity.
“Jimmy Carter established a new model for what it means to be a former president,” Vice President Kamala Harris said late Tuesday afternoon during the service inside the Rotunda. “(He) leaves an extraordinary post-presidential legacy.”
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said he was just 4 years old when Carter was sworn in as president in 1977 and was the first president he remembers.
“President Carter’s life, his selfless service, his fight against cancer and his lasting contributions to his fellow man are truly remarkable,” Johnson said. “Whether he was in the White House or during his post-presidential years … President Carter was willing to roll up his sleeves to serve and get the job done.”
Carter died Dec. 29 at his home in Plains at the age of 100. His remains were transported from his hometown to the Carter Center in Atlanta last Saturday and flown to Washington, D.C., on Tuesday morning.
Upon his arrival at Joint Base Andrews in suburban Maryland just outside of Washington Tuesday afternoon, his flag-draped casket was taken inside the city to the U.S. Navy Memorial to commemorate his service as a submarine engineer during the 1940s after graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy.
There, a military honor guard placed his casket in a horse-drawn caisson for the trip to the Capitol. Members of his family walked behind along Pennsylvania Avenue, harkening back to Inauguration Day 1977, when Carter and wife Rosalynn stunned their Secret Service escorts by getting out of their car and walking so they could wave to the crowd of admirers.
During the ceremony, Harris recited a long list of accomplishments by Carter during his White House years, including a series of environmental protection bills, more than doubling the size of the nation’s national parks system, and appointing an unprecedented number of Blacks and women to federal judgeships.
But Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Carter’s work after leaving the White House was just as impressive.
“Jimmy Carter knew that his status as a former president could bring attention to good causes,” Thune said. “But simply lending his name or maybe attending a gala or two wasn’t Jimmy Carter’s style. … Well into his nineties, he could be found with his hard hat and and tools on construction sites doing the practical work required to get families into homes.”
Carter will lie in state inside the Capitol Rotunda until Thursday morning, when a national funeral service will take place at the National Cathedral. President Joe Biden, who was away from Washington traveling on Tuesday, will deliver a eulogy.
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.
