by Dave Williams | Apr 8, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The Port of Brunswick handled an all-time record of 91,360 units of Roll-on/Roll-off cargo last month, up 18% compared to March of last year, the Georgia Ports Authority reported Tuesday.
As was the case with container trade at the Port of Savannah, higher volumes of vehicles and heavy equipment at Brunswick was due in part to customers front-loading orders to avoid new tariffs. The Port of Brunswick has become the nation’s busiest for Roll-on/Roll-off cargo.
“More manufacturers are making Colonel’s Island a main hub for the global trade of autos and machinery,” said Griff Lynch, the ports authority’s president and CEO. “Brunswick’s central location in the fast-growing U.S. Southeast market and unmatched capacity to take on new business mean our customers can plan for the long term.”
To better handle growing trade at Brunswick, the first phase of a new railyard on the south side of Colonel’s Island Terminal will be completed next month. That will double rail capacity from five to 10 trains per week, increasing the port’s annual rail capacity from about 150,000 autos to more than 340,000.
A second phase in the project will bring annual rail capacity to 590,000 units, more than three times the current capacity.
The ports authority also recently competed $262 million in capacity upgrades in Brunswick, including new warehousing and vehicle processing space. A fourth berth for Ro/Ro vessels is in the engineering phase.
Lynch said uncertainty over tariffs has not affected the agency’s plans to invest $4.2 billion in capacity expansions at Savannah and Brunswick during the next decade.
by Dave Williams | Apr 5, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – An unexpectedly early end to the 2025 General Assembly session Friday night left a bid to put some restrictions on school-zone speed cameras in Georgia on the shelf until next year.
While the Georgia House of Representatives was debating a substitute version of House Bill 651, the state Senate abruptly adjourned “sine die” shortly before 9:15 p.m., calling an end to the legislative session. The General Assembly usually works until midnight on the last day of the session.
The House went on to pass the substitute 140-29, but with senators gone home, final action on the bill can’t take place until the 2026 session begins next January.
“This is the first time in my 30-plus years that I tried to pass a bill, and there was no one left to receive it,” veteran Rep. Alan Powell, R-Hartwell, the measure’s chief sponsor, said on the House floor.
While school-zone traffic cameras have reduced the number of speeders and possibly the number of student injuries and deaths, supporters say, the resulting tickets have frustrated many motorists. That tension explains why House lawmakers introduced two bills this year to regulate or even do away with the devices.
Powell’s House Bill 651 sought to strip school boards of the authority to install the devices, leaving that decision to cities and counties. The other measure, House Bill 225, sponsored by Rep. Dale Washburn, R-Macon, called for prohibiting new contracts with the companies that install school-zone speed cameras starting in July 2027 and repealing the law allowing them starting in July 2028.
The opposition stemmed from the rapid expansion of the cameras, driven at least in part by the revenue generated for local governments.
One lawmaker said the cameras produced 120 tickets per day in one small city, or about 22,000 over the 180-day school year.
“And at the current price of $75 per ticket, that’s over $1.6 million for one location, for one city,” Sen. Timothy Bearden, R-Carrollton, said during the Senate debate on HB 225. “That’s over $1.6 million for one location, for one city.”
The money, said Sen. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, during the debate on HB 651, is like “crack cocaine for government.”
But Sen. Bo Hatchett, R-Cornelia, said the automated enforcement has had the intended effect. A little girl was killed by a speeder in front of her school in Banks County before a camera was installed there, he said. There have been no fatalities there since the cameras were installed, Hatchett said, adding that the number of crashes in front of the school has declined despite an overall increase in the county.
Some local governments are “bad actors” just trying to make money from the cameras, he said, but other communities are using them the right way.
“The issue is people are driving too fast in front of schools,” he said.
The Senate passed HB 651 by a 51-3 vote. But rather than agree with the Senate version of the bill and give it final passage, the House proposed a lengthy amendment.
Among other things, the amendment would have required that flashing signs accompany speed-zone cameras informing motorists how fast they’re driving, that no tickets could be issued unless the violator was driving more than 10 miles an hour over the speed limit, and requiring cities and counties to dedicate revenue from speeding tickets to school safety purposes.
House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, strongly chastised the Senate for calling it quits before giving Powell’s bill a final vote.
“It appears the Senate has checked all their priorities, their political priorities, and decided to end their night,” Burns informed his House colleagues. “But this chamber puts policies before politics. … Let’s do our work.”
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who presides over the Senate, said he called an end to the session when he did because the Senate had completed work on all of its priorities.
“It’s a two-year cycle,” he said. “What we didn’t get done this year is available (in 2026).”
Jones went on to take a shot at his House counterpart.
“I don’t tell the House how to run their chamber, and they don’t tell me how to run mine,” he said.
After the House vote on Powell’s bill, House lawmakers gave a handful of other bills that didn’t have to go back to the Senate final passage, then adjourned for the year shortly after 10:30 p.m.
by Dave Williams | Apr 4, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp signed controversial religious freedom legislation Friday aimed at preventing government intrusion into Georgians’ rights to exercise their religious beliefs.
The General Assembly’s Republican majorities passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act on Wednesday primarily along party lines.
“It’s common-sense legislation,” Kemp said after signing Senate Bill 36. “Georgians still remain the place where there’s no place for hate.”
The bill closely mirrors a federal RFRA law Congress passed back in 1993. However, the U.S. Supreme Court declared in 1997 that the law only applied to the federal government, which has left Georgia lawmakers pushing for years for a state-level RFRA.
Legislative Democrats opposed the bill, arguing it could be used to discriminate against non-Christians and LGBTQ Georgians.
But Republicans defended the measure as applying only to acts by the state and local governments, not to actions by private citizens aimed at other private citizens.
On Friday, Kemp said the RFRA bill builds on past efforts targeting discrimination in Georgia, including a hate-crimes law the General Assembly passed following the murder of Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery near Brunswick by two white men in 2020 and last year’s bill aimed at antisemitism.
RFRA has been championed for years in the legislature almost single-handedly by state Sen. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, unsuccessfully until this year’s session.
by Dave Williams | Apr 4, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The Georgia House of Representatives passed legislation Friday aimed at a gun ordinance the Savannah City Council passed last year.
The ordinance prohibits storing firearms in unlocked vehicles, with violators subject to a $1,000 fine and 30 days in jail.
While House Republicans opposed the ordinance on its merits as infringing on gun owners’ Second Amendment rights, much of Friday’s debate centered around GOP arguments that state law preempts local ordinances.
“Municipalities are a creation of this body,” said House Majority Leader Chuck Efstration, R-Mulberry. “If they are circumventing the laws of this state, it needs to be corrected.”
Rep. Anne Allen Westbrook, D-Savannah, defended the city’s right to pass an ordinance regulating guns, arguing council members in her city saw the need to discourage motorists from leaving their guns unlocked. She said 266 firearms were reported stolen from vehicles in Savannah last year, with 228 taken from unlocked vehicles.
“We are a city that is visited by people from all over the world,” Westbrook said. “We want you to have a good time. … We’re just asking that people lock their cars. Is that unreasonable to ask?”
But Rep. Alan Powell, R-Hartwell, who presented Senate Bill 204 on the House floor, said the Savannah ordinance doesn’t go after the right target, criminals who steal guns.
“Why would a city pass a law to penalize someone who is a victim of a crime?” Powell asked his House colleagues. “That’s not justice.”
Senate Bill 204 declares that regulating firearms is an issue of “general, statewide concern” and prohibits local governments from stepping in to regulate them.
The House passed the bill 99-74 late Friday afternoon along party lines, sending it back to the Senate, where it originated. Senators were expected to vote on final passage of the measure Friday night, with the General Assembly facing a midnight deadline to wrap up the 2025 legislative session.
by Dave Williams | Apr 4, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia lawmakers gave final passage Friday to a $37.7 billion fiscal 2026 state budget that prioritizes spending on education and prisons.
After the state Senate passed the spending plan 54-1, the Georgia House of Representatives followed suit 170-5.
A key line item the House and Senate had disagreed on before a joint conference committee crafted a final version of the budget was how much money to allocate to kick start Georgia’s private school voucher program, which the General Assembly created last year. In the end, the conferees approved Gov. Brian Kemp’s recommendation to fully fund the new program with $141 million.
About 10,000 students have applied for vouchers, although the program doesn’t begin until July, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin, said on the House floor Friday. Of that number, 5,100 have been deemed eligible for the program, he said.
The budget also includes $300 million to fully fund the state’s Quality Basic Education K-12 student funding formula. It contains $108.9 million in state grants to help local school systems pay for safety improvements on their school campuses, which will provide each school with $47,124.
Another $19.6 million is earmarked for a new program called “student support services,” which will include mental-health counselors for the schools, and $15.3 million will go to support economically disadvantaged students through a one-time pilot program.
The school-safety and mental-health services funding are in response to the school shooting at Apalachee High School in Barrow County last September that killed two students and two teachers.
Also in the education arena, the budget provides $18.5 million to hire 116 literacy coaches who will work to improve reading scores.
State policymakers have made conditions inside Georgia prisons a top concern after a federal audit released last fall criticized the prison system for failing to protect inmates from violence. The fiscal ’26 spending plan, increases spending on the Georgia Department of Corrections by $200 million, $75 million above what Kemp recommended in the budget he presented to the General Assembly in January.
“(Corrections) Commissioner (Tyrone Oliver) has been a good partner, always picking up the phone when needed,” Hatchett, said.
That $200 million spending increase for the prison system includes $13.4 million to give correctional officers 4% pay raises and $45 million to hire an additional 700 guards to better protect inmates by lowering the inmate-to-staff ratios. Another $34.2 million is allocated for repairing deteriorating prison infrastructure.
The budget conferees were able to draw down additional funds for education and prisons at the 11th hour, when Kemp raised his revenue estimate for fiscal 2026 this week by $50.4 million.
In the area of health care, the budget includes $16.9 million to increase reimbursement rates for providers serving Medicaid patients and $7.4 million for graduate medical education to help address shortages of health-care providers, particularly in rural Georgia.
The budget now heads to Kemp for his signature. Fiscal 2026 takes effect July 1.
