by Ty Tagami | Nov 19, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — An alleged international drug king pin from China accused of trafficking cocaine and fentanyl in Atlanta using operations based in Mexico was arraigned in a federal courthouse in Brooklyn Wednesday, where he was accused of a host of crimes that could land him in prison for life.
Zhi Dong Zhang, 38, was extradited from Mexico last month, where the U.S. Department of Justice accused him of working on behalf of major cartels.
“Zhang’s transnational network was allegedly intricate, well-coordinated, and well-funded,” said Theodore S. Hertzberg, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.
U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd W. Blanche said Zhang is accused of running a global enterprise that pumped “massive quantities” of cocaine, fentanyl and methamphetamine into American communities, causing addiction, violence and death.
The indictment against Zhang in Georgia accuses him of negotiating and coordinating delivery of 11 kilograms of cocaine and one kilogram of fentanyl to Atlanta for distribution in 2022. It says he oversaw stash houses in Georgia and California where drug money was held before being deposited in banks, with 150 companies, 170 bank accounts and about $20 million in proceeds involved.
The indictment against Zhang in the Eastern District of New York traced seizures of 46 kilograms of cocaine, 58 kilograms of methamphetamine, and nearly 7 kilograms of fentanyl to the organization he allegedly ran.
It says he laundered $77 million through more than 100 shell companies with bank accounts opened by recruits called “banqueros.” They were allegedly supervised from Mexico, where coordinators booked their travel and provided fake Social Security Numbers.
“This arrest represents a critical milestone in a long-running investigation into an alleged high-level narcotics trafficker with international reach,” said Robert J. Murphy, Special Agent in Charge in Atlanta for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
by Ty Tagami | Nov 18, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — With home costs rising beyond the reach of many Georgians, builders and developers are pushing for new limits on local control over construction permitting.
State lawmakers heard Tuesday about legislation that would impose strict deadlines on local governments to issue permits. House Bill 812 would also empower the state to override local building requirements that go above the “minimum standard” in Georgia law.
“I’ve heard horror stories of the length of time it takes for contractors to get a building permit,” said Rep. Mike Cheokas, R-Americus, the chief co-sponsor of the legislation. The delays cost builders and developers money, driving up the price of their product, he said. “This is one of the many things we can do to address affordable housing.”
City and county building departments already have a 45-day deadline to issue permits, but questions that arise during the plan review process can reset the timer.
HB 812 would prevent that, setting a hard deadline. It would also empower the Georgia Department of Community Affairs to reject changes to local building standards that exceed what the state requires.
Currently, the agency only lodge objections to such changes.
“There’s no teeth to it,” said Austin Hackney, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Georgia. “If the department says, ‘don’t adopt that amendment,’ the locals can do it anyway.”
Jerry Parrish, chief economist for the Metro Atlanta Chamber, said the number of residential building permits issued statewide peaked at 70,000 a couple years ago. That is how many were issued annually in metro Atlanta alone before the 2008 Great Recession, he said.
Parrish said higher interest rates and materials costs combined with a shortage of construction workers had contributed to the slowdown and to accelerating costs.
But several industry advocates blamed local government, with one complaining about the number of plan reviews required, including for mosquito prevention in one jurisdiction.
Local government advocates pushed back, saying the industry itself was to blame for its permitting woes.
Many smaller homebuilders have gone out of business, said Noah Roenitz, with the Georgia Municipal Association. In their place have come “large nationwide syndicates” that build big and complicated developments. Too often, he said, they file inadequate plans that require numerous, time-consuming revisions.
“The permitting process is not being used or weaponized,” he said.
Katie Parker, a development approval administrator for Cherokee County government, gave an example of one applicant who submitted plans to her department that bore the name of Gwinnett County.
Environmental advocates said loose soil from dirt roads and unregulated construction were a top river pollutant. They advised caution with any new restrictions on local oversight, with one calling the tighter approval deadlines mandated in HB 812 “crazy low” given current staffing levels in plan review agencies.
by Ty Tagami | Nov 17, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A state legislative committee is eyeing cutbacks in $30 billion worth of tax credits and tax exemptions to offset the potential elimination of an income tax that generates $16 billion for state government.
“It is not a question of if we go to zero, it’s when and how we take our income tax to zero,” said Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, leader of the Special Committee on Eliminating Georgia’s Income Tax. “It’s an issue of competitiveness.”
Senators heard Monday from three invited speakers who advocated for eliminating the 5.19% income tax.
Patrice Onwuka, director of the Independent Women’s Center for Economic Opportunity, said half of the state’s residents live paycheck to paycheck and could use a tax break.
Arthur Laffer described consequences for population, productivity and tax revenue in states that adopted an income tax, and he pointed to gains in states that eliminated their income tax, including his home state of Tennessee.
He said it’s “really cool” not having to file an income tax return and that it is a form of taxation that undermines economies.
“The income tax is the single biggest major tax killer of growth,” said Laffer, a retired professor who advised President Ronald Reagan on economic policy and is associated with “supply-side” economics theory.
Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, noted that Georgia already has a thriving economy and that many of the states that eliminated their income tax subsequently raised their sales tax rate.
Economists have long held that a sales tax is more painful for low-income people than an income tax, and Orrock said retirees would be among those disproportionately affected.
But Tillery, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee and is running for lieutenant governor, had delivered to the other senators more than 200 pages of documents detailing $30 billion in tax credits and tax exemptions in Georgia law. He said those could be eliminated to make up revenue lost by eliminating the income tax, instead of raising the sales tax rate.
The final speaker, Kyle Wingfield, president and CEO of the fiscally conservative Georgia Public Policy Foundation, offered two policy approaches to accompany income tax cuts.
First, Georgia could place some of its billions in reserves into an emergency fund to hedge against unexpected budget shortfalls. Second, lawmakers could set “revenue triggers” that would only allow income tax cuts if overall tax revenue grew.
by Ty Tagami | Nov 17, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A monthly slowdown in container units handled at Port of Savannah suggests an economic slowdown, though traffic is still up for the year.
The number of container units handled fell 8.4% in October compared with October 2024 but traffic is up 4% as of this point for the year compared with the same point last year.
The script was flipped at Colonels Island Terminal at Port of Brunswick, where auto and heavy equipment shipments were up 5.4% last month versus October last year but traffic fell 9% for the year.
Georgia Ports Authority President and CEO Griff Lynch hoped for more trade in 2026.
“We’ve been impacted by the trade downturn,” he said in a statement, “so we look forward to seeing more trade deals come together and we’re hopeful the market bounces back in the new year.”
The Port Authority is preparing for long-term growth. The Blue Ridge Connector, its $127 million rail facility 50 miles from Atlanta, is expected to open next spring.
When it does, Norfolk Southern “doublestack” trains are projected to eliminate 52,000 truck trips during the first year of operation, relieving Atlanta traffic and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 90%, according to the Authority.
It will serve northeast Georgia, a high-growth corridor known for exporting heavy equipment, forest products and poultry. The area to be served by trains is about a five-hour truck drive from the Port of Savannah.
by Ty Tagami | Nov 14, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A year from now people in the hemp industry expect booming growth in a black market for marijuana and illicit hemp consumables.
That is when beverages, gummies and other products made with THC from the hemp plant will become illegal.
Furloughed government workers will soon get their jobs back and low-income households will get food stamps, but the government shutdown that ended Wednesday with President Donald Trump’s signature on a funding bill places a time bomb under the hemp industry.
The new law will ban over 95% of hemp extract products, including most non-intoxicating products made with cannabidiol, or CBD, according to the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, an industry group.
It will have far-reaching effects on hemp businesses and their consumers.
Sen. Mitch McConnel, R-Ky. slipped language into the legislation to restrict hemp products to 0.4 milligrams of THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, the intoxicating, psychoactive compound found in hemp and in much greater concentrations in marijuana.
The law’s passage effectively closed an opening by Congress in 2018 that allowed a flourishing market for intoxicating products.
A year from now, hemp products will only be allowed to contain 0.4 milligrams of THC per container. In Georgia, state regulationsenacted after the 2018 federal law allowed 10 milligrams per 12 ounce beverage. Each gummy could also contain 10 milligrams, with a maximum of 300 milligrams per package.
“Our industry just got wiped out,” said Joe Salome, owner of The Georgia Hemp Company. “Anything hemp derived that has THC is no bueno anymore,” he said.
Salome said the impetus for the pending ban was growing concern about the proliferation of synthetic cannabinoid consumables, including poorly labeled products from China, made with potentially unsafe processes and grown from crops that might not follow U.S. pesticide standards. Children were getting their hands on them.
Salome and other mainstream operators shared those concerns, but he regrets that businesses like his are getting lumped with the bad actors.
“My dad always said, ‘You are who you hang out with,'” he said. “There are good actors and there are bad actors, but there are a lot more bad actors that brought this down.”
The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, commonly known as the farm bill, made it legal to sell products containing 0.3% Delta-9 THC by “dry weight.” Georgia’s rules also speak to that compound.
That is the loophole that allowed synthetic, highly-intoxicating products to flood the market.
“The problem is that the hemp plant contains so much CBD,” said Gregg Raduka, a founding member of Georgians for Responsible Marijuana Policy. “Because the chemical composition of CBD is so close to THC, it doesn’t take all that much chemical engineering to change the CBD into THC, but you can still call it hemp-derived THC. And therefore because it’s not Delta-9, it’s legal.”
People in the hemp industry draw parallels between the coming crackdown and what happened when the country banned alcohol, leading to a boom in organized crime.
“This is a prohibition bill. This is trying to send it all into the underground and it’s going to be around no matter what,” said Chris Karazin, founder and chief executive of Carolindica, a company in Raleigh, N.C. that manufactures and sells hemp consumables.
“It’s not like people aren’t still going to go looking for this product. You just now force it to the black market,” said Karazin, who makes products for other companies and for sale at his own stores and online, with nearly a fifth of those sales in Georgia.
Raduka recognized an irony in banning hemp consumables.
“I’m guessing here that the marijuana industry is not interested in all the competition it’s been receiving from the very high THC hemp products,” said Raduka, who retired from a career in substance abuse prevention and treatment and has been testifying at the Georgia Capitol about risks of consuming hemp and marijuana.
The U.S. Hemp Roundtable says the ban threatens a $28.4 billion industry, jeopardizing more than 300,000 jobs.
“People are going to lose their jobs. People are going to lose their houses,” said Christopher Lackner, president of the Hemp Beverage Alliance. “I know several people have second mortgages on their house because they were following the rules of the 2018 farm bill and creating this category and working with states to create regulatory frameworks.”
Karazin said his business supports a network of suppliers, from makers of syrups, packaging and marketing materials, to landlords. Bottle shops and restaurants will lose revenue on sales of hemp products, he added.
But the industry has a year to work with Congress, and Lackner and other advocates are optimistic that they can find a way to allow the market to continue while eliminating unethical actors.
Salome was trying to be optimistic about that but worried about the future. He said he had at least 50 employees to pay and five retail leases to cover.
“We owe the bank a bunch,” he said. “I hope I can keep my house.”
