by Ty Tagami | Oct 28, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Another Georgia lawmaker is stepping down, bringing to four the number of vacancies in the House and Senate.
Rep. Marcus Wiedower, R-Watkinsville, announced Tuesday that he is resigning after six years in the House because the company he works for is growing rapidly. The expansion will require more travel and would take him away from the Capitol during the legislative session, he said in a statement.
“While I’m stepping away from elected office, I look forward to remaining actively involved in our community and continuing to help tackle Georgia’s most pressing challenges, especially attainable housing through my work at Hillpointe,” he said.
The real estate development and investment management firm, headquartered in Winter Park, Fla., was operating in one state six years ago, when Wiedower joined the company as the lone external affairs employee, Wiedower said. It has since expanded to 13 states, and he said he now oversees dozens of employees, consultants and contractors.
Wiedower served as chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on General Government, among other assignments.
House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, said a special election will be called to elect a successor for House District 121 in Clarke and Oconee counties. Voters must also appoint a successor for Shelly Hutchinson, a Democrat from Snellville, who resigned from House District 106 in September, and for Mandi Ballinger, a Canton Republican who died earlier this month, leaving House District 23 unrepresented.
The Senate also has a vacancy after Atlanta Democrat Jason Esteves resigned from Senate District 35 last month to focus on his campaign for governor.
Voters just filled another Senate vacancy, electing Jason Dickerson to succeed Republican Brandon Beach in District 21 after Beach left office to become U.S. Treasurer. Dickerson, R-Canton, swore his oath of office Oct. 14.
by Ty Tagami | Oct 27, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — People who take a train from the suburbs to downtown Atlanta for a ball game or a concert will soon encounter new fare gates updated for the smartphone era.
MARTA announced Monday that it is installing new contactless fare equipment. New MARTA cards will also be tappable, and the target will be clearer than with the old gates, the agency said. Also coming, a new smartphone app for payment, which should make it easier for occasional riders to use a mobile wallet.
Regional partners, including CobbLinc and Ride Gwinnett, will also be adopting the “Better Breeze” fare collection system in coming months.
New equipment is already being installed, but MARTA said it will not be ready to transition customers from the current 19-year-old Breeze system until spring.
The refresh is part of the transit system’s plans to accommodate soccer fans during next year’s World Cup matches in Atlanta.
Fare prices will remain unchanged, at $2.50 per ride.
“It’s great to keep fares unchanged for years, but not an entire fare collection system,” said MARTA Interim General Manager and CEO Jonathan Hunt.
In coming years, travelers should also be able to drive to MARTA — and anywhere else in Georgia — without a traditional wallet or purse. State lawmakers passed House Bill 296 last winter. It will allow drivers to present a digital license when stopped by police.
The law, which took effect in July, gives police until July 2027 to acquire the necessary equipment (basically, a government-authorized smartphone) to scan a digital license on a phone.
by Ty Tagami | Oct 24, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Doctors gave Jennifer Conforti’s little girl powerful drugs to help her live with profound autism.
Abby, who is 15 now, was 3 when she was taking benzodiazepines to help with her reactions, such as biting the skin off her arm, Conforti said. The drugs were not helping, she said, and after Abby had to be restrained at school, Conforti decided to break the law.
She figured out how to source marijuana and break it down into a concentrate in her kitchen, she told lawmakers at the Georgia Capitol last month.
A decade ago, lawmakers passed a medical cannabis law that lets patients on a state registry obtain low-THC oil.
That helped, said Conforti, but she testified that patients need a product with higher levels of THC — the intoxicating psychoactive agent in marijuana — and in more forms than oil, for instance, vape products or the flower from the plant itself.
“People are still breaking the law to get the type of medicine that they need for the people they want to help,” she said.
But lawmakers have also heard from medical experts who spoke of the dangers of using THC, including an increased risk of psychosis, heart attack and pancreatitis.
It has also been associated with a higher risk of suicide and death, said Dr. Elizabeth McCord, who is trained in internal medicine and psychiatry. She teaches at a public safety net hospital in Atlanta that she disclosed to a reporter but said she didn’t want broadcast publicly during her testimony Friday, the last of four legislative hearings about medical marijuana and hemp products.
Marijuana use can reduce brain volume and permanently reduce IQ in children, she said.
There is not much research on the effects because of the challenges of studying users of a Schedule 1 drug, especially children, McCord said. Because of that, she told the lawmakers, “The word ‘medical’ cannabis is really misleading.”
Members of the legislative study committee have been squeezed by impassioned people on both sides of the debate, from those who want freer access to those who want something close to prohibition, at least for children.
Absent clear and compelling research, the lawmakers will have to chart a path forward based on anecdotes and tangential data, such as testimony from a poison control official about the explosion of childhood visits to the emergency room after Congress legalized intoxicating hemp products in 2018.
The legislative panel has been gathering information since the summer and concluded its hearings Friday.
House Speaker Jon Burns empaneled the Blue Ribbon committee after pandemonium broke out around the issue of THC regulation during the legislative session last winter.
The Senate had rejected a measure to increase the legal limit for THC in medical cannabis and had pushed back with an attempted crackdown on the consumable hemp industry, even trying to ban hemp beverages.
Members of the House meanwhile had talked of expanding sales locations for hemp beverages and of the benefits of medical cannabis.
Lack of an extensive body of research is only part of the problem. The other is the complexity surrounding two different yet essentially identical products under different regulatory schemes: THC from hemp and THC from marijuana.
Hemp is a close cousin of marijuana. The latter is still illegal at the federal level, but in 2018 Congress allowed hemp consumable products containing 0.3% THC by “dry weight,” a measure that has caused some confusion.
The prospect for profit drove innovation and now there are ample hemp-derived products on the market, from gummies to vape liquids. They are widely available, including at gas stations.
This has led to general confusion about the difference between the two categories.
Micah Gravley, a former Republican member of the state House who helped pass Georgia’s medical cannabis law, testified last month that a woman with cancer could not get on the state cannabis registry because her condition was not yet end stage.
“Well, can I just go to the Shell station down the road,” he said she asked him. “I saw that they had some stuff and I could use that, couldn’t I?”
He said a parent of a child who could benefit from marijuana would still find it easier to buy illegal product on the street than obtain “pharmaceutical grade lab-tested safe medical cannabis” from one of the six licensed providers in Georgia.
Rep. Alan Powell, R-Hartwell, is a member of the committee who was sympathetic with Gravley.
“We know that the doctors can’t prescribe because the doctors are absolutely petrified to deal with it,” Powell said. “They might step across the line with DEA or some of their pharmaceutical licensing because it’s still illegal” at the federal level.
Meanwhile, the less constrained hemp products industry has been engineering intoxicating products with an expanding menu of ingredients.
The state Department of Agriculture enforces compliance with legal limits, but local law enforcement and justice officials have testified about obtaining products from gas stations and hiring private labs to test them, finding routine violations.
Gregg Raduka, founder of Georgians for Responsible Marijuana Policy, noted that many new derivatives from hemp plants are not even regulated. He held up a bottle of gummies on Friday that he said he bought at a vape shop in Woodstock.
He noted that the state only regulates “Delta-9” THC per the 2018 federal law, then he read the ingredients on the label: “D8, D9, D11 THC, THCP — which preliminary research shows is at least five times as strong as Delta-9 THC — THD, THCB, THCX.”
At a prior hearing in September, Gaylord Lopez, executive director of the Georgia Poison Center, said his agency had received 1,900 calls since 2022 about children eating hemp edible products, many of them winding up in a hospital emergency room.
He complained about “loopholes being exploited by dorm room chemists” and of a proliferation of intoxicating products causing problems in the health care industry.
“My 10-year-old niece could walk into a gas station and buy these products,” he said. “It’s just heartbreaking.”
Yet, on Friday, the panel heard from another mother who vouched for the healing power of THC. Corey Lowe said her daughter, now 24, suffers from seizures. She was diagnosed with an incurable mitochondrial disease and Lowe said doctors told her she would not live past adolescence. Lowe obtained a nasal cannabis spray with high levels of THC that she said provided instant relief from the seizures. She credits marijuana with extending her daughter’s life.
“Medicine is why we still have her today,” she said, adding that both of her parents have advanced cancer and have benefitted from marijuana use too. “It’s because of the whole plant, full plant medicine,” she said, asking for expanded legal access to marijuana.
Rep. Mark Newton, R-Augusta, is the chairman of the study committee. A medical doctor, he said members of the panel want to consider options besides THC oil in the medical cannabis program.
But he wrapped up the final hearing by noting the challenge of crafting legislation that could satisfy a majority at the Capitol.
by Ty Tagami | Oct 23, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — The Georgia Supreme Court this week heard several cases, including two that could affect how cities design roadways and who gets to sell cars and another involving child custody with an unmarried couple.
The roadway safety case stems from the death of a 21-year-old who crashed a car into a concrete planter while home from college in 2016. The planter had been placed a half dozen feet off the side of a road in Milton before 2006 when the city was established.
A jury awarded the parents of Joshua Chang more than $30 million. The city lost on appeal and then petitioned the Supreme Court to consider the case.
Milton is arguing that it was not responsible for keeping the shoulder of the road unobstructed. Shoulders commonly accommodate fire hydrants, telephone poles, utility boxes and decorations, the city’s lawyers argued.
Georgia cities enjoy what’s known as “sovereign immunity,” meaning they are shielded from civil liability with some exceptions. The state waives that immunity when a city has insurance that covers the injury. It also waives immunity when cities fail to perform their “ministerial” duty, meaning an injury resulted from neglect to follow procedures.
But cities only have a duty to maintain roads for the safe passage of vehicles in the “ordinary course of travel,” Harold Melton, a lawyer for Milton, said at the Supreme Court hearing in the case Tuesday.
“When you have to make an evasive maneuver, by definition, now you’re doing something that’s unordinary,” he said, referring to the way Chang’s vehicle left the roadway and collided with the planter. He said Milton should not have to maintain the shoulder of a road for moving vehicles.
But an expert had testified at the earlier trial that no highway transportation official would agree that a planter should be that close to a road. And a Milton official had testified that the city erred by leaving the planter in place in the decade after incorporation, saying a “ball was dropped” and that the city had had ample time to remove the obstruction.
Milton had insurance, but the damages exceeded the $2 million in coverage. So the question about whether Milton had a ministerial duty to keep the shoulder of the road safe for cars is a key one for the Supreme Court.
The answer could affect cities across the state.
Naveen Ramachandrappa, a lawyer for the parents, argued that cities should anticipate that cars must occasionally use shoulders for evasive maneuvers.
“The ministerial duty is the duty to maintain the road,” he said, “and the road includes the shoulder, it includes all parts of the right of way that are in intended for use.”
The high court also heard an appeal Thursday by electric vehicle maker Lucid, which failed to convince a trial court that the state prohibition on direct sales of vehicles by manufacturers violates the state constitution.
A point made by Lucid lawyer Andrew Grossman was that Tesla was unaffected by a 2015 state law against direct sales.
“The statute is riddled with exceptions for direct sales, but then it prohibits companies like Lucid from selling directly,” he said.
The high court also heard a case about child custody rights in a situation involving an unmarried couple’s pregnancy through a sperm donor. In this case, the birth mother wants the Supreme Court to reverse a trial court order granting her former partner caregiver status for the child.
by Ty Tagami | Oct 22, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A critic of the Republican-controlled Public Service Commission was arrested Tuesday on a felony count in connection with removal of documents from a public hearing room.
Patricia Durand of Mableton, who three years ago ran as a Democrat for a seat on the commission, was charged with theft of trade secrets, according to Fulton County Jail records.
The document lists the Capitol Police Department, which secures the commission’s meeting space, as the arresting agency. A police spokesperson said late Tuesday afternoon that the arrest report was not yet available for release.
Durand did not immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment Tuesday afternoon.
A spokesman for the commission, or PSC, said the document that was alleged to have been stolen did not belong to the agency and that the agency neither filed a police report nor asked for an arrest.
Three videos of Tuesday’s incident released by the PSC under the Georgia Open Records Act show a woman in a brown jacket walking out of the PSC hearing room with a booklet. The incident occurred minutes after noon, during a break in a hearing at which the woman, introduced as Patty Durand, had testified that morning.
The first two videos, taken simultaneously from different angles, show her walking to a table where PSC officials had been seated next to the microphone for public comment. She picks up a spiral bound booklet with a blue cover then places it back on the table and walks away.
She then walks to a table where lawyers for Georgia Power had been seated on the other side of the microphone. She picks up a booklet that looks identical, flips through it, looks around, places it in a satchel, then exits the room. A third video recorded minutes later shows her entering an elevator in the lobby.
Georgia Power provided a statement that said the company was cooperating with law enforcement and could not comment about any criminal investigation.
“Theft or exposure of proprietary information is a serious matter,” the statement said. “While we operate transparently, some data must remain confidential to protect customer interests and ensure we deliver the best value to all customers. Unauthorized disclosure risks harming both our company, the vendors and contractors with whom we do business, and the customers we serve.”
Durand is a founder of Georgians for Affordable Energy, a PSC watchdog group.
“Georgia Power has a long history of aggressively overstating future energy needs so it can overinvest in profitable capital projects to benefit shareholders,” she is quoted as saying in a July press release by the organization.
The hearing Tuesday was about a Georgia Power request to add generation capacity to serve growing demand from data centers. The centers power the internet and are an essential engine for artificial intelligence. They consume vast amounts of energy and are being built across the state.
During her testimony before the break, Durand criticized the PSC and Georgia Power for the high cost of the expansion of nuclear capacity at Plant Vogtle and for rate increases that have created “car payment sized electricity bills.” She said the company’s natural gas affiliates would profit from expansion of natural gas power generation plants.
“It is unfathomable to me why anyone listens to Georgia Power’s lawyers, staff or witnesses about anything,” Durand said at the microphone. “Their claims about costs and demand growth have no credibility because nothing they’ve said in the past has proven even close to true.”
Durand won the 2022 Democratic primary to represent the central eastern Georgia district on the five-member PSC, but the general election was canceled that year due to litigation.
PSC candidates run statewide but each commissioner — all currently Republicans — represents only a fifth of the state. The plaintiffs argued that this dilutes the impact of Black voters.
Durand thus lost her chance to run against Tim Echols, the Republican incumbent.
Echols, meanwhile, is fending off a challenge from another Democrat.
First elected in 2010 and reelected in 2016, Echols was up for reelection in 2022 and has not had to run for reelection in nine years.
Democrat Alicia Johnson wants to unseat him.
Republicans have been expressing concern about the outcome. There was low turnout during the primary elections, and they worry that small numbers of motivated voters could have a big influence on the results.
The more publicity the better, said Josh McKoon, chairman of the state Republican Party.
“You think that you get to a point where nothing will shock you anymore, but it’s shocking that these folks on the left are so radical and are so willing to do anything to advance this green New Deal agenda that even committing crimes is not off the table,” he said. “And that to me highlights how important this election is that unfortunately we don’t have a lot of people participating in at the moment.”
Johnson is running on a platform that calls for more sustainable energy and ratepayer protections. It is like the platform of the other Democrat, Peter Hubbard, who is running against Republican incumbent Fitz Johnson to represent the PSC district for metro Atlanta in the Nov. 4 election.
