by Ty Tagami | Feb 18, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A man who shot at a Georgia trooper with a Glock handgun modified for automatic fire will spend a decade in prison, federal prosecutors announced Tuesday.
Montrez Ballard received the sentence after he was convicted of shooting multiple times at a Georgia State Patrol officer in July 2023, said Richard Moultrie, Jr., acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.
Prosecutors said Ballard fired the Glock 19 like a machine gun, squeezing off at least three shots after the trooper stopped him in a vehicle and Ballard fled on foot.
Ballard, 21, of Hampton, who was on probation for robbery, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee to 10 years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
by Ty Tagami | Feb 18, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The Georgia Department of Education kicked off a new teacher recruitment campaign Tuesday to address a teacher shortage.
The move is necessary as a generation of teachers nears retirement after two decades and more in the classroom, State School Superintendent Richard Woods said.
“A little over a third of our workforce is 20 years and above, so we’re looking at how do we replace that many people in a relatively short period of time,” said Woods, a former teacher who has served in his current role for a decade.
“We’re getting to a point where we’re going to lose over a third of our workforce in a relatively short period of time,” he added. “And that is very, very concerning because we’re not seeing the numbers in our colleges of education to replace those individuals.”
The state education agency oversees 180 school districts educating more than 1.7 million students. The new strategy unveiled Tuesday is fueled by $3 million from corporate donors and athletic foundations.
Britton Banowsky, executive director of the College Football Playoff Foundation, is among those leading the effort. His group, with help from the Atlanta Sports Council, kicked in about half the funding.
The initiative will drive a messaging campaign in an effort to lure more young people to the profession. The “Teach in the Peach” program will also include a website that helps people find jobs as teachers (more at teachinthepeach.org). And it will host a test that people can take to find out whether a career in teaching would fit them.
Banowsky said his foundation wanted to address a problem facing communities. About a decade ago, they started casting about for an issue.
“We sat around a table, and we all said, ‘Well, my mom’s a teacher, my sister’s a teacher. You know, I’ve got a kid who’s a teacher. And they need the help.’ “
by Ty Tagami | Feb 18, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The Georgia Supreme Court is raising “serious questions” about a 2019 state law that allows a judge to give someone joint custody over a former lover’s child, but the law remains intact.
The Equitable Caregiver law that went into effect in July 2019 allows someone who is not a legal parent of a child to seek custody, visitation and other rights.
To win such rights, the person must demonstrate to a judge that he or she had a “parental” role and a “bonded and dependent” relationship with the child that was “fostered or supported” by a parent of the child.
Presiding Supreme Court Justice Nels S.D. Peterson expressed concern about the law in an order on a related case.
“This case raises serious questions about whether the Equitable Caregiver Statute violates the fundamental right of parents to the care, custody, and control of their children,” Peterson wrote Tuesday in the court’s opinion in Dias v. Boone.
In that case, Abby Boone had asked the superior court in Muscogee County to give her equitable caregiver status over Michelle Dias’s minor child. The trial court decided that Boone had presented “clear and convincing evidence” that the child would suffer emotional harm by discontinuing the relationship.
The court granted Boone equitable caregiver status and required both women to follow a parenting plan.
Dias appealed the decision, challenging the constitutionality of the 2019 law.
The state Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision on Tuesday, sided with Dias and reversed the trial court ruling. But the high court did not strike down the law.
Instead, the justices issued a narrow ruling focused on this former couple, finding that the 2019 law did not apply because Boone’s relationship with Dias’s child predated it.
by Ty Tagami | Feb 14, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A former Macon area poll worker pleaded guilty in federal court Friday to mailing a bomb threat to a local elections office and admitted lying about it to the FBI.
Nicholas Wimbish, 25, of Milledgeville, pleaded guilty to conveying false information about a bomb threat and making hoaxes, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Georgia. He faces up to five years in prison followed by three years of supervised release plus a fine of up to a quarter million dollars.
Wimbish worked at the Jones County Elections Office in Gray. After a disagreement with a voter in October, he wrote and then mailed a bomb threat to the polling place pretending to be that voter, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said, adding that Wimbish admitted he intended the letter to appear as if it had come from the voter as a threat to himself and his fellow poll workers.
The typewritten letter contained phrases such as “young liberal woke idiot” and “woke liberal fraudsters,” saying the author knew where the poll workers lived and that the men would get a “beatdown” and a “firing squad” in a fight while the women would be subjected to “rage rape,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Wimbish handwrote a note at the bottom that said a “boom toy” was in an early voting place and later admitted that he knew the term was slang for a bomb, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
In addition to his own admissions, investigators found the letter on Wimbish’s computer, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. He pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Marc Treadwell and is scheduled for sentencing on May 13.
by Ty Tagami | Feb 14, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia businesses continued years of export growth last year, with a 6.4% gain and more than $53 billion in merchandise shipped, Gov. Brian Kemp announced Friday.
Top exports were civilian aircraft and parts at $12.6 billion, motor vehicles at $2.4 billion, computers at $1.8 billion, telephone sets at $1.6 billion, and medical devices at $1.3 billion.
Kemp noted the state’s key assets, including Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the world’s busiest, and two booming ports.
Brunswick recently supplanted Baltimore as the nation’s busiest port for autos and heavy equipment. Savannah has the fastest growing port in the country. Georgia also boasts more rail miles than any other Southeastern state.
Exporters here can tap the state’s official international presence, with trade representatives in a dozen global markets. But businesses have gone beyond those markets.
“Georgia’s diverse industry base and connectivity to more than 200 global markets create a more resilient state economy,” said Pat Wilson, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development.
However, the state is running a trade deficit with some major partners. Georgia imported $18.6 billion in merchandise from Mexico last year, nearly three times more than the $6.3 billion exported south of the border.
The gap with China was even larger: the state imported $17.2 billion from that industrial powerhouse, more than five times the $3 billion exported to the Asian giant. Germany sent four times more exports to Georgia than the state imported from that nation, at $11.8 billion versus $2.4 billion.
Motor vehicle imports – $15 billion – were more than six times greater than exports. The state also imported twice the value of computers and telephone sets than it exported.
Still, exports continued a long growth trend of 37% over a decade. Top export markets were Canada at $7.4 billion, followed by Mexico, China, the Netherlands and Germany.
President Donald Trump’s tariffs could affect that trend though.
Broad and high tariffs on imports likely will drive up prices for Georgia consumers, while retaliatory tariffs levied by America’s trading partners could damage export industries, State Economist Robert Buschman told Georgia lawmakers Wednesday during his annual economic outlook presentation.
