by Ty Tagami | Jul 17, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — The proposed Ocmulgee National Park just grew by 136 acres thanks to a land donation by the Georgia Department of Transportation.
The agency recently inked a deal to transfer the land along Interstate 16 southeast of Macon, Eric Duff, the agency’s environmental administrator, told the State Transportation Board Wednesday.
The property is mostly a thriving wetlands area. The DOT acquired the Bibb County property in 1998 as wetlands mitigation for a freeway in nearby Twiggs County.
“It’s a continuation of the work that we do every day to improve the relationships with our tribal partners, with the National Park Service,” Duff said.
The handoff is the latest sign of progress in a bipartisan effort to promote the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park into a national park and preserve.
It would be a simple name change with major implications for tourism and development.
While the United States has 63 national parks, the vast majority are out West. Georgia has none, but four neighbors — South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Florida — either share one or have one of their own.
Ocmulgee is among 370 lesser properties overseen by the National Park Service. It draws around 160,000 a year, but national park status could increase that nearly tenfold to almost 1.4 million annual visitors within a decade, advocates say. Studies indicate this would generate thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in annual economic activity.
National park status would also promote recognition of a painful chapter in American history when Native Americans were driven from their ancestral lands in Georgia.
The Ocmulgee Mounds area was continuously inhabited for at least 12,000 years, beginning with the Ice Age, says the National Park Service. During the Mississippian Period, starting in the 900s, native peoples constructed mounds for their elite, landmarks that endure as a central attraction.
The desire to promote Ocmulgee to national park status has been in circulation since at least 1933, when the Macon Historical Society and Junior Chamber of Commerce pitched it. The next year, the local congressman, Democratic Rep. Carl Vinson, introduced legislation for a national park. He wound up with a lesser designation, but the dream for top-tier status lived on.
Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle have been collaborating to make the promotion a reality, with nearly every member of the Georgia delegation on board. And the Muscogee Nation, whose ancestors were forcibly moved to Oklahoma by the U.S. government in 1836, is working on the promotion. The tribe would have a role in guiding the new national park’s management.
Seth Clark, the Macon mayor pro tem and current leader of the grassroots force behind this movement, said he expects the congressional committee process to begin in a couple of months. It was underway last year but got derailed by bigger issues, such as the federal budget. Clark, who is executive director of The Ocmulgee National Park and Preserve Initiative, told the transportation board that he expects the mission to be complete during this Congress, which ends in January 2027.
The current historical park would anchor the national park. Proponents would raise money to buy another 7,100 acres, expanding the attraction to about 10,000 acres. The addition would be a federally managed preserve with fishing and hunting.
The Georgia DOT land donation, inked in April but revealed at Wednesday’s transportation committee meeting, expands the core park. The transaction concludes a process that started more than a dozen years ago.
The National Park Service asked Georgia DOT in 2012 if it was interested in including the land as part of a national park feasibility study. The state agreed. Then, at the start of this decade, the federal government asked for the land. In 2023, the state sent a letter of intent to transfer it.
“This gift is more than acreage,” said Jacob Collins, a Park Service tribal liaison at Thursday’s DOT board meeting. “It represents the preservation of sacred grounds.”
by Ty Tagami | Jul 15, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Delta Air Lines has paid the federal government $8.1 million to settle claims that it misused a portion of the $11.9 billion in taxpayer dollars it received as emergency aid during the pandemic, according to the Justice Department.
The U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia investigated after a whistleblower alleged Delta had violated executive pay limits connected with the federal funding, $8.2 billion of it in the form of grants that didn’t have to be repaid.
A $425,000 cap on executive pay was supposed to be in effect between March 2020 and April 2023. Federal attorneys concluded Delta had paid some executives more than that, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced Tuesday, adding that Delta then allegedly falsely certified its compliance with the caps and failed to notify the Treasury Department of its breach of the agreement.
If true, this would have been a violation of the rules of the Payroll Support Program established by Congress under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.
Delta’s payment settled the allegations without determining liability, prosecutors said, noting that the whistleblower got a cut of the settlement money.
Still, U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg suggested the company misused public dollars.
“When companies accept federal assistance, especially generous pandemic-relief funds like those at issue here, they owe a duty to the American people to respect the conditions placed on those funds,” Hertzberg said. “We will continue to enforce all available laws to punish the misuse of taxpayers’ money.”
by Ty Tagami | Jul 15, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Georgia’s top elected education official will face a third challenger in next year’s Republican primary election when he seeks a fourth term.
In early June, State School Superintendent Richard Woods announced he was seeking re-election as two others were contesting the seat. Now, Fred “Bubba” Longgrear, the superintendent of the Candler County School District, has entered the race.
Longgrear is the only local public school employee in the running. Randell E. Trammel, who lives in Cartersville and is CEO of the Center for Civic Engagement, announced his candidacy in June, nearly a year after Nelva M. Lee, a Locust Grove entrepreneur whom Gov. Brian Kemp had appointed to a two-year term on the state Board of Community Health in 2021.
Woods previously worked as a local educator but has led the state superintendent’s office since 2015.
Longgrear touts his experience as a teacher, coach and principal, plus 11 years as a superintendent, currently for the 2,000 students in Candler County, straddling I-16 between Macon and Savannah. His campaign website emphasizes safe learning environments, literacy and career development.
by Ty Tagami | Jul 14, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — The campaigns of the two announced Republicans for Georgia’s U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Jon Ossoff are disclosing similar amounts of outside campaign money raised.
The unofficial reports from the two GOP candidates, U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, R-St. Simons, and John King, Georgia’s elected insurance and safety fire commissioner, had Carter slightly ahead of King in drawing money from donors. But both of their campaign accounts were dwarfed by incumbent Ossoff, the most prodigious fundraiser in the Senate.
Ossoff’s campaign announced raising more than $10 million over the three months from April through June, ending the second quarter with $15.5 million in the bank.
The Federal Election Commission filing deadline is not until Tuesday, but a source close to the Carter campaign said the congressman will be reporting that he raised $1.1 million from donors and loaned himself another $2 million.
King’s campaign said he had raised $518,000 plus another $150,000 for his political action committee, or PAC. King also reportedly rolled another $350,000 from his state election campaign funds into that PAC, bringing his total haul to about $1 million.
Carter and King will spend some of their money battling each other for the Republican nomination, but so far Ossoff has drawn no Democratic challengers and can continue amassing his war chest for the 2026 general election.
by Ty Tagami | Jul 14, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — The public reaction to the meltdown of a financial institution connected to Republican politics in Georgia continued Monday as Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger called on campaign finance recipients to return any contributions from First Liberty Building and Loan or the family that controlled it.
“Now is the time for every elected official, candidate, or political action committee who received financial support from this entity currently under investigation to stand up and help the victims,” Raffensperger said. “Ill-gotten gains do not belong in the State Capitol.”
The federal Securities and Exchange Commission sued the institution last week alleging it had operated as a Ponzi scheme, bilking investors.
The complaint in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia said Edwin Brant Frost IV, owner and president of First Liberty, used investor funds to make more than $570,000 in political donations.
The company raised at least $140 million from about 300 investors, telling them that their money would go toward short-term, high-interest, small business loans, the lawsuit said. Frost, who is also a named defendant, misrepresented the success of the loan program to his investors, the suit said, noting that he also used their money to pay himself and his family at least $5 million.
Frost’s son, Brant Frost V, is chairman of the Coweta County Republican Party.
“We take allegations of financial fraud seriously, especially when it puts hardworking Georgians at risk,” Raffensperger said, urging anyone who lost money in a transaction with First Liberty to contact his office immediately. “If you believe you’ve been misled or victimized by First Liberty, we need to hear from you.”
