by Ty Tagami | Jul 17, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr launched an attack against his Republican primary opponent for governor Thursday, calling for an investigation of Lt. Gov. Burt Jones’ $10 million loan to his own campaign.
“In his 2022 financial disclosure, Jones reported a $12 million net worth with only $700,000 in liquid assets,” Carr’s campaign said. “Now he claims to have loaned $10 million to his leadership committee — 14 times what he previously disclosed. Either he misrepresented his finances then or he’s misrepresenting them now, and Georgians deserve the truth.”
Jones’ camp promptly dismissed the allegation, which was detailed in a complaint to the State Ethics Commission Thursday.
“Not surprised by this weak attempt to get attention — it’s exactly what you’d expect from a campaign that’s losing steam with many months to go until Election Day,” Jones campaign spokeswoman Kendyl Parker said.
Carr was the first leading Republican to announce his candidacy. Jones then jumped into the race last week.
Mandatory campaign finance disclosures they filed last week show each raised about $3 million from donors. But Jones — an executive in a family-owned oil company — leapt far ahead by adding another $10 million of his own money. He benefits from a 2021 law that allows him to collect unlimited sums due to his role as lieutenant governor.
The law authorized so-called leadership committees as fundraising vehicles. The governor also has one, as do legislative leaders. Whoever wins the primaries for governor and lieutenant governor can also have one.
On the Democratic side, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and state Sen. Jason Esteves, a former member of the Atlanta school board, had each raised about $1 million. State Rep. Derrick Jackson from Tyrone raised less than a tenth as much.
by Ty Tagami | Jul 17, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Judge Benjamin A. Land will step up from Georgia Court of Appeals to fill a state Supreme Court vacancy that opened in March with the resignation of Chief Justice Michael P. Boggs.
Gov. Brian Kemp said Thursday he decided to appoint Land to the high court because of his commitment to fairness and impartiality, his work ethic, his integrity and his background.
“His extensive experience as a former litigator and judge will make him a valuable addition to the Supreme Court as he continues his service to the people of our state,” Kemp said.
Kemp had already appointed Land once, to the Appeals Court in 2022. Land then won a six-year term during statewide elections in 2024. Then-Gov. Nathan Deal launched Land’s judicial career with an appointment to the Superior Court for the Chattahoochee Circuit in 2018.
Before that, Land focused on civil litigation as an attorney for a quarter century, playing key roles in nationwide class action lawsuits.
He served as president of the Chattahoochee and Columbus Bar associations and volunteered on boards of community organizations, including the Columbus Area Habitat for Humanity and the Pine Mountain Trail Association.
Land earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Georgia and clerked for the state Supreme Court.
Chief Justice Nels S.D. Peterson welcomed Land to the high court.
“His background and experience, including years as a state appellate judge, trial court judge, and litigator, position him well to serve on the state’s highest court,” Peterson said.
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.
