by Dave Williams | Nov 12, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The University System of Georgia has hit an all-time high for student enrollment this fall.
Nearly 365,000 students are enrolled at the system’s 26 public colleges and universities, an increase of more than 20,000, or 5.9%, compared to last fall, Angela Bell, the system’s vice chancellor for research and policy analysis, told the Board of Regents Tuesday.
The enrollment growth since the pandemic year of 2020 has been most dramatic among out-of-state students, Bell said. Out-of-state enrollment has increased by 27% since the pandemic year of 2020.
“Students are looking to the South for a number of reasons, whether it be winning football or the weather,” she said.
Bell said another reason for enrollment growth in the university system is that Georgia remained open for business during the pandemic while other states shut down.
Other highlights of Bell’s report included a huge 53.5% increase in dual enrollment students since 2020.
The university system also has become increasingly diverse in recent years. While enrollment among white students declined from 47% in 2020 to 42% this fall, enrollment among Latino students has grown from 10% to 12%, and Asian enrollment is up from 11% to 14%. Enrollment among Black students has held steady at 25%.
In other business Tuesday, board members unanimously approved a series of policy changes aimed at basing student admission and faculty hiring decisions on merit. Among other things, the changes prohibit requiring prospective students or professors to submit “diversity statements,” typically one or two pages that outline how the applicant plans to advance the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
“These (policies) all make clear the employees and students are evaluated on their merits, not on any ideological tests,” board Chairman Harold Reynolds said.
While encouraging individual freedom of expression, the policy changes assert that the university system “shall remain neutral on social and political issues unless such an issue is directly related to the institution’s core mission.”
“Our mission is education – not politics,” system Chancellor Sonny Perdue said.
The board also voted to authorize a $25 million renovation and expansion of Georgia Tech’s basketball facilities. The project will be funded by the Georgia Tech Athletic Association.
by Dave Williams | Nov 11, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia tax collections fell by 3.4% last month compared to October of last year.
The state Department of Revenue brought in $2.53 billion last month, down $89.7 million from the same month a year ago.
The decline was due in part to an extension of the state income tax and filing deadline announced Oct. 3 because of disruptions caused by Hurricane Helene. Return and payment deadlines for both individual and corporate income taxes from that date through next April have been extended until May 1.
Individual income tax revenue declined by 8.7% in October, mostly due to a sharp drop in tax return payments of 36.5%.
Net sales tax receipts also were down, but only by 1%.
Corporate income taxes fell last month by 47.4%, with payments down and refunds up.
by Dave Williams | Nov 8, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – State Senate Democrats Friday elected Sen. Harold Jones of Augusta to serve as Senate minority leader.
Meeting in Savannah, the Senate Democratic Caucus chose Jones, who has been serving as minority whip, to succeed retiring Minority Leader Gloria Butler. Sen. Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain, will take over as minority whip.
Senate Democrats reelected the rest of their leadership team. Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta, will return as caucus chair, with Sen. Sonya Halpern, D-Atlanta, as vice chair.
Sen. Jason Esteves, D-Atlanta, will serve as vice chair of finance, and Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, will continue as caucus secretary.
This week’s elections didn’t change the makeup of the Senate. The upper legislative chamber again will consist of 33 Republicans and 23 Democrats.
by Dave Williams | Nov 8, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia voters have reasserted the Peach State’s bona fides as a Republican stronghold.
Four years after losing to Democrat Joe Biden by fewer than 12,000 votes in Georgia, former President Donald Trump captured the state’s 16 electoral votes Nov. 5 by defeating Vice President Kamala Harris by more than 117,000 votes.
Trump won by running up his victory margins in Republican-friendly rural Georgia and cutting into his losses in urban and suburban areas. The GOP also retained its majorities in the General Assembly.
“We’ve shown the country that Georgia remains a red state, with big wins up and down the ticket,” said state House Speaker Pro Tempore Jan Jones, R-Milton. “We will take this mandate from the voters to continue lowering taxes, protecting our neighborhoods and quality of life, and providing more options for Georgia’s students to thrive.”
After Biden’s victory in Georgia in November 2020 followed in short order by the elections of Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, Democrats had reason to believe they had turned the state from red to purple.
But Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia, said those races were run in unique circumstances. For one thing, Trump encouraged his Republican supporters not to vote in the January 2021 runoffs that elected Ossoff and Warnock, arguing the November election had been stolen from him by widespread fraud.
Bullock said Trump fatigue among the voters at the time was another factor.
“In each of those situations, Donald Trump was president,” Bullock said. “(Voters) are more likely to remember grievances when they’re fresh.”
Bullock said most of the issues voters cared about this year favored the Republicans, including inflation, the economy, and illegal immigration. The Biden administration was widely criticized during the campaign for its handling of all three.
The only major issue that skewed toward the Democrats was abortion, Bullock said.
“(Trump’s victory) was a resounding rejection of the last four years,” said Stephen Lawson, a principal in the Atlanta office of the international law firm Dentons and former spokesman for Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington.
Demographically, Trump gained a historic level of support for a Republican in Georgia and elsewhere from Latinos, winning nearly half of the Latino vote. His campaign worked to appeal to Latino voters, particularly men.
“Republicans have figured out they can’t retain a majority just on white votes,” Bullock said. “They had to go after the Latino vote.”
On the other hand, Harris didn’t draw the dominant outpouring of women voters that Democrats were expecting two years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion as a constitutional right.
Her loss coupled with Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016 leaves major party women nominees for president 0-2.
“(Women) are perceived to be more liberal,” Bullock said. “It’s not necessarily accurate, but it’s a perception.”
Georgia Democrats see a silver lining in their defeat at the presidential level. U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, D-Atlanta, chairman of the Democratic Party of Georgia, pointed to the loss of at least two Republican seats in the state House of Representatives.
Democrat-turned-Republican Rep. Mesha Mainor was soundly defeated in a heavily Democratic Atlanta district, and GOP Rep. Ken Vance of Milledgeville was ousted in a new majority-Black district drawn by the General Assembly during last year’s redistricting special session.
While the Democrats failed to gain any state Senate seats, they didn’t lose any either, leaving Republicans holding a majority of 33 seats to 23.
“The momentum remains with Democrats fighting for reproductive freedom, Medicaid expansion, gun safety, and an economy that puts working families first,” Williams said. “Georgia is still a battleground, and we are ready for the next fight.”
Bullock pointed out that Trump’s 117,000-vote victory margin over Harris in Georgia translates to just two points.
“Georgia is going to continue to be a pretty competitive state,” he said. “We’re more red than blue, but we’re still going to be among the tossup states.”
by Dave Williams | Nov 8, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia Power’s first “grid-connected” battery energy storage system (BESS) has gone into commercial operation, the Atlanta-based utility announced Friday.
The Mossy Branch Battery facility in west-central Georgia’s Talbot County will generate 65 megawatts of battery storage that can be deployed back to the grid during a four-hour period, adding resiliency to the state’s power grid.
The state Public Service Commission (PSC) approved Mossy Branch as a demonstration project back in 2021 to evaluate the technical and economic feasibility of producing power through battery storage.
“Battery storage is an example of a new technology that will make our grid more reliable and resilient every day, and especially during extreme weather events,” said Kim Greene, Georgia Power’s chairman, president and CEO.
“The Mossy Branch facility is an incredibly valuable addition to our grid, and commercial operation of this site is a significant milestone in our continued work with the Georgia PSC to evolve and enhance Georgia’s power grid.”
While the Mossy Branch facility is Georgia’s first BESS, others are in the pipeline. Georgia Power expects to bring the 265-megawatt McGrau Ford Phase I project in Cherokee County into commercial service by the end of 2026.
The PSC is expected to vote next month to authorize a second phase of the McGrau Ford project as well as BESS projects adjacent to Robins Air Force Base in Bibb County and Moody Air Force Base in Lowndes County, and at Georgia Power’s retired coal-burning Plant Hammond in Floyd County.
by Dave Williams | Nov 7, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The state should actively promote developing sustainable aviation fuel and mass timber construction as emerging markets for a struggling timber industry, a legislative study committee recommended Thursday.
While Georgia is the nation’s No-1 state for forestry, the industry has been hit with shrinking demand for timber, resulting in an oversupply.
“Market volatility and out-of-state closures within the supply chain have posed significant risks and continue to pose significant risks,” state Senate President Pro Tempore John Kennedy, R-Macon, said Thursday at the final meeting of the Senate Advancing Forest Innovation in Georgia Study Committee. “These challenges result in higher prices for consumers and create uncertainty for the industry.”
The study committee chaired by Kennedy unanimously approved recommendations that include funding a Georgia-based nonprofit or research facility affiliated with an academic institution that would work to develop innovative forestry markets including sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
SAF is a biofuel that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions up to 85% compared with conventional petroleum-based fuel. The European Union will require commercial aircraft to burn at least 6% SAF by 2030, a percentage that will increase gradually each year until it reaches 70% in 2050.
The Federal Aviation Administration recently awarded two grants to help accelerate the development of SAF in Georgia.
SAF producer LanzaJet will receive nearly $3.1 million to support a new production facility in Soperton, while Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta will get $240,000 to build the infrastructure needed to deploy SAF at the world’s busiest airport.
The other technology included in the study committee’s recommendations – mass timber construction – involves using prefabricated wood panels as an alternative to concrete and steel in building multi-family residential or commercial structures that are larger than single-family homes. The first commercial building in Georgia constructed with mass timber is at Atlanta’s Ponce City Market.
The study committee also suggested the state conduct a study to determine what can be done to promote Georgia’s pulp-and-paper industry. Mills have been going out of business in large numbers due to foreign competition.
Finally, the panel’s report asks the Georgia Forestry Commission and Georgia Forestry Association to put together a list of burdensome regulations that are hurting the timber industry.
The recommendations will be forwarded to the full Senate to consider during the 2025 session of the General Assembly starting in January.
