ATLANTA — U.S. Rep. David Scott, a Democrat who made history as the first African American to chair the House Agriculture Committee, has died, his office announced Wednesday.
Scott, 80, had represented the 13th congressional district for nearly a quarter century, representing much of the area south and east of Atlanta.
“To the public, he was a devoted leader who spent more than 50 years serving his community, the state of Georgia, and the American people,” his office said in a statement Wednesday afternoon. “He will be remembered not only for his leadership but for his kindness, compassion, and enduring impact on those around him.”
David Albert Scott was born on a farm in Aynor, S.C., a month after Germany’s surrender in World War II and two months before Japan would surrender.
He graduated from Florida A&M University and earned an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania and them started an advertising business.
Three years after finishing his studies, he worked on Andrew Young’s successful congressional campaign.
Two years later, in 1974, he won his own election to the Georgia House, serving there nearly a decade before switching to the state Senate.
Scott rose in the state Senate to chair the powerful Rules Committee, a role he held when Rep. Carolyn Hugley, D-Columbus, was still learning her way around the Gold Dome.
“I will always remember the grace he showed me,” said Hugley, now the House minority leader. She said in a statement that he was “a fighter,” and she applauded his role in passing the Affordable Care Act after he reached Congress. “He will be missed.”
Scott served in the state Senate until winning his own successful congressional campaign in 2002.
In 2020, the U.S. House Democratic caucus named him chairman of the Agriculture Committee, a key position for a lawmaker from a state like Georgia where agribusiness is significant.
He was up for election this year, when a new crop of graduates from Georgia’s General Assembly decided to challenge him.
Scott faced six opponents in the May 19 primary, one each from the state House and Senate.
Early voting starts Monday. That does not leave enough time to remove Scott’s name from ballots, according to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office.
Voters will see notices at polling places that say any votes cast for Scott will not count, a spokesman for Raffensperger’s office said. Similar notices will be sent to absentee by mail voters, the spokesman said, adding that Gov. Brian Kemp will call a special election to fill the remainder of Scott’s term.
But Scott’s death put politics on hold.
“Today, politics fades and humanity remains,” said Everton Blair Jr., a former Gwinnett County school board member who is running in the Democratic primary to succeed Scott.
U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff said in a statement that “Georgia is a better place thanks to the service of Congressman Scott.”
Scott was married to Alfredia Aaron Scott. They had two daughters, Dayna and Marcye, and two grandchildren, Kimani and Kaylin.
ATLANTA — An extended spell of dry weather has led to major wildfires in South Georgia, prompting Gov. Brian Kemp to declare a state of emergency covering more than half the state.
Kemp’s order on Wednesday covers 91 of Georgia’s 159 counties. It will be in effect for 30 days and includes a ban on burning yard debris and agricultural material there.
“With much of Georgia remaining in extreme drought conditions, wildfires have already surpassed the state’s 5-year average and continue to spread,” Kemp said in a statement.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency approved assistance grants for two locations: the Pineland Road Fire in Clinch and Echols Counties and the Highway 82 Wildfire in Brantley County.
“We are praying for the families who have lost their homes in these devastating conditions, as well as for the first responders working around the clock,” Kemp said.
ATLANTA — With weeks to go before Georgia’s primary election, nearly all the leading candidates for governor attended a forum Tuesday in hopes of distinguishing themselves from their competitors.
Only Keisha Lance Bottoms, a Democrat and former Atlanta mayor, skipped the event at The Battery Atlanta hosted by the Georgia Association of Manufacturers.
Republicans Chris Carr, Brad Raffensperger, Burt Jones and Rick Jackson delivered messages about their support for industry. So did Democrats Derrick Jackson, Michael Thurmond, Jason Esteves and Geoff Duncan, while also calling for more government spending, especially in health care.
Duncan, who was a Republican when he was Georgia’s lieutenant governor, switched parties after clashing with President Donald Trump over the 2020 election. He said his transition away from the GOP had enlightened him on a Democratic “toolkit” that could be expensive while also helping millions. As governor, he said he would be “looking for opportunities to stop ignoring poverty,” using the state’s ample reserves to help pay for pre-kindergarten, assistance for the poor and Medicaid expansion.
He acknowledged the financial advantage of two of the leading candidates on the Republican side.
“Rick Jackson and Burt Jones are having to light $100 million on fire to punch each other in the face,” he told reporters after his time on the stage.
Jones, Duncan’s successor as lieutenant governor, helps run a profitable family gas company. Jackson, a health care entrepreneur, entered the race with no background in government.
Jackson painted his outsider status and wealth as an asset.
Politicians sometimes do the wrong thing to please their donors, he said. “The only reason I’m running is to represent people that don’t have a voice. I could care less about what donors say. I can actually afford to do the right thing.”
Jones said the day’s discussions about policies on affordability, energy and taxes were ultimately less determinative than a gut check by voters.
“Everybody’s talking about the same thing,” he said. “And so at the end of the day, the voters have to decide who it is that they think can best execute on these promises.”
Chris Carr, the Georgia attorney general, delivered a similar line but with a twist that seemed aimed at Jackson and Jones. He said a rich guy and a rich guy’s dad were trying to buy the election, but “candidate quality matters.”
Carr said he supported a “humane” approach to immigrants brought here as children and that he would keep a state tax credit for affordable housing. He took a harder line against data centers than other Republicans, saying no community should have one “crammed down their throat.”
Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, appealed to older voters, saying he would support eliminating income taxes on retirement benefits while capping property tax increases that outpace the rise in Social Security checks. He told reporters that one solution to the health care crisis could be “charity clinics” where doctors have a “sliding fee structure” based on what patients can afford.
State Rep. Derrick Jackson, pointed to his leadership roles in the military and at General Electric and said he supported Medicaid expansion, a standard refrain among the four Democrats.
Jason Esteves, a former Atlanta school board chair and state senator, appealed to younger voters, saying he represented a “new generation of leadership.” Like nearly every candidate, he said a solution to Georgia’s workforce challenges would be to expand alternative pathways to a job. He said he would support tax credits for apprenticeship programs.
Most from both parties agreed that Georgia needs to steer more youths toward trade schools.
Michael Thurmond, who had perhaps the most expansive resume of the day, led the DeKalb County School District out of an accreditation crisis when he was an unconventional hire as superintendent over a decade ago. He went on to become the elected CEO of DeKalb.
Before all that he was the elected labor commissioner during the Great Recession, leading him to boast that he had connected more Georgians with a job than any candidate.
“White collar, blue collar, no collar. It’s not the color of the collar,” he said, “but it’s the green in the dollar that makes all the difference.”
ATLANTA — A little amendment to the last bill to pass the Georgia General Assembly this year could cause quite a stir if Gov. Brian Kemp signs it into law.
Or the Senate’s tweak to House Bill 1409 could do nothing, except give lawmakers pause about pursuing sex with a staffer.
The measure, which passed the Senate unanimously during the lunch hour on April 2, technically the last day of the legislative session, went on to pass the House 12 hours later, at 12:53 am, with broad bipartisan support.
The underlying bill updates a Georgia law that requires adults who interact with children to report suspected child abuse.
The amendment connects Georgia to recent events in Washington, D.C., where California Democrat Eric Swalwell and Texas Republican Tony Gonzales each resigned from the U.S. House on Tuesday.
Swalwell stepped down and suspended his campaign for California governor after he was accused of sexually assaulting a former staffer. Gonzales admitted in a radio interview to having an affair with an aide who later took her own life by lighting herself on fire.
Georgia state Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, said he was moved to introduce what lawmakers referred to as “the Epstein amendment” after he read about her death.
“I’m going to encourage our congressional delegation to look at what we did here and go up and take the same stand,” Robertson said this week after Swalwell and Gonzales resigned. “They represent us, so I think they have an obligation, the same as state senators and state representatives, to be transparent with the people who put them in office”
Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, discusses House Bill 1409 on the Senate Floor during what was technically the final day of the 2026 Legislative Session, Sine Die, on Thursday, April 2, at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta. This legislation sought to update the mandate for reporting child abuse. Another senator added what came to be called “the Epstein amendment,” a transparency mandate Robertson had added to other bills. (Ashtin Barker/Capitol Beat)
Calling it the Epstein amendment is a misnomer since he was a financier rather than a lawmaker, but the connotation of sexual abuse is what led to the nickname for Robertson’s transparency mandate.
HB 1409, should the governor sign it, will require that the leaders of the House and Senate treat any settled claim of “sexual harassment, discriminatory harassment, discrimination, or retaliation” as an open record, subject only to the scrubbing of the complainant’s identity. Refusal to release such records after a request would be treated as a misdemeanor punishable with a fine of up to $1,000, or $2,500 for each additional violation within a year.
Robertson, who got another bill approved that would make it illegal for clergy to have sexual contact with people taking their counsel, said he felt lawmakers should hold themselves to the same standard.
He had been trying to get his transparency amendment approved since March 6, the deadline to “cross” bills from the Senate to the House, when he stuck it onto another bill about public access to mugshots and police videos. That bill did not pass. Nor did another he tried to attach it to. But other senators started copying him.
When Senate Minority Whip Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain, added it to another bill, he said he looked back at her and smiled.
It is not a partisan proposal, Robertson said.
Jackson agreed to a point. She had attached Robertson’s language to a bill she opposed and hoped to kill, yet she said this week that sexual harassment is “rampant” in Congress and in legislatures across the country. Before she was elected, she toured the state Capitol with a YWCA group, and she said the lobbyist leading them warned about wearing clothing that might attract unwanted attention.
“Robertson is on the right side of history on this,” she said. But she also said that she thinks he just forced his colleagues — by that she meant Republicans — to support the measure. “You can’t vote against it, right?”
She said she thinks the disclosure mandate could use safeguards to protect against publicizing false claims of harassment, but she said she would still like Kemp to sign it into law. The Legislature can tend to those details in the future, she said, but in the meantime the transparency requirement would protect aides and other women who work under the Gold Dome.
“I think we’re all safer with having it brought to the light,” she said.
The version of the amendment that ultimately passed was tacked onto HB 1409 by Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, who is running for lieutenant governor.
He acknowledged that the language in his amendment had originated with Robertson, and he said he was moved to act by the failure of Congress to impose transparency on itself.
“The U.S. Congress voted to not do that,” he said on the Senate floor. “I think our body is better.”
ATLANTA — Georgia Chancellor Sonny Perdue announced Wednesday that he will retire from his job overseeing the state’s 25 public colleges and universities, ending a career that spanned more than four decades, from service on a local zoning board to the cabinet of President Donald Trump, with two terms as governor in between.
“As I prepare to retire, I’m grateful for our presidents, faculty and staff, our students
and the many communities that make up this remarkable system,” Perdue said in a statement. He did not give a definitive date, saying he would leave the post after a national search finds a successor.
Just over four years ago, on April 1, 2022, Perdue assumed leadership of a higher education system that now has a $12.1 billion budget, with 54,000 employees and 382,000 students.
Enrollment has grown during his tenure.
“Under his leadership, the system has seen record enrollment, modernized campuses and advanced medical education, including the launch of UGA’s new School of Medicine,” Gov. Brian Kemp said in a statement, adding that Perdue’s time leading the University System of Georgia “has solidified a legacy of impact that will continue for generations to come.”
A native of Perry, Perdue attended undergraduate and graduate school at the University of Georgia, earning a veterinarian medical degree. He flew in the U.S. Air Force and owned an agricultural business.
He started his political career in the 1980s, on the Houston County Planning and Zoning Board, before making his way to the state Senate in 1991. He chaired the Senate Higher Education Committee and rose to the top rung for a senator as President Pro Tem.
In 2003, he made history by becoming the first Republican to occupy the Georgia governor’s office since Reconstruction, serving the maximum two terms. Trump, in his first term as president, then tapped Perdue as the 31st U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.
After his pivot to chancellor, Perdue focused on affordability, eliminating a fee that saved students hundreds of dollars a year. He also restrained tuition growth, with students on average paying less now than in 2017 when adjusted for inflation, according to the system.
On Tuesday, the system Board of Regents raised tuition by 1% for in-state students and by 3% for out-of-state students.
Despite Perdue’s attention to affordability, critics noted that Georgia higher education remained out of reach for many from low-income households.
Lawmakers finally addressed that this year, budgeting $325 million as seed money toward a need-based program to be called the DREAMS Scholarship Endowment Fund. They placed the program under the control of the Georgia Student Finance Authority, but the idea started as a small fund in the University System of Georgia Foundation, under the leadership of Perdue.
The national search for Perdue’s successor will be conducted by a committee of the Board of Regents, with help from a consultant and from former Chancellor Stephen R. Portch and former Georgia State University President Mark Becker.
After they find a successor, Perdue, who has served as a foster parent with his wife, Mary, will have more time to spend with their four children, 14 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
ATLANTA — Tuition will rise 1% for Georgia students attending one of the state’s public colleges or universities, the state Board of Regents decided Tuesday.
The regents also increased tuition 3% for out-of-state students attending one of the University System of Georgia campuses.
“With enrollment at record levels, we’re focused on limiting new financial hurdles and delivering real value on every campus,” Chancellor Sonny Perdue said in a statement. “Today’s decision reinforces that commitment.”
Tuition covers only a portion of instructional costs, with the state paying for 57%, according to the university system. It said students pay, on average, less in tuition now than in 2017 when adjusted for inflation.
The system also said the Georgia General Assembly’s new budget for fiscal year 2027 includes a $34.2 million “reduction” in enrollment-driven state funding. The budget, which awaits the signature of Gov. Brian Kemp, increased the state funding for teaching to $3.5 billion, up nearly $229.5 million from the budget approved last year.
The Senate initially sought to roll that back by $123.5 million, but settled on a $34.2 million reduction in negotiations with the state House.
The Senate’s reduction was aimed at online courses, which leaders in that chamber said should cost the state less than in-person classes.
Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said on the Senate floor on April 2 that the Senate’s move had been framed publicly as a cutback.
“Only in government can more money next year than this year be called a cut,” he said.
