by Dave Williams | May 28, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – An Augusta woman has pleaded guilty to running a “ghost” tax preparation business out of her home.
Kim Brown, 40, faces up to three years in prison on each of two counts of aiding and assisting in the preparation and filing of false tax returns, a period of supervised release after serving her sentence, and monetary penalties.
According to a plea agreement entered Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, Brown failed to comply with IRS requirements by failing to identify herself as a paid preparer on the tax returns she filed on behalf of her clients.
She also fabricated income to qualify her clients for tax credits, claimed fake deductions to boost the size of the refund, and charged clients a fee based on a percentage of the refund.
In all, Brown prepared 22 false tax returns that cost the U.S. Treasury Department $541,912 in false refunds.
The case was investigated by the IRS’ Criminal Investigation Division and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney George J.C. Jacobs III.
by Dave Williams | May 27, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia Power has overestimated how much additional electrical generating capacity it will need to meet the demands of data centers, representatives of the state Public Service Commission’s Public Interest Advocacy (PIA) Staff testified Tuesday.
But those witnesses also supported the Atlanta-based utility’s plan to continue operating two of the company’s coal-burning power plants at Plant Bowen near Cartersville and Plant Scherer near Macon as well as upgrading existing natural gas units.
Tuesday’s testimony came as the commission opened a second round of hearings on Georgia Power’s 2025 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) outlining the mix of energy resources the utility plans to rely on for power generation in the coming years.
The rapid growth of both data centers and cryptocurrency mining operations across Georgia is spurring expectations of a huge increase in demand for electricity. In its 2025 IRP, Georgia Power is forecasting a need for 13,140 megawatts of additional peak generating capacity, mostly from “large-load” customers including data centers.
A megawatt is enough electricity to power about 750 homes.
But the utility hasn’t produced adequate evidence to support such a massive increase, Rob Trokey, director of the PSC’s Electric Unit, testified.
“The company has not provided empirical evidence suggesting that data centers or cryptocurrency customers are likely to materialize at a higher rate than other industrial customers,” he said.
“If the commission approves Georgia Power’s current load forecast … that would lead to over-procurement, potentially including the risk of keeping coal longer,” added Isabella Ariza, a lawyer representing the Sierra Club and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
The PIA Staff is recommending that the commission reduce Georgia Power’s load forecast by 2,000 megawatts.
But Brandon Marzo, a lawyer representing Georgia Power, said the staff’s analysis did not take into account three data center projects that have broken ground in Georgia that will add 3,721 megawatts of generating capacity.
“All of these data centers are in development,” he said. “Staff is proposing to make a 2,000-megawatt adjustment to the forecast, which could have a horrific impact if wrong.”
“They have made an investment,” Commissioner Tricia Pridemore added. “They have secured the capital. Why is it that the opinion of the staff is they’re not going to materialize?”
Trokey responded that the staff does believe substantial growth in demand by data centers will occur in Georgia. But he said the staff isn’t forecasting that demand will increase as much as Georgia Power is predicting.
“We’ve seen some data centers pull back in certain regions,” he said.
While the PIA staff’s recommendation to reduce Georgia Power’s load forecast is supported by consumer watchdogs and environmental advocates, staff witnesses backed up the utility’s plan to continue using fossil fuels to generate power.
“This option would allow the company to continue operating an existing resource and maintain fuel diversity as well,” said Anthony Sandonato, an independent contractor retained by the staff.
Jennifer Whitfield, a lawyer representing Georgia Interfaith Power & Light and the Southface Institute, suggested Georgia Power could save customers billions of dollars by retiring the two coal plants.
Energy lawyer Bobby Baker argued the utility doesn’t need to nearly double its current generating capacity over just the next eight years, calling it a “historic” expense that wouldn’t benefit Georgians.
“Why not put (data centers) in Virginia or Texas?” he asked. “They don’t bring anything to Georgia. They serve international customers.”
But David Hayet, a member of the PIA staff, said the huge increase in capacity Georgia Power is seeking would be offset in part when some of the company’s power-generating assets are taken offline.
“There are going to be retirements,” he said. “There are also going to be transactions that are going away, thousands of megawatts.”
The hearings will continue on Wednesday and possibly extend into Thursday. The PSC is scheduled to vote on the Georgia Power IRP on July 15.
by Ty Tagami | May 27, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A state agency created two decades ago to hold Georgia public schools accountable for student performance will have a new interim leader.
Gov. Brian Kemp’s policy director will take over as the interim executive director of the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement following the retirement of executive director Joy Hawkins, who served in the role for a half dozen years, Kemp’s office said Tuesday.
Ian Caraway is “uniquely qualified” for the role due to his “insight on the pressing needs facing Georgia students, along with his partnership approach to the various education agencies of our state,” Kemp said.
The agency, called GOSA, was founded under Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes, and the three Republican governors who followed him in office have kept it operational.
Some see the agency as duplicative of the Georgia Department of Education, while others see it as a public-facing window into the performance of public schools.
GOSA produces an annual school report card and other analyses using data from the state education department. It also analyzes trends and shares its findings with the public.
Lawmakers often call on the agency for special tasks. For instance, they gave GOSA the responsibility for determining which schools were among the lowest performers under legislation that created a new private school voucher program. Families zoned for those schools are eligible for the funding, called a “Promise Scholarship.” GOSA drew criticism when it had to recalculate the list due to problems with the data.
Caitlan Coleman, a Kemp staffer, will fill Caraway’s policy role in the governor’s office on an interim basis.
by Ty Tagami | May 27, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – More students have been skipping school since the COVID-19 pandemic, and Georgia lawmakers are looking into the problem.
A leading state Senate Republican announced Tuesday that he is forming a committee on the issue. Sen. John F. Kennedy, R-Macon, will also chair the new Study Committee on Combating Chronic Absenteeism in Schools.
Kennedy, the Senate’s president pro tempore, credited the chamber’s leader, Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, with prioritizing the issue.
“Thanks to his support, this new study committee will help us dig deeper into the root causes of absenteeism,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy was the chief co-sponsor of Senate Bill 123, which Gov. Brian Kemp signed last month. It amends Georgia’s compulsory attendance law for students ages 6 through 15, with chronic absenteeism defined as missing 10% or more of the school year. That law already requires superior court judges to establish and oversee student attendance and school climate committees in each county.
When it takes effect in July, SB 123 will require attendance review teams in each school system where 10% or more of the students were chronically absent and in each school where at least 15% were chronically absent.
SB 123 also adds a requirement that the Georgia Department of Education publish biannual reports on compliance with the law and on attendance rates.
The education department already publishes attendance rates, and the percentage of students missing school has climbed sharply since before the pandemic, when 12% of students qualified as chronically absent.
The rate fell briefly to 8% in 2020, when Kemp ordered schools to close their doors.
But chronic absenteeism surged to 20.1% in 2021, when schools adapted to the pandemic, with some operating online while others returned in person.
The percentage of chronically absent students climbed to 23.9% in 2022 before settling to 21.3% last year.
That means more than 370,000 Georgia students missed at least 10% of the 2024 school year.
Rates varied by district though, from 43.0% chronically absent in Crisp County to 5.1% in Wilkinson County.
by Dave Williams | May 23, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Starting May 27, Georgia Power executives will defend the mix of energy resources the utility intends to rely on for generating electricity against critics who say the plan relies too much on fossil fuels and not enough on renewable power.
The state Public Service Commission (PSC) will hold a second round of hearings expected to last several days on Georgia Power’s 2025 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP). The first round of hearings over three days in late March gave company witnesses a chance to outline how they propose to meet a massive increase in demand prompted by the growth of power-hungry data centers across the state.
The new IRP calls for Georgia Power to continue operating coal-burning plants at Plant Bowen near Cartersville and Plant Scherer near Macon, providing about 4,000 megawatts of electricity. A megawatt is enough electricity to power about 750 homes. The Atlanta-based utility also plans to upgrade existing natural gas units.
On the renewable side, the IRP proposes to add 4,000 megawatts of generating capacity from a combination of utility-scale and rooftop solar projects as well as battery storage.
But consumer watchdog and environmental advocacy groups argue Georgia Power could and should add more renewable energy to the utility’s portfolio beyond the 4,000 megawatts and do away with its aging fleet of carbon-emitting coal and gas plants.
“By arbitrarily capping solar development in its Integrated Resource Plan, Georgia Power has sidelined one of the most cost-effective resources available in favor of expensive fossil gas infrastructure,” said Patrick King II, Georgia policy advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “This approach ignores more sensible pathways that would cut emissions, lower financial risk, and save bill payers money.”
But Georgia Power executives say the soaring demand for electricity to serve “large-load” customers including data centers makes retaining the coal and gas plants critical. The 2025 IRP estimates the utility will need an additional 8,200 megawatts of electrical generating capacity during the next six years, an increase of more than 2,200 megawatts above projections in an updated IRP the commission approved a year ago.
“We need these units,” Jeff Grubb, Georgia Power’s director of resource planning, testified during the hearings in March. “They’re an economical way to serve the load growth that we have.”
Grubb warned that if the company doesn’t keep those plants operating, it would need to build more expensive new generating capacity by 2032.
A key disagreement between Georgia Power and the IRP’s critics is over whether the utility really needs that much additional generating capacity.
During cross-examination of Grubb and other Georgia Power executives at the March hearing, energy lawyer Bobby Baker said the utility’s demand forecast has increased 27-fold since 2022.
“Doesn’t that raise some red flags for y’all, an enormous jump?” Baker asked the Georgia Power witness panel. “Hasn’t the company consistently overestimated load growth?”
Baker said the costs of overbuilding generating capacity would fall squarely on Georgia Power customers.
But Fernando Valle, director of forecasting and analytics for Georgia Power, defended the utility’s forecasting track record.
“The load forecast has always incorporated the best available information we have at the time of the forecast,” he said. “Predicting the future is inherently uncertain.”
Grubb said Georgia Power customers also would be on the hook if the company underestimates how much generating capacity will be needed.
“Under-forecasting is a bigger risk than over,” he said. “We don’t want to be short.”
The PSC is scheduled to vote on the proposed IRP on July 15.
by Ty Tagami | May 23, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers quietly rolled back half the closures of recreational areas it had announced around Lake Lanier this week after public pushback from Georgia’s congressional delegation.
U.S. Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Suwanee, drew attention to the closures when he issued a statement Wednesday saying he was disappointed to learn about them ahead of the busy Memorial Day weekend, noting the lake draws more than 10 million visitors a year.
Meanwhile, Georgia’s two Democratic U.S. senators were blaming the administration of President Donald Trump, with Sen. Raphael Warnock attributing the closures to “reckless cuts,” and Sen. Jon Ossoff calling them “a direct and predictable result” of “reckless and chaotic mismanagement.”
The Army Corps triggered the barrage with an announcement Wednesday that it was temporarily shuttering parks and public use facilities at waterways in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, blaming “staffing shortages.”
The announcement included 20 sites at Lake Lanier, two at Allatoona Lake, one along Lake George W. Andrews southwest of Blakely, and a public shoreline area along the 240-mile Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River system.
On Thursday, the agency seemed to reverse course with another announcement that listed only 10 closures at Lake Lanier, or 11 depending upon how one counts the facilities. (The Thursday announcement listed as separate facilities two sites that would remain: Van Pugh North and Van Pugh South. The Wednesday announcement had listed them as one site.)
Warnock took some credit for the reversal, issuing a statement that said the Army Corps had scaled back the closures “following pressure” from him and Georgia families.
His office also took issue with McCormick’s suggestion that Democrats were partially responsible for the closures, even though Republicans control the federal government.
McCormick had said Democrats blocked an appropriations bill in the House of Representatives last year that would have prevented campground closures around Lake Lanier. Warnock’s office then noted that Republicans also controlled the House last year.
On Wednesday, McCormick said he was working with the Army Corps to find a solution before Memorial Day. On Friday, he merely shared the Army Corps’ update on X, without further comment.
