by Dave Williams | May 20, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The head of a commercial real estate investment firm has been sentenced to 87 months in prison and ordered to pay $45 million in restitution in a fraud scheme involving the Atlanta Financial Center in Buckhead.
Elchonon (Elie) Schwartz, 46, of New York City pleaded guilty in February to one count of wire fraud. Schwartz convinced more than 800 investors to send him $62.8 million, including $54 million earmarked for the huge office building on Peachtree Road. Instead of using the money for legitimate purposes, he diverted it into buying luxury items for his own use.
“Schwartz’s greed was boundless,” said Theodore S. Hertzberg, interim U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. “He callously abused the trust of hundreds of investors to line his own bank accounts. … Schwartz’s sentence reflects our office’s commitment to hold fraudsters accountable for exploiting investors who innocently rely on their false representations.”
According to court records, Schwartz set up a crowdfunding website – CrowdStreet Marketplace – that raised nearly $63 million, including $54 million for the Atlanta Financial Center and $9 million for a mixed-use building in Miami Beach. He represented to investors that he would safeguard their funds within segregated bank accounts, would not commingle the investors’ money, and would use the funds only for investment in each property.
Schwartz then directed the money into his personal bank account as well as unrelated commercial real estate investments he controlled, using it to buy luxury watches, invest in stocks and options in a personal brokerage account, and cover payroll expenses for unrelated commercial real estate businesses.
The case was investigated by the FBI with assistance from the Security and Exchange Commission’s Division of Enforcement.
Along with the jail time and restitution order, Schwartz was sentenced to three years of supervised release after he completes his prison term.
by Dave Williams | May 20, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Businesses front-loading orders to avoid looming tariffs are continuing to drive containerized cargo traffic at the Port of Savannah.
The port handled 515,500 twenty-foot equivalent container units (TEUs) last month, up 17% from April of last year and the third monthly record in a row, the Georgia Ports Authority reported Tuesday.
“Our operations remain business-as-usual,” authority President and CEO Griff Lynch said.
Officials at the ports authority feared the worst back in February when President Donald Trump slapped across-the-board tariffs on imports from countries across the globe, kicking off a trade war, including a 145% tariff on China. However, Trump backed away from that high tariff earlier this month and reduced it to 30% while pausing tariffs elsewhere for three months.
“With the latest news on tariffs, we’re optimistic the situation will settle down and cargo will continue to flow through Savannah and Brunswick,” Lynch said. “We’re already seeing an uptick in business for the months ahead.”
However, last month’s numbers at the Port of Brunswick were not so encouraging. The nearly 63,000 units of Roll-on/Roll-off cargo Brunswick handled in April was down 22% from the same month last year.
That monthly decline occurred after Brunswick had posted an 18% increase in RoRo units in March, the result of many auto and heavy equipment manufacturers rushing orders in anticipation of the tariffs.
At the monthly meeting of the authority board, Lynch announced that a new $44.5 million U.S. Customs inspection warehouse will come online in July at Savannah’s Garden City Terminal, more than doubling the previous space to 300,000 square feet. Lynch said the on-terminal site will save customers time and money because containers won’t have to be moved off-port for inspection.
The board also approved construction of a fourth berth for RoRo units at the Port of Brunswick’s Colonel Island Terminal. Work on the $99.8 million project is due to begin by the middle of this year, with completion set for 2027.
by Dave Williams | May 20, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms entered the 2026 race for governor Tuesday, vowing to push back against the disruption perpetrated by the Trump administration.
“We know there’s a lot of chaos coming out of Washington, D.C.,” Bottoms, a Democrat, told Capitol Beat in an exclusive interview. “It’s been destabilizing to the economy. I’m a fighter. I want to be able to fight for Georgians.”
Bottoms, a lawyer, served two terms on the Atlanta City Council before being elected mayor in 2017. After deciding not to seek reelection four years later, she joined the Biden administration as a senior advisor and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.
She said her most important accomplishments as mayor included steering the city through an economic downturn brought on by the pandemic, leaving office with Atlanta boasting $180 million in budget reserves without raising taxes and while providing historic pay raises for police officers and firefighters.
Bottoms pledged to expand the state’s Medicaid program if she is elected governor, a goal Georgia Democrats have advocated for more than a decade but that has been blocked by Republican governors and GOP majorities in the General Assembly.
“We’ve had nine rural hospitals close because we’ve not expanded it,” she said. “We’ve got 300,000 people in this state that don’t have health coverage.”
Bottoms said building her name recognition in rural Georgia will be an important part of her campaign. Her family history goes back generations in Crawfordville, the county seat in tiny Taliaferro County.
“You can be the most popular person in Atlanta, and it doesn’t mean a thing statewide,” she said. “I’m going to be out and about across the state.”
The only other Democrat running for governor at this early stage of the race is also an Atlantan. State Sen. Jason Esteves, a former member of the Atlanta Board of Education, declared his candidacy for governor last month.
The only announced Republican candidate thus far is state Attorney General Chris Carr. Other potential candidates to succeed term-limited GOP Gov. Brian Kemp include Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
by Ty Tagami | May 19, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Corporate landlords have been consolidating ownership in Georgia’s single-family housing market, drawing increasing criticism and political attention, including from U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff.
The Georgia Democrat said Monday that it’s too soon to know how a new state law requiring local managers might change things. Meanwhile, he said he wanted “to expose the mistreatment of renters by large out-of-state corporate landlords” in Georgia by conducting his own investigation.
Ossoff invited a lawyer and two renters to speak with reporters at his Atlanta office Monday about their experiences with such landlords. Attorney Esther Graff-Radford of Atlanta said renters waste many hours of personal and work time trying to correct billing errors or to coordinate maintenance.
Patrick Colson-Price of Smyrna said he found large quantities of glass, razor blades and other dangerous debris in his backyard, leading to the injury of one of his dogs. He said it took significant badgering and personal time to get his landlord to remediate the yard. He said he sent at least 30 emails with photographs and showed up at the company’s Atlanta office with a bucket of glass shards.
Shana Brooks-Wilhite, a renter in Stockbridge, said a carbon monoxide alarm went off in early December, leading to the discovery the stove and fireplace were leaking gas. She said that when she called the company, she was told it would take three weeks to send a repair person.
She said she had to spend more than she could afford on takeout food for herself and her son, while her gas bill doubled that month. And they had no heat in the depths of winter.
“We’re not humans to them. We’re dollar signs,” she said. “I felt completely worthless and small.”
Both renters said their landlord is Invitation Homes. A recent report by Georgia State University found that more than 19,000 metro Atlanta homes are owned by that company and two others, accounting for 11% of the single-family rental homes in Atlanta’s core counties.
An Invitation Homes spokesperson said in a statement that the company has over 200 associates in Georgia who “dedicate themselves to providing our local residents a positive experience throughout their stay with us.” When the company does “miss the mark, we acknowledge the mistake and work hard to make it right,” the statement added.
Other reports have found different numbers than Georgia State yet have revealed a similar story of consolidated ownership. It’s an investment strategy that became viable when new digital capabilities combined with the Great Recession to lower the opportunity cost.
Seven corporations own more than 51,000 single-family homes in the 21-county metro-Atlanta region, according to a blog by the Atlanta Regional Commission late last year. And the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported last year that Metro Atlanta was the top U.S. region for such consolidation, with 25% of the single-family home rentals — 71,832 homes — owned by large investors in 2022.
Last week, Gov. Brian Kemp signed House Bill 399 into law. The bipartisan legislation requires out-of-state investors who own and rent houses or duplexes to have a local broker and a local property manager.
Ossoff said he has launched an investigation to build a factual foundation for potential further intervention by local, state or federal government. He said such companies had harmed renters by failing to do timely repairs, by withholding security deposits and by imposing “junk” fees and higher rents.
He offered no timeline for completing his investigation. He asked renters who are experiencing problems with large corporate landlords to contact his office and make a complaint at ossoff.senate.gov/homestory. He promised anonymity for anyone who shares their story.
by Dave Williams | May 19, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia Power will not seek to raise base rates for the next three years under a proposed agreement the Atlanta-based utility announced Monday.
The agreement between the company and the state Public Service Commission’s (PSC) Advocacy Staff – if approved by the five-member PSC – would cancel the rate case Georgia Power was planning to submit to the commission by July 1.
Georgia Power has increased its customer rates three times in the last six years and has been criticized by consumer watchdog groups and environmental advocates for doing so.
The state Senate considered legislation during this year’s General Assembly session to prohibit the company from passing on the costs of providing electricity to the giant power-hungry data centers cropping up across Georgia. But the bill didn’t make it through the Senate Regulated Industries and Utilities Committee, as opponents argued the PSC already had taken that step by passing a new rule earlier this year.
“We are well-positioned to balance mutual benefits that are available as a result of the extraordinary economic growth taking place in our state,” Georgia Power spokesman Jacob Hawkins said Monday. “This stipulated agreement helps balance the affordability needs of our customers while ensuring Georgia Power remains equipped to continue its support of our state’s incredible growth – which is good for all of our stakeholders.”
But the Southern Environmental Law Center cried foul over the agreement. Jennifer Whitfield, a senior attorney in the group’s Atlanta office, pointed to a provision in the agreement that exempts “reasonable and prudent” costs incurred from storm damage from the rate freeze. That would include the massive damage Hurricane Helene wreaked on Georgia Power’s system last September.
Whitfield criticized the PSC for waiving the public hearings that would have taken place after Georgia Power filed its rate case. The hearings would have dealt with issues including the costs of storm damage and the impact of the rapidly growing number of data centers sucking up power.
Whitfield predicted those rising costs will force customer bills higher as early as next May.
“Commission staff has given away our hard-fought relief from data centers,” she said. “Make no mistake: Bills for residential and small business customers will rise under this agreement.”
Under the agreement, the PSC would consider any storm damage costs Georgia Power incurs in a separate regulatory proceeding next year. Then in 2028, when the utility files its next rate case, the agreement would require the company to make sure data centers cover their costs and don’t pass them on to ratepayers.
The commission must vote on the agreement by July 1. Otherwise, Georgia Power would move forward with its rate case.
The PSC is planning to hold public hearings on the agreement before voting on it.
by Ty Tagami | May 16, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
BRUNSWICK – We arced toward the blue sky, punching through cotton ball clouds as the fearsome acceleration pressed me into the ejector seat with a force that equaled multiples of my own weight.
The Blue Angels will be dazzling a crowd at an airshow over Brunswick this weekend. They barnstorm the country promoting the U.S. Navy and Marines, in a display of mastery in the air.
Beforehand, they take a couple of people up for the ride of their lives. Usually, one of them is a media representative, and I drew the lucky straw.
I went up Wednesday after a local official returned from his nearly hour-long flight. He was sweaty and he looked spent, but he insisted he had enjoyed the experience, especially flying upside down, the expanse of green forest spreading out to the Atlantic Ocean under his head.
Although this F/A-18 Super Hornet was decades old, it was still capable of screaming at near Mach 2 and potentially surviving up to 10 times the force of gravity, or 10 Gs.
As I waited for the local official’s flight to end, people on the ground asked if I was nervous.
No, I lied. What could go wrong?
Before we went up, both of us got a briefing. Crew Chief 7, also known as Silent Bob (they all get nicknames) had laid out photos of the cockpit on a conference room table.
Don’t touch the objects with black and yellow stripes, he warned. That would result in “irreversible change” to the aircraft. He used a similar euphemism to explain the outcome of pulling the black and yellow hoop between the thighs: “bonus flight.” It would trigger the explosives beneath your seat, rocketing you up through the (hopefully) open cockpit canopy.
Despite that warning, he still walked us through what to do in the rare event that the pilot ordered ejection. Push your helmeted head back on the headrest and look up for the parachute.
When I arrived in the morning, Silent Bob was methodically going over the plane. He opened a panel in the fuselage and inspected the pasta bowl of electric wiring underneath. He hopped up and down behind the aircraft so he could peer into the nozzles of the twin jet engines. He slid his eyes slowly over the fuselage. He propped himself next to the cockpit, reviewing the controls and instruments. You could see him mentally ticking off a checklist.
If I was able to control my nerves, there were two reasons: Silent Bob and the pilot, Major Scott Laux. The pilot’s surname is pronounced “locks,” so of course they called him Goldie.
As Goldie triggered the motor on the translucent canopy, and it descended to seal the aircraft – and my fate, he told me he was here to make this an enjoyable ride. We would do many of the maneuvers that the Blue Angels execute during their show, but he would always check with me first and allow me to reject any of them.
I knew I’d never get another opportunity like this, so that was unlikely. But it was nice to have the option.
Silent Bob had strapped down my ankles, thighs, hips, and chest with the elaborate harness system, ticking off the steps by counting out loud.
During our briefing, he had explained the Anti-G Straining Maneuver, or AGSM. Most fighter pilots these days wear compression suits that squeeze their bodies during aggressive maneuvers, forcing the blood to stay in the brain.
Without this, the down-body pressure created by powerful accelerations and directional changes could cause blackout.
“In the world of aviation this is called a G-LOC, aka G-induced loss of consciousness, and remains a significant cause of loss of aircraft and pilot in both military fighter aviation and civilian acrobatic aviation,” says a medical website established by a U.S Air Force flight surgeon. “Throughout the 1990s, for example, the USAF lost approximately one aircraft per year due to G-LOC.”
Due to the precision required of Blue Angels pilots, they eschew those inflatable compression suits.
Hence, the AGSM: when the pilot says “three-two-one go,” you squeeze the muscles in your calves, your thighs, and your butt, then you suck in a breath, tighten your belly, hold to a count of three, push out the oxygen, then suck in and tighten again, repeating until the maneuver is over.
Now, on the runway, Goldie told me to arm the ejector seat. Silent Bob had said it was the only black and yellow lever we were allowed to touch.
The aircraft then lifted gently off the ground – like a passenger jet – until Goldie pulled back on the joystick and the fighter nosed up at 45 degrees, hurtling through the clouds.
We leveled off, and he said I could relax for a while and take in the view as we sped toward a Navy bombing range, the open airspace where we would be executing maneuvers.
As a warmup, he accelerated through 2, 3, 4 and 6 G turns, instructing me to lift my arms. They grew heavier and heavier! I scrunched up as hard as I could as he banked into a 6 G turn.
I hadn’t eaten much before the flight. I figured an empty stomach would ease the nausea. My teenage son had helpfully informed me that my strategy would merely lead to dry heaves.
I hate it when the kid is right.
Goldie said nearly all pilots, himself included, get airsick. He said it didn’t happen to him anymore though.
He’d downed a turkey sandwich with jalapenos for lunch.
Next on the menu was a “minimum radius” turn: he rolled the plane on its side in a quick and precise twist that seamlessly transitioned into a tight banking turn that pushed my guts into my hips. That was 7 Gs.
Next, were some aileron rolls that sent the sky spinning under us then back above.
We also did the inverted flight that my fellow traveler had enjoyed before me. Goldie told me to check that my harness was strapped as tightly as possible first, and I discovered that Silent Bob had, indeed, done a thorough job. After Goldie flipped us back upright, he demonstrated what astronauts feel, dropping the plane to replicate zero gravity. I was strapped in so tightly that I couldn’t tell. I flapped my arms about, but they felt normal.
Later, I wished I’d pulled out my cellphone to watch it float around. But then again, the next maneuver, would have sent it shooting through our cockpit like a missile.
Goldie had saved the “sneak to vertical rolls” for last, and I can see why. After that one, I was cooked, done. Get me to the ground.
Three-two-one go!
We instantly pivoted from horizontal to what felt like straight up, then he executed what I conceptualized as an ice skater’s double axle, before looping out of the maneuver back to level flight. I could see my field of vision narrowing, a sign of pending G-LOC.
We hit 7.5 Gs on that one, the maximum safe threshold for the Super Hornet. My body effectively weighed 1,200 pounds. I don’t think I blacked out.
After that, we buzzed the Navy control building, screaming past at low altitude. Goldie also demonstrated slow flight, angling the nose up and dropping the speed to 120 miles per hour, as if setting us down on an aircraft carrier. The stubby wings shuddered.
We floated over Interstate 95 then banked sharply over Golden Isles Airport. My belly was jelly by that point, so I was thankful when we lined up with the runway. Within seconds we were on the ground, and Goldie was instructing me to disarm my ejector seat.
We soon came to a stop, and the cockpit opened. Silent Bob unstrapped me and guided my feet down the blue airship’s ladder.
I considered kissing the tarmac but that seemed a bit dramatic, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stand back up.
Back in the conference room, I peeled off the dark-blue jumpsuit and sprawled on the carpet to keep the walls from spinning.
Goldie, true to form, was a calming presence. This dizziness is common, he explained. The maneuvers disturb the fluid in your inner ear, and there isn’t much to do about it. He warned me not to drive back to Atlanta right away, so I took a nap first.
The next morning, I had traded the jumpsuit for a gray suit and tie, as I listened to lawyers argue in federal appeals court. By then, the flight seemed like a fever dream, but the ache in my back and the difficulty of rising from the wooden bench was evidence that I had, indeed, ridden along in the backseat of a fighter jet at over 600 miles an hour.
