The Supreme Court of Georgia held its first meeting on January 26, 1846 at Talbotton, Georgia.
John Sammons Bell was born on January 26, 1914 in Macon, Georgia. He would go on to serve as Chairman of the Democratic Party of Georgia, as a Judge on the Georgia Court of Appeals, and as chief judge of the appellate court. He is today best known as the designer of the state flag featuring the Confederate battle flag, which was adopted by the General Assembly in 1956.
On January 26, 2001 a new state flag, first designed by Atlanta architect Cecil Alexander, passed out of committee in the General Assembly by a 4-3 vote and would be voted on later that week. Click here to view the floor debate from 2001.
Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections
The Georgia State House and Senate both convened at 10 AM for Legislative Day Five.
Legislative Meetings
7:30 AM APPROPRIATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE MEETINGS 341 CAP HYBRID
1:30 PM HOUSE JUDICIARY 132 CAP HYBRID
1:30 PM HOUSE REGULATED INDUSTRIES 506 CLOB HYBRID
Vaccinating home-bound seniors is a challenge for the state, according to Georgia Health News.
Many elderly people are unable to travel by car to a facility where they can be vaccinated. Others might be able to go if a ride were available, but they live alone and have no family members to help them.
“I think it’s an unmet need in our community and our state,’’ Dorothy Davis, president and CEO of Visiting Nurse Health System/Hospice Atlanta, an Atlanta-based home health provider, told GHN this week. “It’s not just a Georgia problem.’’
State Sen. Gail Davenport, a Jonesboro Democrat, questioned Georgia’s Public Health commissioner at a legislative hearing this week about elderly residents living in their homes who are unable to get a shot.
The commissioner, Dr. Kathleen Toomey, replied that the state is working on plans to collaborate with home health agencies to have them vaccinate the homebound elderly. “I know it’s on people’s minds,’’ Toomey told legislators.
“There are frail elderly who live at home,’’ she said. “It would be next to impossible for them to travel to a vaccination site, let alone stand in line at a mass vaccination event.’’
One major concern is vaccines’ vulnerability to room temperatures, which can cause them to lose their efficacy. Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines need to be stored cold and used fairly quickly once the vials are opened.
A new national voting rights act may complicate proposed changes to Georgia voting laws, according to the Georgia Recorder.
Democrats are hoping President Joe Biden will further honor the civil rights icon by signing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, restoring key components of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that Lewis shed blood for as a young man. Biden urged Congress to take action on the measure as a candidate.
“If they don’t, I’ve been saying all along, it’s one of the first things I’ll do as president if elected,” he said at a campaign stop in July.
[The Voting Rights Act (1965)] opened the door for Black citizens to vote in Georgia and across the South, said Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University.
“If you go back and you look at how many Blacks voted in 1964, and then you look at how many Blacks voted in 1968 and 1972, it’s an exponential increase because the barriers that were being used to exclude Blacks from the franchise were removed,” she said. “The state was put under federal oversight to make sure that they didn’t institute any practices that, intentionally or unintentionally, were going to prevent Blacks from being able to exercise their rights.”
Georgia was one of six states that required approval, or preclearance, from the U.S. Justice Department for any changes related to voting in 1965.
In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act on the basis that it singled out states with a history of racialized voter suppression at the time the act was passed.
The decision ended preclearance but left the door open for Congress to come up with a new standard that treats all states the same. Legislation passed by the U.S. House would require 10 years of preclearance for states or counties with a significant number of voting rights violations in the past 25 years. The House renamed that bill after Lewis following his death.
Yesterday, Governor Brian Kemp and First Lady Marty Kemp introduced legislation to fight sex trafficking, according to a Press Release.
“Brian and I are proud to renew our commitment in the fight against human trafficking going into 2021,” said First Lady Marty Kemp. “With these important initiatives and the support of our state and national partners, we can continue taking important steps to end modern day slavery and ensure that our state is a safe haven for survivors – not their abusers.”
“During our first days in office, we hit the ground running to crack down on traffickers, care for survivors, and eradicate modern day slavery in our state,” said Governor Brian Kemp. “And I don’t think any First Lady in the country has done more to end human trafficking than our First Lady, Marty Kemp. This legislation is a strong testament to Marty’s commitment to dismantle this criminal industry for good, and we will not rest until every victim is rescued and every trafficker is behind bars.”
Name Change Exception for Survivors of Human Trafficking
This legislation proposes to amend Georgia’s name change statue to protect the privacy and safety of survivors of human trafficking who wish to change their names. Currently, Code Section 19-12-1 requires anyone wishing to change their name in Georgia to file a petition for name change with their local Superior Court. Public notice of this petition must be published in the county’s legal organ (newspaper) once per week, consecutively for four weeks. The notice must include the petitioner’s current name, the new name the petitioner is seeking to assume, the court the petition has been filed in, the date of the filing, and a notice of the right of any affected or interested party to appear and object to the change.
There is one current exception to the above requirements for victims of family violence. An individual may petition the court to file their petition under seal as a victim of family violence. If the judge allows it, the victim may skip the notice requirement and file their petition secretly with the court. This bill creates the same exception for survivors of human trafficking.
Civil Remedy for Victims of Human Trafficking
This bill proposes a civil cause of action by which a victim of human trafficking may sue any person who knowingly benefitted from any venture or scheme which that person knew or should have known involved human trafficking. Any civil suit filed under this section will be stayed until after any criminal cases arising from the action are resolved. The bill creates a ten-year statute of limitations from the date of the human trafficking offense, or, if the victim is a minor, from the victim’s 18th birthday. The bill also creates a cause of action whereby the Attorney General may file suit against human traffickers.
This bill mirrors federal 18 U.S.C. § 1595, which allows victims and Attorney Generals to sue human traffickers in federal court. This bill provides a state remedy for those who were victimized by traffickers who do not face federal charges or have out-of-state ties.
Department of Driver Services Rule Change
This Department of Driver Services rule change would require new and renewal applicants for Commercial Driver’s Licenses to take an anti-human trafficking course and provide proof of attendance in order to receive their license.
The legislation outlined above will be formally introduced in the coming days.
The first bill would establish an exception for trafficking survivors who want to change their names. State law requires anyone who petitions the court for a legal name change to publish a notice in the local newspaper for four consecutive weeks. Current law allows victims of family violence to file petitions without public notices and this legislation would also allow trafficking victims to keep their name changes private.
Under the second piece of legislation, victims of human trafficking would be able to sue their traffickers or anyone else who knowingly benefitted from their crimes in civil court. A lawsuit could not be filed until any criminal cases were resolved and the statute of limitations would be 10 years.
Finally, Gov. and Mrs. Kemp have proposed a rule change for the Department of Driver Services which would require anyone getting or renewing a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) to take an anti-trafficking course first.
From the Capitol Beat News Service via the Rome News Tribune:
The slate of bills on deck in the current legislative session would follow legislation passed last year that toughened penalties on foster parents engaging in improper sexual behavior with children in their care and on commercial drivers with human-trafficking criminal convictions.
Legislation was also passed last year allowing victims to clear their court records of any offenses stemming from activities while they were being trafficked.
State officials also created a new hotline in September for Georgians to alert law enforcement officers of sexual or labor exploitation and to receive help for victims. Thousands of state government employees have also taken a trafficking-awareness course during the past year on how to spot abuse.
The number for the state’s human-trafficking hotline is 1-866-ENDHTGA.
The Georgia Department of Public Health is not seeking major budget increases from the state legislature, according to the AJC.
Amid a pandemic that, as of Monday, has killed 11,584 Georgians and sickened more than 720,000, Toomey’s boss, Gov. Brian Kemp, proposed only a minuscule increase in the state’s public health budget for the next fiscal year: about $900,000, or 3/10 of 1%. None of the new money addresses the pandemic. But nearly $200,000 would fund a licensing program for tattoo parlors.
Kemp’s budget plan continues a long-established trend in Georgia. If lawmakers follow his recommendations, the state will spend 13% less per resident on public health in the coming year than it did a decade ago.
“It assumes this will be a short-term problem, and the federal government will be there to pay for it,” said Amber Schmidtke, a public health researcher who has worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and taught at Mercer University.
In a news conference on Jan. 12, Kemp said the agency is adequately funded to respond to the pandemic through testing and vaccinations.
“We have the bandwidth to do what we need to do,” Kemp said. “We will use every resource, human and financial.”
Georgia ranks 37th among the states in public health spending per resident. It advanced from 39th over the past decade only because of budget cuts in other states.
State Rep. Kasey Carpenter (R-Dalton) will file legislation to allow some undocumented immigrants to qualify for in-state tuition at some state institutions, according to the Dalton Daily Citizen News.
The House Higher Education committee chairman did not move the bill forward last March as the fate of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — which protects children brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents — was in flux. But last June, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling saved the program after finding the Trump administration illegally rescinded it in 2017.
The decision has allowed lawmakers and advocates to again turn their sights on passing legislation that would increase access to higher education for DACA recipients. As of 2020, there are about 21,000 young immigrants, or “Dreamers,” in Georgia who may be missing out on the opportunity for a secondary education because of the out-of-state cost of tuition.
“For me it’s a workforce development issue,” Carpenter told CNHI. “We’ve got opportunity to keep these high-achievers in our state and for my community they add a lot of value. They’re hard-working folks and they just want opportunities. They’re Georgians, as far as I’m concerned.”
Only students younger than 30, who have been in the country since they were 12 years old and graduated from a Georgia high school or received a Georgia GED diploma would be eligible. Georgia’s four research institutions — Augusta University, the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech and Georgia State University would not be included in the legislation.
The Georgia Department of Natural Resources is accepting comments on a proposed Camden County Spaceport, according to The Brunswick News.
The Georgia Department of Natural Resources Coastal Resources Division is accepting comments until March 7 to determine if the proposed Spaceport Camden is consistent with Georgia policies and laws created to manage coastal resources. The study and public comment period is being held at the request of the FAA, which is expected to make a final decision on an environmental impact statement in March.
The Coastal Resources Division’s response to the FAA will help determine if Camden County gets the license it has been seeking more than five years.
Supporters say a spaceport will bring good, high-paying technical jobs and could help establish Camden County as Georgia’s space coast.
Opponents say the more than $9 million in local tax dollars spent so far is a waste of money because launches will never happen at the site. Launches from the spaceport would potentially take rockets over homes, historic structures and environmentally sensitive marshes where a malfunction could be catastrophic.
Dougherty County Commissioners hired an architecture and engineering firm for a new morgue and are looking for a location, according to the Albany Herald.
Currently, the county is renting morgue space Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital North on Palmyra Road for storing bodies awaiting transfer to funeral homes or for autopsy. The county has recognized the need to operate its own morgue for years, and included funding for the project in the current special-purpose local-option sales tax approved by voters in November 2016.
Valdosta City Schools report more than 160 students quarantined, according to the Valdosta Daily Times.
Hall County Commissioners will hold a vote-a-thon to try and clear a backlog created by COVID-19, according to AccessWDUN.
The Hall County Board of Commissioners held its final work session Monday afternoon in preparation for a trio of voting sessions that will take place later this week, all within a 26-hour period.
COVID-19 has necessitated the tabling and rescheduling of numerous agenda items over the past month and that has created a backlog of thirteen applications awaiting the commissioners’ decision. Commissioners say they cannot wait any longer to decide those applications.
But beginning Wednesday afternoon that situation will likely become more of a challenge as the first of those three voting sessions convenes. Under state law those voting sessions must provide an opportunity for public comment, and for that no appointment is required.
So in order to minimize the number of people in the common areas of the Hall County Government Center at any one time a plan was launched to separate the thirteen applications by holding three voting sessions instead of the usual single voting session.
The University System of Georgia will conduct a national search for a new Chancellor, according to the Capitol Beat News Service via the Gwinnett Daily Post.
Georgia State University President Mark Becker is one of the highest-paid state employees at $2.8 million, according to the AJC.
The Effingham County Sheriff‘s deparment seized ten pounds of fentanyl, according to the Savannah Morning News.
Rome City Commissioners set qualifying fees for the November elections for city commission and board of education, according to the Rome News Tribune.
“We’ve got 10 seats to fill: the three Ward 2 seats on the city commission and all seven seats on the school board,” City Clerk Joe Smith noted.
Rome City Schools board candidates can live anywhere within the city limits but City Commission candidates must live in the ward they are running in. Ward 2 is the area south of the Coosa and Etowah rivers — South Rome, East Rome and including places such as Saddle Mountain and the city portion of Chulio Hills.
Gainesville will use a $28 million state loan from the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority to provide infrastructure improvements for a business park and planned residential development, according to the Gainesville Times.
Container traffic increased slightly through the Georgia ports for 2020, according to the Savannah Morning News.
The Port of Savannah moved more than 4.68 million twenty-foot equivalent container units (TEUs) last year, up 1.8 percent over its 2019 total of 4.59 million. Total cargo crossing all docks in 2020 reached 38.4 million tons.
The growing container trade in Savannah during the last five months of the year followed five consecutive months of lower volumes.
In fact, the Port of Savannah achieved its busiest December ever, handling 447,525 TEUs, an increase of 24% over December 2019.
“Savannah’s capacity to take on additional trade as well as its diversified cargo portfolio – including ecommerce and strong export markets – helped to drive business gains,” said Griff Lynch, the ports authority’s executive director.
Comments ( 0 )