Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections for July 12, 2023

John Percival, an Irish Member of Parliament who served as a Georgia Trustee, was born on July 12, 1733.

In the British House of Commons, Percival served on the committee on jails with a young member named James Oglethorpe, who shared his idea about a new colony in North America for the deserving poor. Percival, like Oglethorpe became a Georgia Trustee, and during Georgia’s first decade, with Oglethorpe in America, Percival worked harder than anyone to champion Georgia’s cause and secure its future.

On July 13, 1787, Congress enacted the Northwest Ordinance, in which states ceded some claims to the west, and a process was set up for admitting new states.

The United States Army Medal of Honor was created on July 12, 1862 when President Abraham Lincoln signed legislation authorizing the award.

The first U.S. Army soldiers to receive what would become the nation’s highest military honor were six members of a Union raiding party who in 1862 penetrated deep into Confederate territory to destroy bridges and railroad tracks between Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Atlanta, Georgia.

On July 13, 1865, James Johnson as provisional Governor of Georgia, issued a proclamation freeing slaves and calling an election in October of that year to elect delegates to a state Consitutional Convention. Johnson had previously opposed Georgia’s secession and after the war was appointed Governor by President Andrew Johnson.

Savannah, Georgia-born John C. Fremont, who was the first Presidential nominee of the Republican Party in 1856, died in New York City on July 13, 1890.

On July 13, 1960, John F. Kennedy was nominated as the Democratic candidate for President.

Lt. Frank Reasoner of Kellogg, Idaho died in action on July 12, 1965 and was later posthumously awarded the first Medal of Honor to a United States Marines for action in Vietnam.

On July 12, 1984, Congresswoman Geradine Ferraro (R-NY) joined the Democratic ticket with Presidential nominee Walter Mondale. Ferraro was the first woman and first Italian-American woman nominated for Vice President. Mondale and Ferraro lost the General Election in the largest ever Republican landslide to Republican President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George Bush.

On July 13, 2013, the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter first appeared on Facebook.

Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections

Bryan County, Georgia is implementing “Logan’s List,” a system that alerts first responders when they’re likely to find people with special needs on a call, according to WTOC.

In 2021, state legislators were inspired by a young girl, Logan Stuart, who is autistic. Her story inspired a database called Logan’s List which will notify EMS personnel when they are in route to a location that may have someone with special needs.

Arriving quickly and fully prepared could be the difference between life and death – and preparation is key.

The Logan’s List database hopes to alert personnel so that they can respond more compassionately once dispatched… Identify any triggers that may be overwhelming to an individual and assist first responders in knowing who or what to look for.

Bryan County 911 Director Jodie Jernigan says this can ensure safety on both ends. She says often those with special needs react differently to loud sirens and flashing lights, something that this system will help responders know ahead of time.

“A lot of times special needs will become combative when they are scared and it hinders when they need to give first aid or get them out of a residence. If it’s a fire or as simple as an officer coming to take a report,” said Jernigan.

This law was first signed in 2021 and has slowly been implementing in counties around Georgia.

“We will get calls where there are individuals that have special needs and they are sometimes afraid of officers, sometimes they will hide in the home or even outside. They will get into cars, and this database is going to give the officer a chance to know ahead of time what they may be dealing with.”

Signing up is as simple as a phone call with a few questions.

The Bryan County Dispatch is working on creating an online application but they are asking for now. If you wish to sign up, call 912-756-2181.

As we noted yesterday, State Rep. Mesha Mainor switched from the Democratic Party to the GOP, according to the Capitol Beat News Service via the Albany Herald.

Rep. Mesha Mainor of Atlanta announced Tuesday that she is turning Republican, adding to the GOP’s House majority.

Mainor voted with the Republicans on several key pieces of legislation this year, most notably her vote in favor of a controversial school voucher bill. Despite her support, the measure failed to pass when a number of rural Republicans opposed it, citing a lack of private-school alternatives in their areas.

“As a lifelong Democrat … I blindly followed a vision that is far from reality,” she said. “It is time to put people and sound policy above politics and false narratives.”

Georgia Republican Chairman Josh McKoon, a former state senator from Columbus, welcomed Mainor to the House GOP Caucus.

“This is a historic day for Georgia Republicans,” he said. “Our party stands for empowering parents to be advocates for giving their children the best education possible.”

Mainor is in her second term representing a heavily Democratic district, making her prospects for re-election potentially difficult.

From the Associated Press via WJBF:

Rep. Mesha Mainor becomes the only Black member of the GOP among Georgia’s 236 state lawmakers, and the first Black Republican woman to ever serve in the Georgia General Assembly. Mainor’s defection gives Republicans a 102-78 edge in the House.

Mainor said legislative Democrats drove her out of the party for breaking party orthodoxy, claiming at a Tuesday news conference outside the Georgia Capitol that they had “relentlessly tried to sabotage every single thing that I have done for District 56” and “publicly slandered me in every way imaginable.”

“I thought it was OK to not agree with those things as a Democrat. But they told me, ‘You know what, those are values we just don’t have,’” Mainor said, flanked by state Republican Party Chairman Josh McKoon.

School choice has always had some support among urban Black Democrats, but Mainor’s fellow party members reacted with scorn even as Republicans rallied to Mainor’s support. State Sen. Josh McLaurin, an Atlanta Democrat, posted a picture of a $1,000 check online for a primary challenger, writing, “All I need is a name.”

Mainor, first elected in 2020, represents House District 56, an ultra-Democratic swath of Atlanta including its Midtown neighborhood and close-in parts of the city’s west side. She had said earlier that she wouldn’t switch parties. Tuesday, though, she urged other lifelong Democrats to reexamine the party’s values.

“I am encouraging more Black Americans and Black Democrats in particular – you might have this coat on, but I suggest you look at the lining. See what’s on the inside,” she said.

U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia, lambasted Mainor’s switch as a “stinging betrayal” of her Democratic constituents.

“House District 56 deserves a representative who will do the job they were elected to do, including fight for high-quality public education,” Williams said in a statement.

House Speaker Jon Burns, a Republican from Newington, said in a statement that Mainor is “joining the party of opportunity.”

The last legislative Democrat in Georgia to switch to the Republican Party was DeKalb County’s Vernon Jones, who plunged into the GOP in January 2021 as a supporter of then-President Donald Trump, at the end of Jones’ last term in the state House. Jones abandoned a Republican primary challenge to Gov. Brian Kemp at Trump’s behest and then lost a Republican congressional primary runoff in Georgia’s 10th District to current U.S. Rep. Mike Collins despite Trump’s backing.

Who can name the Democratic State House Member who last switched parties before Vernon Jones?

And we get a pithy quote via the AJC:

“Hate to be the turd in the punchbowl, but this is bad for school choice,” said veteran GOP strategist Chip Lake. “She can’t win as a Republican in that district, and what incentive would a Democrat have now to support any meaningful legislation on parental choice?”

Georgia’s maternal mortality rate rose dramatically in the most recent three-year period, according to The Georgia Recorder.

Dr. Kathleen Toomey, the commissioner of the state Department of Public Health, had warned lawmakers early this year the report would show an increase. The June 30 report was released quietly but was the focus of Tuesday’s Board of Public Health meeting, where board members called for a sustained focus on addressing the problem.

The report found that there were 30.2 deaths for every 100,000 live births in Georgia from 2018 to 2020. That is about a 20% increase from the previous three-year period, when the rate was 25.1. Black women are twice as likely as white women to die from pregnancy-related causes.

Of the deaths studied in the new report, 113 were concluded to be related to pregnancy – and 89% of them were deemed preventable, meaning they had “at least some chance of being prevented,” according to the report.

State lawmakers have taken steps in recent years to improve maternal care. Most notably, legislators just last year extended Medicaid to cover treatment a full year after the end of a pregnancy.

Public health officials also outlined several projects underway, such as a home visitation pilot in two pockets of the state. Some initiatives, they said, are showing signs of progress that board members said they hope will prod lawmakers to continue to support these efforts – and even expand them.

For example, Dr. James Curran, the board’s chair, floated the idea of expanding Medicaid coverage to women who are considered high risk before they are pregnant. Curran is also the dean and professor of epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University.

“Good surveillance and good analysis, that’s really the conscience of public health. And the conscience has got to be honest. It can’t be political, but it’s got to be honest,” Curran said.

“And once you show people that something works, everybody will want to support it,” he said.

The report issued a series of recommendations, such as encouraging providers, insurers and hospitals to offer a year of case management after the end of a pregnancy.

In the Georgia report, the highest rate – 65.7 per 100,000 live births – was documented in a southwest Georgia region stretching out from Columbus. The Macon-based public health district was not far behind with a 59.5 rate.

Fort Gordon will be renamed after U.S. Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who also happens to have been a Republican President of the United States. From WRDW:

October 27 has been approved for the redesignation ceremony for the Cyber Center of Excellence and Fort Gordon to implement the Naming Commission’s recommendation to recognize General Dwight D. Eisenhower as the name for the installation.

The post, named for a Confederate military figure, is being renamed along with U.S. military installations with Confederate-linked names.

“Rising from second lieutenant to commander-in-chief, Eisenhower’s extensive, innovative, and effective military experience and leadership shaped our modern world,” said Cyber Center of Excellence and Fort Gordon Commanding General, Maj. Gen. Paul Stanton. “His dedication to ensuring equal rights for Soldiers and citizens alike continues to be an example and inspiration for the present and future Soldiers of the Army he so faithfully served and decisively led. General Eisenhower epitomizes those values we continue to instill in our Soldiers today.”

The University of Georgia Law School named a scholarship after the late Speaker of the House David Ralston, according to AccessWDUN.

The fund was created by Ralston’s friend Joel O. Wooten with funds being matched by the University of Georgia Foundation.

“David Ralston was a good friend who spent much of his life in public service, working to move our state forward,” said Wooten.  “David had the knack of bringing people on both sides of the aisle together, and he treated everyone with civility and respect. He was a true leader who cared about people and studied issues carefully before acting. David would listen and work with various interests to come up with the best, most workable solutions to help Georgia and its citizens.”

Ralston was first elected to the Georgia House in 2002 serving Fannin, Gilmer and Dawson counties. He was named the 73rd Speaker of the House in 2010.

“It is an honor for this fund to be named in recognition of Dad,” said Ralston’s son, Matthew, a spokesperson for the family. “His dream when in law school was always to return to the North Georgia mountains to practice law and serve the area of the state where he grew up. As Speaker of the House, he reminded his colleagues in the state House that your zip code should not dictate your direction in life. Through his years of public service, Dad adopted the philosophy non sibi sed aliis – not for self, but for others. The David E. Ralston Memorial Fund will allow recipients to follow in that same principle and be able to serve the rural parts of the state after receiving a world-class legal education.”

Ralston graduated from the UGA School of Law in 1980 and was classmates with current UGA President Jere W. Moorehead.

“David Ralston and I were lifelong friends and law school classmates,” said Moorehead. “His very busy and extraordinary career never interfered with his faithful support of the University of Georgia.”

Speaker Ralston also served in the Georgia Senate for three terms beginning in 1993, and was the Republican nominee for Attorney General in 1998

Gwinnett County Public Schools will welcome 1500 new teachers in the coming school year, according to the Gwinnett Daily Post. That’s all. The rest of the article wasn’t that interesting to me, but the reminder of the sheer scale of Gwinnett Public Schools is worthwhile.

Columbus is preparing to open a new city hall, according to WTVM.

Columbus’s new City Hall building in Uptown is preparing to open up soon, with some city offices already operating from the new location.

The mayor’s office, along with the city manager’s, and city council, will be open on July 18. The $50 million purchase and renovation deal was signed back in 2021.

Columbus Mayor Skip Henderson calls the move a key component in a plan to meet the needs of a growing city.

Augusta’s interim administrator Takiyah Douse has developed a plan to save $10 million dollars by changing county operations, according to the Augusta Chronice.

The Augusta Administrative Services Committee Meeting this week heard a “right sizing” proposal the commission had requested earlier this year to reduce the budget without raising taxes.

“Right sizing from a governmental perspective is the process of restructuring to make sure we operate efficiently as well as meet updated service objectives,” said Takiyah Douse, interim administrator for the Augusta consolidated government.

From WRDW:

Among the cost-cutting proposals from Douse:

Explore outsourcing services: She’s looking into consolidating a number of groups for grass and tree maintenance.

Duplicative tasks: She suggests reducing automatic dispatch of firetrucks to reduce equipment costs and put more emphasis on Central EMS, the city’s ambulance provider. Also a community cat trap program will reduce cat food and euthanasia costs for the Department of Animal Services, saving $765,000.

13WMAZ reviews how the Governor can remove from office a Sheriff.

Georgia state law (15-16-26) covers that.

It says the governor can act when a sheriff who faces criminal charges, is accused of some other misconduct in office or is unable to perform his duties in office.

If the governor chooses, he can appoint three people to review the case. Two of them should be other Georgia sheriffs, and the third should be the attorney general, Chris Carr.

They can investigate, hear from witnesses under oath and then they report back with their findings.

The governor can suspend a sheriff for up to 90 days or – in extreme cases – ask the local district attorney to start the process of removing him.

Richmond County Sheriff Richard Roundtree hosted a Town Hall to discuss crimes by homeless people, according to the Augusta Chronicle.

During the town hall, Roundtree attributed crime committed by the homeless population to drug abuse and lack of mental health resources.

The formation of the Property Owner Response Team, “PORT,” is a public and private collaboration that was developed to identify property owners within certain targeted areas. The program will begin in the Washington Road corridor between Center West Parkway and Furys Ferry Road.

PORT will obtain written authorization from the sheriff’s office to act on behalf of each property owner, whether or not the property owner is present. This will include removing and destroying homeless encampments and removing anyone from quasi-public parking areas when deputies determine the person is not on the property for business purposes.

The group will also enlist the help of the Superior Court of the Augusta Judicial Circuit to consider the constitutional rights of anyone who has been removed from private property along with the constitutional rights of the private property owner.

Milledgeville City Council adopted an FY 2024 budget that includes raises for all employees, according to 13WMAZ.

City Manager Hank Griffeth says the mayor and city council wanted to focus on salaries in this budget.

Several departments have expressed how essential pay raises are to keep running– the most vocal being the fire and police departments.

Milledgeville Police Major Linc Boyer says they’ve lost folks due to low salaries, making those who are left stretched thin.

“We were 13-14 officers short,” Boyer said. “Our gang, our narcotics, our traffic units– those units were suffering because we were having to pull those officers to supplement patrol.”

Both departments told the city council they needed a 20% salary increase to keep running.

Griffeth says the salary increases will be paid partially through American Rescue Plan funds. They’re looking into additional revenue to maintain the pay raises starting in January.

Every department in the city will receive a pay raise under the new pay scale. That includes water, sewer, public works, cemetery and parks, code enforcement, etc.

Rome City Commissioners are considering a partial rollback of the property tax millage rate, according to the Rome News Tribune.

Rome City Commissioners are proposing to lessen the impact of property tax assessment hikes by reducing the millage rate by 2.3%

Despite that measure, Rome residents will likely see an increase in their property taxes for 2023.

The combined millage rate for the city and Rome school system is 26.45. The rollback rate — an estimate of what the millage rate should be to keep revenues flat — is 24.674, according to Finance Director Toni Rhinehart.

Residents of Edison, Georgia are questioning how their city government is $400,000 dollars in debt, according to WALB.

Marcia Killingsworth was a very vocal attendant at the meeting. She says she and other people in the city have been looking into the city’s finances since December 2020, when they received COVID funds. Killingsworth didn’t find out about the extent of the debt until the city council’s June meeting.

“So I asked the mayor about the status of the city’s debt, and he did not give us a complete picture,” Killingsworth said. “It wasn’t until WALB’s report on June 30th, the day before the fiscal year began, that we discovered from the city attorney that the city was $400,000 in debt.”

A police officer at Monday’s meeting called for the GBI to be alerted to investigate where the COVID funds went, along with the city’s regular funds from taxes.

“If the GBI comes in, I believe it would be an awesome resolution and it would be as soon as possible,” Tia Ingram, a meeting attendee, said. “I know that the people that broke the system can’t fix the system, right? Because they have the same mindset that they had when they broke it.”

The city is not eligible for state funding to address the debt since the audit period was missed.

“It’s because the audit has not been done, and we’re in the process,” Edison Mayor Reeves Lane said. “We just approved, tonight, to hire a company to do that for us. The ordinance was about keeping some people and keeping the police officers. And we voted to keep two, and we’re keeping three in the public works.”

Statesboro is raising some fees, according to the Statesboro Herald.

Statesboro residents, developers and other city utility customers will have to pay higher fees – including various water and sanitation rate increases designed to deliver a roughly 10% overall increase in fee-based revenue for those services – with the city budget that took effect July 1.

“Most people won’t see it until they get their August bill,” said city Finance Director Cindy West. “It depends on what the service is. The August bill would definitely be the soonest, but we’ve got to get (the new rates) keyed into the system.”

A 10% hike in solid waste collection and disposal rates and an approximately 10% increase in water and sewer rates had been part of the list of “budget assumptions” West and City Manager Charles Penny presented to the mayor and council during a May budget work session.

A 10% increase in the value of the property tax digest from construction and inflation was also included in those assumptions. On top of that, the staff recommended a 2-mill increase in property tax, and that recommendation also remained part of the budget assumptions when council adopted the budget. However, the millage rate was not automatically decided.

To comply with a state law known as the Georgia Property Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, the city must yet hold three public hearings when the council decides how large the tax increase will be and votes to set the rate.  In past years those hearings have usually been held in August.

The Glynn County Board of Elections voted to move forward with a proposed new contract to run Brunswick elections, according to The Brunswick News.

“It really just puts down on paper what’s in practice right now and solidifies the payment structure,” [Elections Director Chris] Channell said.

The next steps are approval from the county commission and then the city. Channell said he expects discussions and decisions to progress next week in meetings.

Among other discussions, the elections board approved the motion to add the issuing of voter ID cards into their growing policy manual.

The policy comes directly from the Georgia state code. If a registered voter does not have an acceptable photo ID, they can apply for a voter identification card at the Glynn County Registrar’s office.

Channell said about 95% of the voter ID cards they issue go to the homeless.

Once the voter information is approved, the office will photograph the registered voter. They will be immediately presented with a photocopy and will later receive the hard copy of the voter ID card in the mail, Channell said.

Effingham County is considering hiring a private probation company, according to WSAV.

Instead of the county collecting probation fees, an independent firm will handle the process with the oversight of a judge.

County Manager Tim Callanan says the change will save taxpayers money, at least $100k a year to be exact.

“I think here you have a case where we would actually be having to spend money to support and administer folks who have been guilty of a crime, whether it’s something as simple as a traffic violation or violent offense, or something, something they are on probation for, and that really is something taxpayers shouldn’t be subsidizing,” Callanan tells News 3.

“There have been changes in state court recently, causing the caseload to triple,” says Callanan, “The problem is the fee revenue has only gone up by 55%, so that discrepancy in itself is really what’s causing operating loss.”

He says most of the cases are traffic violations.

“Traditionally those can be taken care of simply with the new way they’re doing it if they can’t afford the fine, they’re putting them on probation, and that increases the caseload drastically,” he adds.