On June 25, 1788, the Commonwealth of Virginia became the tenth state to vote for ratification of the United States Constitution by a vote of 89 to 79. A committee was appointed to be chaired by George Wythe to draft a proposed Bill of Rights.
On June 27, 1864, Sherman’s Union forces attacked General Johnston’s Confederates at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain.
One year later, the Military Department of Georgia was created to oversee Reconstruction in the state.
On June 25, 1868, the United States Congress provisionally readmitted Georgia to the Union following the Civil War with the requirements that they ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and never deprive any citizens of voting rights.
On June 25, 1876, Indians under the leadership of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse defeated the U.S. Army 7th Cavalry under Lt. Colonel George Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn.
On June 25, 1888, the Republican National Convention nominated Benjamin Harrison for President of the United States; Harrison’s grandfather was WIlliam Henry Harrison, ninth President of the United States.
On June 26, 1918, the Georgia General Assembly ratified the Eighteenth Amendment, which outlawed the production, sale, and transportation of alcohol. Governor Hugh Dorsey did not sign it for nearly a week, but the United States Secretary of State considers an Amendment ratified when the state legislature has voted on final passage.
The Gone with the Wind scene that includes the line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” was filmed on June 27, 1939, along with an alternate that used the line, “Frankly, my dear, I just don’t care.”
On June 26, 1945, the United Nations Charter was signed in San Francisco.
The Berlin Airlift began on June 26, 1948 after the Soviet Union had blockaded West Berlin, which was occupied by the United States, Great Britain, and France.
On June 25, 1990, the United States Supreme Court released its opinion in Georgia v. South Carolina, a boundary dispute. From Wikipedia:
A… 1922 Supreme Court decision, also called Georgia v. South Carolina, 257 U. S. 516, also held that all islands in the river belong to Georgia, but that the border should be in the middle of the river between the two shores, with the border half way between any island and the South Carolina shore.
Since the 1922 case, a number of new islands were created in the river between the city of Savannah and the ocean, due to the deposit of dredging spoilage or the natural deposit of sediments. In some cases, the new islands were on the South Carolina side of the previously drawn boundary, and Georgia claimed that once a new island emerged, the border should be moved to the midpoint between the new island and the South Carolina shore of the river. In some cases, the state of South Carolina had been collecting property tax from the land owners and policing the land in question for a number of years.
When an island causes the border to leave the middle of the river, it raises the question as to how the border line should return to the middle of the river at each end of the island. South Carolina advocated a right angle bend at each tip of the island, while Georgia advocated a “triequidistant” method which kept the border an equal distance between the two shores and the tip of the island (resulting in a smooth curve).
The first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, was released in the UK on June 26, 1997.
Gone with the Wind was re-released on June 26, 1998.
Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections
The Georgia Dental Association is urging Georgians to get exams now, as many delayed it during the pandemic. From WTVM:
Thursday, the Georgia Dental Association urged the community to return to dental offices for regular dental exams.
GDA says regular dental visits can help treat problems before they become larger or more painful.
“I know that a lot of patients are fearful because the pandemic was something that we never had before. So, we had to create some guidelines and new measures that are out there, but I want to ensure that their oral health is taking care of,” said Louvenia A. Rainge, GDA president.
The AJC Political Insider writes about a poll being conducted regarding the 2022 Republican Primary for Governor.
The survey asks Republicans: “If a self-made, wealthy executive from a Big Technology company like Facebook, Google or Apple who lives in Georgia and announced a candidacy to be the next Republican Governor, how excited would you be to learn more about this candidate?”
We don’t know who this might be — or if this person even exists. But the operative who sent the poll might be onto something with this analysis: “The Trump folks are working overtime to find someone.”
My guess? Joe Townson, whoever that is. From an earlier question in the same survey:
Governor Brian Kemp said that lifting the Public Health Emergency Order does not mean Georgia is done with the pandemic, according to the Savannah Morning News.
Kemp, who said he looks at the numbers every day, said COVID-19 cases have been falling even though “we’ve got variants in the state that spread faster than the original COVID-19,” referring to the Delta variant that currently makes up 20 percent of cases nationwide. “That trend line is down to where we started the pandemic.”
“The message is we’ve got to continue to fight COVID but Georgians know how to do that,” he said. “I want to urge people to continue to get educated about the vaccine.”
The federal unemployment supplement will end tomorrow for Georgians, according to 13WMAZ.
The change is expected to impact a lot of people. According to the Department of Labor, more than 200,000 Georgians are currently getting federal unemployment assistance through the COVID Relief package in addition to state unemployment.
But when 11Alive spoke to the Department of Labor Commissioner about the decision, he said cutting off federal funding will incentivize people to get back to work.
“We haven’t seen the labor participation rate change much since last October, even though even going back to the end, we’ve seen more and more jobs open up across the state,” Commissioner Mark Butler said. “For example, this year, we’ve seen record numbers of jobs being advertised across the state. We’re seeing a lot of jobs may used to pay less than $10 an hour, push up to $14, $15, $16 an hour; though, we’re still not seeing those jobs being filled. And if we don’t start getting these jobs, feel the economic impact to Georgia’s population, our consumers is going to be dramatic.”
From the Capitol Beat News Service:
Beginning Saturday, Georgia will no longer participate in federal unemployment insurance programs Congress has enacted since COVID-19 struck the nation in March of last year. That’s going to cut off benefits to about 223,000 claimants, according to the labor department.
“After 66 weeks of benefits during the pandemic and the release of $22.5 billion, we look forward to refocusing our organization on reemployment and helping claimants find a career path that will provide the stability and support necessary to provide for their families,” Georgia Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler said Thursday.
But critics say the state is being premature in cutting off benefits the Biden administration plans to continue into September. The move, announced by Gov. Brian Kemp last month, means nearly two-thirds of Georgians who have been receiving unemployment benefits will be cut off, according to an analysis by the National Employment Law Project (NELP).
Opponents of the looming benefits cutoff say legitimate reasons keeping people at home include difficulties finding child care and safety concerns over returning to work in a state where so many have not been vaccinated against COVID-19.
Georgia is quitting federal programs this week that pay unemployment benefits to people not usually eligible.
It’s also quitting a program that pays an extra $300 a week to everyone who gets unemployment.
Georgia could have kept using federal funding for those programs through Sept. 6. But Labor Commissioner Mark Butler and Gov. Brian Kemp say the move is needed because employers are having trouble finding workers.
“This is a step in the right direction, but we need to continue to get Georgians back to work,” said Mark Butler, the state’s labor commissioner.
Georgia’s recovery would accelerate if fewer people had unemployment benefits, argues Gov. Brian Kemp, who has ordered the elimination of federal benefits as of Saturday. With 221,000 openings on the state’s job board, Kemp and Butler say ending payments will push many jobless Georgians to accept what is available.
The Biden Administration extended a national eviction moratorium, according to the Athens Banner Herald.
The Biden administration has extended the nationwide ban on evictions for a month to help tenants who are unable to make rent payments during the coronavirus pandemic, but it said this is expected to be the last time it does so.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, extended the evictions moratorium from June 30 until July 31. The CDC said Thursday that “this is intended to be the final extension of the moratorium.”
Henry County Superior Court Judge Brian Amero dismissed most claims in a lawsuit that led to unsealing Fulton County absentee ballots, according to the Washington Post.
Superior Court Judge Brian Amero on Thursday dismissed seven of the lawsuit’s nine claims against Fulton County officials on the basis of Georgia’s sovereign immunity laws. Amero did not dismiss two counts in the lawsuit that sought digital images of the mail-in ballots through the state’s open records law.
Amero last month had ordered Fulton County to allow Favorito’s group to inspect all 147,000 mail-in ballots, the latest instance of a local government being forced to undergo a third-party inspection of its election practices amid baseless claims by Trump and others in the GOP.
Superior Court Judge Brian Amero’s ruling jeopardizes the prospects for the ballot inspection to continue, though a plaintiff in the lawsuit said he believes it will soon move forward.
An attorney for the Fulton elections board said the ruling prevents the possibility for an in-person review of absentee ballots using high-powered microscopes in the Georgia World Congress Center, as sought by those who believe fraud produced Democrat Joe Biden’s 12,000-vote win in Georgia over Republican Donald Trump.
“That litigation is finished,” said Don Samuel, a prominent Atlanta attorney hired by the Fulton elections board. “Is there going to be an audit? Not right now. … There’s no discovery permitted. There’s no lawsuit pending anymore.”
Amero dismissed most claims against the county elections board, the county clerk and the county itself, deciding they couldn’t be sued under Georgia’s sovereign immunity laws, which limit when plaintiffs can turn to the courts for relief.
The judge left in place a previous order requiring the county to produce digital images of absentee ballots and other election records that are public documents under the Georgia Open Records Act.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger released a statement after the announcement that Rudy Giuliani was disbarred in New York, according to WTOC:
“The judges recognized that the baseless conspiracy theories Giuliani repeated were not true and punished him for spreading lies, particularly about Georgia’s election. This decision backs up my own statements about Georgia’s election being fair and accurate. I hope they will show the same level of concern about any attorneys who may be spreading disinformation about Georgia’s new election law.”
Even without his law license, Giuliani will be back in Georgia next week, when he headlines a fundraiser for Vernon Jones in his primary bid against Gov. Brian Kemp.
Former President Donald Trump goaded Jones to challenge Kemp in the primary, but has yet to endorse him.
The minimum donation at next week’s Buckhead Club event is $1,000. We’ll be especially interested to see which elected Republicans turn out to see their old friend Rudy– and support Jones against Kemp in the process.
The Georgia State Road and Tollway Authority expects toll revenues to return to pre-pandemic levels and higher, according to the Capitol Beat News Service via the Albany Herald.
The State Road and Tollway Authority expects to generate $39.5 million from tolls during the fiscal year starting July 1. That’s more than double the $19.5 million SRTA has brought in during the current fiscal year, dominated by COVID-19.
“Traffic is coming back,” SRTA Executive Director Chris Tomlinson told the agency’s board of directors.
The trend is expected to continue to the point that SRTA is projecting higher toll revenue during the coming fiscal year than in Fiscal 2019, the last year not affected by the pandemic, when income from tolls was less than $35 million.
In other business, SRTA sold $417 million in revenue bonds at an average interest rate of 2.50% made possible by Georgia’s AAA bond rating with the three major rating agencies. Most of the proceeds will go toward refinancing SRTA’s debt on the toll lane projects.
Tomlinson said the refinancing will ultimately save Georgia taxpayers $131.8 million.
Former United States Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-Atlanta) spoke in Statesboro about voter registration and turnout efforts, according to the Statesboro Herald.
To a midday crowd Thursday in Statesboro, former U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler explained the goals of Greater Georgia Action, a nonprofit corporation she founded in February, in terms of registering more right-leaning voters, getting them actively involved and assuring them that their votes count.
“Greater Georgia is premised on three things, and I’m going to flip the script about them a little bit, first of all starting with election integrity, because it turns out, the polling that we’ve done, that’s the number-one issue here in Georgia for conservatives,” Loeffler said.
On “January 5th, 339,000 Republicans that voted November 3rd did not come back out because they didn’t believe their vote counted,” Loeffler said. “We have to address that.”
“We know that there are hundreds of thousands of unregistered conservatives in our state, and when you think about the margins of victory or loss, you know, they’re between 50,000 and 100,000 over the last two cycles,” Loeffler said. “So, to have 600,000 potential voters that are unregistered, we can’t let that stand.”
“The third effort is to expand the party,” Loeffler said. “We cannot grow our party if we are taking down the tent after an election.”
“I really took the approach to growing our party by making sure that under-represented groups were heard in our conservative movement, that the voices of minorities were heard, that we welcome more folks in and continue to grow the party,” she said.
“You guys got it done, you stood up to the heat of the national media that was full of misinformation, disinformation, intentional lies,” Loeffler said. “You have people like Stacey Abrams, Raphael Warnock, Joe Biden promoting lies about our election law that have now cost our state over $100 million with the loss of the MLB game.”
A grand jury in Glynn County, convened by Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office, finished its work, according to The Brunswick News.
Glynn County Sheriff Neal Jump confirmed Thursday to The News that a grand jury was “called by the AG’s office.” The AG’s office, however, is not acknowledging the grand jury’s existence — a grand jury some media outlets say focused on former Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jackie Johnson and her handling of the Ahmaud Arbery shooting death in 2020.
“We are not able to confirm or deny the existence or substance of grand jury proceedings,” Georgia Attorney General spokeswoman Katie Byrd told The News in an email response Thursday.
Citing anonymous sources, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution stated in an article Sunday that Carr called a grand jury here to focus on Johnson and her handling of the Arbery case.
In Georgia, the grand jury hears and reviews evidence against an individual to determine if there is enough evidence to take the case to trial. These criminal proceedings are not public. Indictments by the grand jury are available to the public after judicial review.
Chatham County District Attorney Shalena Cook Jones (D) has formed a Racketeering and Organized Crime Coalition (ROCC) to fight gang activity and other organized crime, according to the Savannah Morning News.
Jones addressed a crowd of about 50 people Thursday evening as she and five of her staffers unveiled the newly formed Racketeering and Organized Crime Coalition (ROCC), which will focus on addressing gang activity and other forms of organized crime.
The countywide coalition — Jones stopped short of calling it another task force — will share resources on organized crime, develop a protocol to improve response times to incidents and create a coordinated response team to dispatch in response to gang activity and mass shootings.
The group will also work on community outreach and education efforts and develop strategies to protect victims and witnesses and prevent retaliation.
In the past two years, there have been 26 gang-related arrests locally resulting in a total of 30 charges, according to data from Phoenix, a database used by the Chatham County Detention Center. The database also indicates there have been 22 RICO arrests with a total of 24 charges in that same timeframe.
Additionally, the DA’s office has indicted 70 cases identified as “gang cases” since 2010. The data was provided during Thursday’s meeting.
The DA’s office also raised the concerns of retaliation against family and victims of gang-related crimes, saying that this also impedes their efforts to arrest offenders as it leads to people fearful of speaking out against crime.
“We understand that people show up at hospitals to finish the job. We need extra manpower and security to make sure that the victims were being treated and those hospitals are safe,” Jones said.
Jones said she is concerned about gunfire at the victims’ funerals.
Twiggs County will upgrade their 911 system using a federal grant and loan, according to 13WMAZ.
When Twiggs County completes its upgrade to the 911 system, people shouldn’t have to worry about first-responders finding them.
“It’s actually next-gen 911 capable,” Jennifer Mullis said.
Jennifer Mullis, Twiggs County E-911 Director, says that will help them quickly locate cell phone callers.
“For so long now, we’ve been without our ‘Annie Alley,” which is what pings you on our maps and our 911 system has not been able to talk to our ‘CAD,’ which is our computer dispatch,” Mullis said.
Mullis says their new system consists of a “Text to 911” feature.
That will let people to send a text message to the sheriff’s office if they can’t call.
The United States Department of Agriculture gave the sheriff’s office a $100,000 grant for their 911 system and a $274,000 loan.
The Albany City Commission adopted a budget and property tax millage rate for FY 2022, according to the Albany Herald.
The commission approved the $291 spending package by a 5-2 vote, the same margin as a preliminary vote on Tuesday.
The budget includes $10 million, the first installment from the [federal COVID relief] legislation, to pay for part of the stormwater/sewage separation project for the budget year beginning July 1. The first year of the more than $200 million project will cost about $16 million, and the balance budgeted will come from state funding and special-purpose local-option sales tax funds.
“There is not going to be another $20 million coming to Albany ever for COVID relief,” Harper said. “There’s going to always be money coming down for the sewer.
“What is sad, you’ve got $20 million coming down here and they’re not going to spend one cent (on COVID relief). They are spending zero on non-sewage stuff. They decided zero; we’re spending no money helping the people who have been suffering for so long.”
The Hall County Commission approved a budget and property tax millage rate for FY 2022, according to AccessWDUN.
The Hall County Board of Commissioners gave final approval Thursday night to a budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2021 and ends June 30, 2022.
As outlined in budget presentations over the past weeks, the 2021 General Fund millage rate was reduced from 4.853 mills to 4.636 mills, representing a full rollback. The Fire Fund millage rate, which supports Fire Services, remains at 2.65 mills for unincorporated residents and 4.08 for incorporated residents. Other tax service district millage rates include Emergency Services at 0.571 mills, Development Services at 1.005 mills, and Parks & Leisure at 0.364 mills. All of the millage rates remain the same as the 2020 rates.
The budget also includes an investment in projects that require a one-time investment funded by the federal American Rescue Plan.
“These investments include HVAC system projects, air filtration improvements and overall building upgrades to better facilitate social distancing,” said Hall County Financial Services Director Dena Bosten. “These projects clearly meet the criteria for use of ARP funding as outlined by the U.S. Treasury.”
Hall County held a single public hearing on the FY 2022 budget on June 10 prior to budget adoption.
The Richmond County Board of Education plans for maskless classes in the summer and fall, according to the Augusta Chronicle.
It was announced during a special called school board meeting on Thursday that students and staff will not be required to wear face coverings on school premises starting July 1.
However, guidelines from the Department of Transportation still require masks for all public bus drivers and passengers, including school buses.
Spaceport Camden opponents are signing a petition to oppose the project’s approval, according to The Brunswick News.
Despite objections by a majority of people who responded during a public comment period, the Federal Aviation Administration released a favorable Final Environmental Impact Statement for the spaceport last week, conceivably paving the way for approval of a launch site license.
Opponents remain hopeful that a launch will never happen despite the FAA’s ruling. While it’s expected there will be legal challenges to the FAA’s ruling, some Camden County residents are taking a different approach.
A petition being circulated already has the signatures of more than 3,000 residents asking for a referendum to let the voters decide whether to go forward with the planned spaceport. They need 4,100 signatures — 10 percent of the county’s registered voters — which organizers expect to have within a few weeks.
It will be presented to the Camden County Probate Court judge, who will be required by state law to hold a special election where voters will be asked to repeal the county’s decision to buy the Union Carbide property where launches would be conducted.
Pro-tip: If you need 4100 signatures to prevail, collect 8200 or more in order to survive challenges to the inevitable signatures that get thrown out for petitioner misconduct or signatures by people who live outside the jurisdiction.
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