On June 28, 1742, Spanish forces based in Florida invaded Georgia.
On June 28, 1776, Thomas Jefferson’s second draft of the Declaration of Independence was presented to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
On June 28, 1887, John Pemberton patented Coca-Cola Syrup and Extract.
Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, Bosnia on June 28, 1914, sparking the First World War.
The first production Corvette was assembled on June 28, 1953 in Flint, Michigan.
Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections
Columbus attorney Mike Garner has abandoned his effort to collect enough signatures to get on the ballot for Muscogee Superior Court Clerk, instead running as a write-in candidate.
The law states that candidates who want to run as independents must gather and submit petitions signed by enough voters to equal 5 percent of those registered during the last election. In this case, that would be 5,226 signatures, and they would have to be submitted by July 12.
“Mike Garner therefore has abandoned his effort to obtain signatures and will instead mount a vigorous campaign to tine the election for clerk by write-in vote,” Garner’s release states.
Hardman defeated incumbent Superior Court Clerk Linda Pierce in the May 24 Democratic Party primary, 6,699 to 4,480.
Sheriff John Darr, … will face Democratic nominee Donna Tompkins and Republican nominee Mark LaJoye in the November election. Darr will run as an independent, but as an incumbent, he does not have to gather any signatures to do so.
Holly Springs City Council member Dee Phillips is facing a recall petition that seeks to remove her from office.
A group of residents aiming to have a longtime city council member recalled have received enough signatures to begin the petition process, the elections office confirmed Friday.
The Holly Springs residents, led by Chris Heeter, are looking to have Dee Phillips removed from her seat on the Holly Springs City Council.
Phillips has been councilwoman for more than 16 years. She was initially elected in 1999, and took office at the beginning of 2000.
Heeter will need to obtain the signatures of 30 percent of the city’s registered voters. That means the group will need 1,438 signatures, [Elections Director Kim] Stancil said.
Another Columbus attorney, Walker Garrett, won his election on May 24th and was interviewed last week by the Ledger-Enquirer.
Q: There are other young people who have been trying to win elections here in Columbus that have not been as successful. What’s your advice to them?
A: Keep running. Mine was an open seat. I don’t think you can use that as the benchmark, because my opponent was also young, and we were both political newcomers. There’s no telling what would have happened if I had run against an incumbent.
I did work really hard. You’ve got to put in the man hours. You have to go door-to-door. It’s an unfortunate reality that raising money is integral to any campaign these days. Advertising is necessary. You’ve got to build up that network. You don’t want to be discouraged from running, but you also want to make sure you’re ready and that you have the network in place, because you’re going to have to have volunteers. Your employers have to be on board….
Q: You were in a unique situation where you actually won two elections in one night. That’s very interesting. What was that like?
A: It made counting the ballots really hard when you’re going up and counting the ticker tape and you’re on there twice, and other people are behind you. I think somebody from the Ledger was actually over there. They were trying to count. I was trying to count two different elections. … It was scary, though, because I was worried maybe people would get confused and they’ll think I shouldn’t vote for him but once.
Fortunately, in every forum, whenever I went door-to-door, and when I did my mailers, I was very clear: “I’m going to be on the ballot twice, check twice,” and I really got that out to the voters.
Muscogee County School Board adopted a $274 million dollar FY2017 budget by a 7-2 vote with Frank Myers and John Thomas voting against it.
The Cherokee County Commission is considering a FY2017 budget that would include a property tax increase.
The Cherokee County Board of Commissioners voted Tuesday to advertise a millage rate of 5.825 to support its general fund for the upcoming year, which would mean the majority of Cherokee homeowners will likely see property taxes increase.
However, commissioners could end up voting on a lower rate, but all plans under consideration include some tax increase for property owners.
While an official rate has not been set, the county is required to advertise its proposed rate and will hold three public hearings before approving the hike next month.
Those meetings are scheduled for July 5, July 19 and July 21. County officials say the public is typically interested in those meetings and that they generally see large turnouts.
A study by Georgia State found that charter schools approved by the State Charter Schools Commission are performing about on par with traditionally-structured schools.
The City of Atlanta has submitted proposals for addressing 60 issues with the streetcar that were raised by the Georgia Department of Transportation.
The Sugarloaf Community Improvement District has been formed in Gwinnett County.
A certificate of need has been approved for a new mental hospital in Newnan.
Greg Bluestein of the AJC writes about a potential expansion of Medicaid in the 2017 Session of the Georgia General Assembly.
Powerful business interests have endorsed an expansion, setting up another potential fight between the Republican base and the corporate forces that led to the downfall of “religious liberty” legislation this year. Politicians won’t have an election looming in 2017. And it will come as lawmakers prepare for a brutal debate over whether to extend a tax that plugs a gaping hole in the state Medicaid system.
“I just think lawmakers are weary of searching around and digging in the trenches for other money. We’ve got this pot of money here that’s ready to be tapped,” said state Sen. Renee Unterman, who once opposed expansion but has changed her mind. “And if we don’t, how many other issues are going by the wayside? To me, that’s the shame.”
Unterman, the chairwoman of the Senate’s health committee, is working with a handful of other Republicans to gather steam behind the initiative next year. Some are new converts to the cause, frustrated with the financial struggles of rural hospitals and trauma centers. Others bucked the party line years ago to endorse an expansion.
“I just think lawmakers are weary of searching around and digging in the trenches for other money. We’ve got this pot of money here that’s ready to be tapped,” said state Sen. Renee Unterman, who once opposed expansion but has changed her mind. “And if we don’t, how many other issues are going by the wayside? To me, that’s the shame.”
Unterman, the chairwoman of the Senate’s health committee, is working with a handful of other Republicans to gather steam behind the initiative next year. Some are new converts to the cause, frustrated with the financial struggles of rural hospitals and trauma centers. Others bucked the party line years ago to endorse an expansion.
State Rep. David Stover, R-Newnan, echoed a familiar complaint that the White House’s promise to subsidize the program can’t be depended upon in the long term. The law requires the federal government to cover 100 percent of the cost for three years and then gradually scale back its support to a permanent level of 90 percent.
“The gridlock in D.C. is the exact reason that we should not expand Medicaid in Georgia,” he said, adding: “Who will have to pick up the slack for the cuts once Medicaid has been expanded? Quite simply, the states will.”
“I still have the same concerns. And you won’t see anyone advocating a wholesale Medicaid expansion,” Deal said in an interview. “But I do think there will be variations that will be discussed, and I look forward to talking to members of the General Assembly.”
“There are major challenges any time you look to alter a joint federal and state program, and I’m always reluctant when we as a state become more dependent on the federal government with all the uncertainty in Washington,” Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle said. “We are constantly looking at ways to improve our health care system, and Senator Unterman is very knowledgeable in this space and always willing to engage in difficult discussions.”
Heads-up: this will likely be the biggest issue of 2017 in the Georgia legislature, whether it gets the most headlines and airtime or not.
Is the Peach State becoming Gangland?
Earlier this month, Bill Torpy of the AJC did another drive-by column, about the changing appearance of gangs in DeKalb County.
Gangs had invaded DeKalb, we surmised [in spring 2014].
District Attorney Robert James agreed. Police were more skeptical. “We have not seen a big influx of people coming from out of state recruiting,” the gang crime unit commander told me. “We’re not seeing an escalation of violence with gangs.”
Then last summer saw a 10-week period in DeKalb that DA James called a “reign of terror.”
About five years ago, James noticed more violent gang-related crime, something that can eat away the soul of a community.
“You saw an influx of the national gangs and everything changed,” he said. “It was like a hostile takeover” of the home-grown hoodlums. A cop as a gang member is just the cherry on the top.
The question is no longer whether big-time gangs are here.
“That’s a closed issue,” James said. “It’s not up for debate.”
The Ledger-Enquirer has written an editorial about the gang situation in Columbus.
Gang violence is becoming less organized, more diffuse, less bound by any semblance of moral limits even by the perverse standards of criminal “codes.”
In a sense, and on a more localized scale, it seems to present the same kinds of challenges as a nation fighting terror cells instead of armies or other organized and identifiable threats. The enemy is as deadly or deadlier, but harder to spot.
Of the dozen homicides recorded in Columbus as of this writing, most seem to have at least some connection to gang activity. Mayor and public safety chief Teresa Tomlinson said that while these killings aren’t officially designated as gang related, some of the people involved “self-identify themselves as being associated with a gang.”
Sgt. Roderick Graham, who heads the Criminal Intelligence Unit of the Columbus PD, said the gang structure is “evolving and changing … no longer do you see 15 kids walking through the neighborhood with the same colors on like you did in the ’80s.”
The Ledger-Enquirer editorial follows a story in the same paper published last week.
As details unfold concerning recent Columbus shootings, a new picture is emerging of the city’s gang culture.
Even a former gang member says there’s a difference in the way young criminals operate these days, and he’s surprised at how cold-blooded some of the crimes have been.
“In my days of being in a gang, you were a gang, you represented your set, your beliefs and what you were about,” said Xavier McCaskey, a certified mental health therapist who ran with gangs as a youth living in the Baker Village public housing complex. “Now, it’s like people are in gangs as individuals; and you’ve got people in the same gang who’ve got beef with other people in the same gang. And ya’ll fighting and beefing. And you got your set homeboys, so it’s cliques within cliques.”
Tomlinson said gangs now operating in the city are very different to those in generations past, and the city has had to adapt to current trends while trying to address the problem.
“I think when people hear gangs, they think of Bloods and Crips and things from the ’80s and the ’90s. That’s not so much what we deal with on a day-to-day basis,” she said. “What we typically have are criminal enterprises, sort of affiliations of opportunity. Individuals who knew each other, either from middle school, high school, perhaps they’re related. Groups of cousins, for instance. People who live in the same neighborhood, and they, through their relationships and affiliations, decide their highest and best use is criminal activity. And they collude and conspire to do a great deal of smash and grabs, break-ins, largely property crimes, drug trafficking, things of that nature.”
The Savannah Morning News looks as the related topic of recidivism among criminals released from prison.
According to State Rep. Jesse Petrea, who is hosting an anti-crime forum this Thursday at 6 p.m. at Calvary Baptist Temple, 86 parolees who were released from state prisons since Jan. 29 this year have been re-arrested for committing crimes in Chatham County.
And if Chatham County has experienced such a large number, it makes you wonder what the trend looks like for other Georgia counties.
Unfortunately, the state is making it Chatham County’s problem by opening the flood gates of parole and dumping more violence-prone individuals into our community.
While two-term Republican Gov. Nathan Deal generally rates high marks for his criminal justice reform efforts, aimed at rehabilitating those who have been locked up in expensive state prisons for drug-related and non-violent offenses, the governor should worry that some of his efforts are having unintended consequences, when violent offenders are released and are committing more crimes.
[T]he state must hold off on sending so many rotten apples from the prison system to Chatham County.
Finally, the Covington News chimed in about trends in Newton County.
For the most part, there has been little evidence of gang activity in Newton County, according to local law enforcement. However, in March of 2015, eight alleged members of the Ghost-Faced Gang, a violent gang thought to be operating out of prisons, were indicted in Newton County Superior Court on three counts of the racketeering influenced corrupt organizations (RICO) act. Three of them were also charged with seven counts of aggravated assault, one count of conspiracy to commit murder and 14 counts of criminal street gang related acts.
In May of 2016, 32 members of Gangster Disciples were federally indicted on Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) charges. One of those charged was Conyers resident Charles Wingate, who allegedly served as chief of security for a Covington group.
Crum said the NCSO has a Crime Suppression Unit with five deputies who do intelligence and statistical gathering to predict where gang activity may be happening. “We’ll send in patrols, see who’s hanging out on the corner, try to get in the community and parents involved,” he said.
“It’s a misnomer to say you can prevent [gang activity],” said Sgt. James Fountain of the Newton County Sheriff’s Office (NCSO). “What we do is monitor gang activity. We try to track if there’s someone who’s showing signs of gang activity.”
“Gang activity is so evolving, you have to keep up,” he said. In addition to courses, officers read materials as they are published, research online and take part in an association that meets once a month to discuss gang investigation.
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