Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections for September 25, 2017

On September 25, 1789, Congress adopted the first twelve amendments, called the Bill of Rights, to the United States Constitution. A little more than two years later, in 1791, enough states had ratified ten of the Amendments, with two not receiving sufficient support.

On September 25, 1864, Confederate President Jefferson Davis met with General John Bell Hood and visited troops at Palmetto, Georgia.

Ronald Reagan appointee Sandra Day O’Connor became the first female Justice of the United States on September 25, 1981. In an interview with Terry Gross, she recalled receiving the call from President Reagan:

“I was working in my office on the Arizona Court of Appeals,” she tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “I was at the court in my chambers when the telephone rang. And it was the White House calling for me, and I was told that the president was waiting to speak to me. That was quite a shock, but I accepted the phone call, and it was President Reagan, and he said, ‘Sandra?’ ‘Yes, Mr. President?’ ‘Sandra, I’d like to announce your nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court tomorrow. Is that all right with you?’ Well, now, that’s kind of a shock, wouldn’t you say?”

On September 25, 2008, the last car came off the line at GM’s Doraville Plant.

Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections

Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp set qualifying for Special Elections in House District 4, vacated by State Rep. Bruce Broadrick (R-Dalton) and House District 60, vacated by State Rep. Keisha Waites (D-Atlanta). The qualifying period begins today from 9 AM to 5 PM and continues Tuesday 9-5 and Wednesday from 9 AM to 1 PM at the SOS office in the Twin Towers.

Kemp also told the AJC that Homeland Security officials told him Georgia was not targeted by the Russians in the 2016 campaign.

Former Georgia Congressman John Barrow announced yesterday to the Athens-Clarke County Democrats that he will run for Georgia Secretary of State.

Democrat Sarah Riggs Amico filed paperwork to raise funds for a 2018 Lieutenant Governor campaign.

Amico is executive chairman at Jack Cooper Holdings Corp., a trucking and logistics firm run by her father, Michael Riggs. Trained at Harvard’s business school, she’s previously worked at talent and literary agencies in New York and Hollywood.

She hasn’t publicly announced her campaign yet, but her Twitter biography provides a clue about how she might run the race: She identifies herself as a “politically purple advocate for common sense policy.”

Vice President Mike Pence has a full travel schedule, including a fundraiser in Alabama for Republican Senator Luther Strange.

Vice President Mike Pence went home to Indiana on Friday to pressure the state’s lone Democratic senator to support a GOP tax overhaul. He’ll bounce to Alabama on Monday, campaigning for President Donald Trump’s pick in a special Senate election. And by Thursday, he’s scheduled to be in Milwaukee, headlining a $35,000-per-couple fundraiser.

Pence is expected to campaign extensively on behalf of congressional Republicans seeking to maintain their majorities next year. More immediately, Republicans expect him to help Ed Gillespie, the former Republican National Committee chairman who is running for governor in Virginia this fall.

Pence will also campaign in Alabama today for Sen. Strange in the GOP Runoff Election.

The State House Science and Technology Committee met Friday to discuss a new voting system for Georgia.

The meeting of the state House Science and Technology Committee represents a start. Any decision will likely take a few years and, depending on the type of system officials pick, could cost more than $100 million. Cheaper options are available, but the state’s leaders all need to agree on what they want.

“We all want to have a system that is best in class and does all the things technology can provide for us,” said committee Chairman Ed Setzler, R-Acworth. Beginning that conversation now, he added, means the “committee starts out of session to look at these things and to look at what technological options can serve our state well.”

“The return to voter-marked paper ballots is the current best practice and most widely accepted safe-voting methodology,” Jeremy Epstein, a computer and network systems expert with the National Science Foundation, told the committee.

Savannah’s Georgia Air National Guard base is being used for staging and support for relief missions to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Right now, massive relief efforts are underway to help the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, and Savannah is serving as a staging ground for much of it. As Maria intensified last week, the Savannah Air National Guard Base was tapped to serve as a place to store food and water, house members of the military and corral aircraft ahead of anticipated humanitarian missions.

“We’re basically the hub for the Air National Guard as far as airlift going into and out of the U.S. Virgin Islands,” Col. Pete Boone, director of Air Operations and vice commander of the Savannah-based 165th Airlift Wing of the Georgia Air National Guard, said Thursday.

The Savannah base was also being used as a staging point for flights of the Biloxi, Miss.-based 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, also known as the Air Force’s “Hurricane Hunters.” Three C-130s from Puerto Rico also flew in ahead of Maria.

The base was already supporting hurricane relief efforts. On Monday, airmen unloaded more than 150,000 bottles of water bound for people still recovering from Irma. Boone says the new orders came quickly. Before that, the 165th Airlift Wing flew two planes to Texas after Hurricane Harvey to bring supplies in and help evacuate victims. For Irma, the base flew airmen to affected areas to help clear routes and sent personnel into Florida to help augment law enforcement after the storm.

The unit found out its role in the Maria relief response Wednesday, and by that night “planes started arriving from all over the country,” Boone said.

“In less than 24 hours, we’re up and running and operating this relief effort,” he said Thursday.

United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price will discontinue taking government-funded private planes and the department’s Inspector General is investigating his past use.

Former Congressman Bob Barr writes about federalism and medical marijuana.

Although many reduce the debate over state legalization of marijuana to personal opinions about individual drug use or its medicinal value, doing so misses the more consequential issue regarding the federal government’s flagrant interference in a state’s constitutional right to self-governance. True conservatives recognize this truth and apply the philosophy to all issues that deal with the intersection of state and federal jurisdictions. There should be no such thing as “selective federalism,” where one supports federal control or state control based solely on what outcome is preferred personally.

[W]hen it comes to the long-standing dispute over marijuana, amplified in recent years by a stream of states that now have medical marijuana laws (29 plus D.C.), or which have legalized it outright for recreational use (eight), the conservative response should be straightforward — leave it to the states. Instead, the stubborn determination of Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reassert federal authority over marijuana, despite the changing tides at the state level, has complicated what should be a non-issue for a Republican-controlled Executive branch and Congress.

In the case of marijuana legalization, which in some states came directly through ballot referendums, action by the federal Department of Justice is truly overruling the voice of the American people. Such authoritative action robs states of the power guaranteed to them by the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in favor of keeping the matter in the hands of unelected bureaucrats in Washington.

Despite the anti-federalism push led by Sessions and at least tolerated by President Trump and congressional GOP leaders, some members of Congress seem to be getting the message from their constituents back home and are trying to make it easier for states to explore this new territory. Fortunately, also, these efforts are bipartisan and enjoy support from the influential Americans for Tax Reform, as well as from the “usual suspects” such as the CATO Institute.

While many politicians run to Washington, D.C. to drink from the “Swamp,” far removed from the kitchen table issues back home, such issues do not magically disappear or decrease in importance. Problems with heroin and opioid addiction, budget shortfalls, and unemployment persist and are left to the responsibility of governors and state officials to resolve. If the people or their elected state officials decide that marijuana reform may help ease these burdens — and states have enjoyed success with these very issues in legalizing marijuana — then it is their constitutional right to explore them. Washington bureaucrats have no moral or legal right to interfere. Trump, Sessions, and other Republicans should know better and would do well to get out of the way and focus instead on truly federal issues (of which there are many).

Lake Lanier Stakeholders warns about water quality degradation due to development surrounding the lake.

As the population grows around Lake Lanier and the creeks and rivers that feed it, these bodies of water are absorbing more runoff and treated wastewater — enough that regulators are starting the process of tightening restrictions for municipalities and water utilities in September.

The Georgia Environmental Protection Division regulates drinking water and wastewater utilities and requires they treat water that flows from their facilities back into the environment. At the end of September, EPD is rolling out for public comment a plan for new restrictions on wastewater permit holders.

That growth is causing more runoff into state waterways with more roads, parking lots and gutters, more subdivisions, lawns and vehicles.

As communities expand around the lake, the watershed and particularly Lake Lanier are seeing higher concentrations of phosphorus and nitrogen — two nutrients that promote growth of algae that in large enough quantities can foul water supplies for both humans and wildlife.

Athens-Clarke County Elections Director Charlotte Sosebee attended a Price Is Right taping last week. Did she hear the call to “Come on down!”?

Georgia Southwestern State University opened a new Presidential Plaza last week.

Georgia Southwestern State University counts three of the notable U.S. national figures as alumni, including the late former U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell, former First Lady Rosalynn Carter and former President Jimmy Carter.

The former first couple were at GSW on Friday, expressing gratitude for what the institution has done for them.

The nation’s 39th president, who attended GSW in 1941-42, was recognized at a ceremony on the institution’s Wheatley Administration Building lawn, where the university dedicated its new signature landmark — the Presidential Plaza, located at the main entrance to the campus.

Carter was one of four freshmen who signed the newly cemented driveway of the Wheatley Building in 1942. At the time, he was a chemistry lab assistant.

The former president explained that he had wanted to attend the U.S. Naval Academy since he was a child. He eventually got an appointment, which he went to after a year at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

In the meantime, his time at GSW included a stay in a residence hall and attending a home economics class full of women. “I was probably one of the luckiest males on campus,” he quipped about the latter while speaking at Friday’s ceremony.

He spoke fondly of his attachment to GSW and made a brief political aside when he said that his goals while in the White House were to champion for human rights and to keep peace.

To that end, he said, he was able to get through his four-year term without having to drop a bomb.

“I hope we will return to that in the near future,” Carter said.

Marietta City Council will consider changes to their alcohol ordinance.

Council members will discuss aspects of the city’s alcohol code relating to on-premises beer sales by craft beer retailers and open containers.

City code does not currently allow wine and malt beverage retailers to sell drinks for onsite consumption, though thanks to a law proposed by state Sen. Hunter Hill, R-Smyrna, and signed by Gov. Deal in May, breweries can sell their product to be consumed on their premises.

Thomas Monti, owner of Schoolhouse Brewery on Whitlock Avenue, has been pushing for the change. If Marietta makes the proposed changes, Monti could pour pints for his customers to sip while they peruse his selection of fancy beers and home brewing equipment.

The city will also discuss changes to the open carry ordinance.

Gwinnett Village Community Improvement District will hold a food crawl as part of a process to chart the district’s future.

The CID will host a community visioning session from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at Hong Kong Supermarket for a Livable Centers Initiative study it is conducting on the corridor. As part of the listening session, attendees will participate in a restaurant crawl that will include three restaurants in the Carter Oak shopping center, where Hong Kong Supermarket is located.

“We will be hosting a restaurant crawl at the shopping center, with opportunities to sample some of our local restaurants’ delicious food while providing feedback that will help shape the future of the Jimmy Carter Boulevard corridor,” CID officials said in an invitation for the session.

There will be three stops on the crawl and different questions will be asked of participants at each stop.

Dusty Nix of the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer writes about the impending departure of DFCS Director Bobby Cagle.

When Bobby G. Cagle took the helm of the state Division of Family and Children Services in 2014, Georgia’s situation was even worse than most. DFCS had lost 60 percent of its state funding in the Great Recession and that money had still not been fully restored. He stepped into the job in the midst of a tragic scandal involving a 5-year-old child who died of abuse despite extensive DFCS records on her circumstances. He inherited an annual staff turnover rate of about 39 percent. There was little if any more continuity in the leadership of the division, which had gone through 10 directors in 20 years.

During a visit to Columbus in late May, Cagle said DFCS had developed a “bunker mentality” when Gov. Nathan Deal asked him to head the agency: “They were doing hard work, they were underpaid and they were understaffed.”

In his three years as head of DFCS, Cagle has been credited with increased stability, reduced turnover, reduced caseloads and clearing a huge backlog of child abuse and neglect investigations. He also oversaw increases in staffing and a 19 percent pay increase for case workers on the front lines. While numbers are important (one caseworker with 19 cases said her total before Cagle had been 80), experience in this kind of wrenching work is at a premium, and incentives to hire and retain the best people are crucial.

He’s certainly leaving Georgia’s system in better shape than he found it. As the AJC reports, Cagle will not “be leaving under a familiar sad scenario: A new leader takes command, boldly heralding reforms, then is unceremoniously ousted after a child dies while under the agency’s watch … Cagle appears to be leaving after a good run, having added caseworkers, reduced employee turnover and increased the number of adoptions.”

Among the most valuable qualities that make Cagle effective in this role is the fact that he is far more than just a bureaucrat managing files and numbers from on high; he is a former caseworker himself, and a foster child as well.

The Augusta Chronicle editorializes about legislative language by Senator David Perdue.

When the U.S. Senate passed a defense budget last week, the headline-grabber was the $700 billion bottom line.

But nestled in the bill is a provision secured by U.S. Sen. David Perdue of Georgia that relates to Fort Gordon and its growing cybersecurity mission.

From his seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Perdue inserted language in the bill requiring that the [cybersecurity] training issue be resolved in the next budget planning cycle and requests an update for the committee.

Perdue’s provision might be one of the most important aspects of this defense bill.

Cyber threats evolve every day. It’s a battlefield that’s changing constantly. And if our military is going to successfully wage war on that battlefield, our fighting men and women in the Cyber Mission Forces need a unified training program, and a curriculum to train them and keep them trained on the latest developments in cyberwarfare.

Thomasville City Council adopted a “zero” level of city property taxes.

The action was approved on first and second readings under a resolution of emergency. Millage was to be set at a Sept. 11 meeting that was cancelled because of Tropical Storm Irma. Emergency status is required so tax bills can be dispersed.

Steve Sykes, Thomasville city manager/utilities superintendent, said the city is in an enviable position when compared to other communities, because Thomasville has the ability to operate without dependence on property taxes.

“Through efficient operation and prudent policy-setting on the part of the city council, we are able to fund many of our general government operations from utilities revenues,” he said. “This means that because of conscientious policies by our city council and efficient management by our city staff, we are able to not only provide exceptional utility services at competitive rates, but to also continue operating without the need for any additional tax burden on our citizens.”

Opioid Abuse Epidemic

Tomorrow night, the Partnership for a Drug Free Hall County is sponsoring a forum, Pain Pills and Heroin are Killing Our Families. Among the speakers will be Avery Nix, whose addiction began with an injury.

With that first feeling at age 12 from a hit of morphine for a broken arm off a skateboard, he can remember like it was yesterday “the rush, the feeling” for the brief seconds before passing out.

“All the nervousness, all the anxiety, all that self pity, all that resentment I had bottled up in here. Addiction is kind of like having this never-ending hole in your soul. No matter how much I used or how much I did, there was no filling it,” Nix said, who grew up in Clermont.

Nix is sharing his story as part of Partnership for a Drug Free Hall’s Forum Series: Not My Family, the first scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Brenau Downtown Center.

“This is the biggest thing we’ve done by far in Hall County, and it’s one explaining how extensive this is, which most people don’t really realize,” said Dallas Gay, one of the chief organizers of the partnership.

Gay said Northeast Georgia Medical Center’s emergency rooms are handling 63 overdoses per month. In 2016, the number of overdoses at the hospital jumped to nearly 700 after just 275 cases the year before.

Nix said he hopes people will start to understand addiction not as a moral deficiency but as a disorder.

“I think the biggest thing, first and foremost, people don’t want to admit at face value that somebody in their family and their family name in conservative Gainesville, Georgia, that there’s maybe a problem with addiction,” he said.