There’s a brewing drama over which of the state’s top leaders should get the credit for the flood of new electric vehicle, battery and solar manufacturing companies to Georgia: Democrats in Washington, who passed an infrastructure bill with billions in direct incentives for the Georgia-bound companies or GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, who wooed individual companies with millions in state tax breaks and incentives.
On Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff pushed back hard on Kemp’s assertion earlier this week that the state should get sole credit, and blaming President Joe Biden for taking “false credit” for the factories heading to Georgia. '
“Economic development should be a team sport. So the tantrum yesterday and all the drama is just politics,” Ossoff said of the governor from a stop in Metter, where the senator announced $1.3 billion from the infrastructure bill for Georgia to expand rural broadband.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
“It’s a collaboration, and I don’t see why there’s political drama about this,” Ossoff said. “The federal infrastructure and manufacturing policies that (Democrats) passed are benefiting Georgia, more than just about any state in the country. We should celebrate that together.”
Ossoff added that the federal incentives are securing billions of dollars of additional private capital heading to the state.
“It is a great thing for the state of Georgia and rather than politicizing it we should be celebrating it together and working together.”
Kemp made his comments about Biden from the groundbreaking of an Anovion Technologies, the battery supplier that received $117 million in federal grants from Biden’s infrastructure law meant to spur domestic manufacturing in the green energy sector.
U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm echoed Ossoff’s comments during a stop in Atlanta Wednesday.
“Let’s just try to throw all the politics out,” she said during a town hall hosted by the AJC and Georgia Tech. “The reality is, on the ground, we now have a policy to make sure that we can manufacture stuff in America again and be competitive globally, and that is really a good thing for the United States.”
Ossoff isn’t up for re-election until 2026, but there is already speculation that Kemp could be eying a run for Senate that year, when his current term as governor is over.
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Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
MORE COPS. House Speaker Jon Burns headlined the first meeting of the public safety “working group” he put together, and he made clear that finding more money to pay state law enforcement officers would be a key priority next year.
While the 2024 budget includes pay hikes of at least $4,000 for state law enforcement officers, Burns charged the group to take an expansive view of finding ways to recruit and retain top-notch officers.
Burns said that could include “compensation and benefits, training, equipment” — along with other perks.
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Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
BUDGET BLISS. The Georgia Budget & Policy Institute is out with its annual primer on this upcoming year’s state spending plan and our budget man James Salzer has the details.
The new fiscal year begins Saturday, when the $32.4 billion budget lawmakers passed earlier this year — complete with pay raises for about 250,000 educators and state employees — will take effect.
As GBPI points out, the state will spend closer to $56 billion when federal dollars and other funding are included. The $32.4 billion is the state portion that the General Assembly directly approves.
The institute is seen as left-leaning, so conservative readers may not like the commentary. But the primer is filled with interesting facts and figures cobbled together with the help of Danny Kanso, the institute’s senior budget guru and a former aide to ex-Republican Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle.
A few of the interesting numbers:
- Salzer reported last month that Gov. Brian Kemp told agencies to disregard more than 130 lines of expenditures approved by lawmakers — money for everything from bonuses for school custodians to mental health programs. That accounted for 134 “disregards,” worth about $242 million in spending. In the previous four years, Kemp had told agencies to disregard line items 49 times.
- The report notes that the state government started the previous year with about 6,400 fewer full-time employees than in 2018, before the COVID-19 pandemic.
That’s partly because the state had a hard time filling jobs when workers leave — one reason lawmakers have sought to raise salaries and consider other benefit increases.
- Kanso projects the state will take in $5 billion more by the end of this fiscal year than it spends. That means there will be yet another big surplus — after two years of record surpluses — and possibly another round of income tax rebates.
The primer also looks at budget trends in specific areas, such as education, human services, health care and the criminal justice system. You can find it here, but note: It’s not a light bedtime read.
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SCOTUS STOPS THE STEAL. The U.S. Supreme Court this week rejected a political theory that was pushed by conservative Republicans that could have made it easier to overturn state election results.
In a 6-3 ruling, the court rejected the once-fringe “independent state legislature” theory. Its core argument is that state courts have little, and possibly even no authority to invalidate or scrutinize election laws set by state legislatures and regarding federal contests.
The case before the Supreme Court was regarding North Carolina’s congressional map. In refusing to accept the “independent state legislature” theory, the high court upheld the North Carolina state Supreme Court decision that called for a new map after declaring one drawn by the GOP-led legislature contained illegal gerrymandering.
Politico wrote that the SCOTUS decision could also make it harder in the future to attempt schemes intended to undermine elections like the “fake electors” backed by former President Donald Trump in 2020. That scheme depended in part on the theory that said state legislatures could override their state election laws or constitutions at will.
“It keeps the toothpaste in the tube, in the sense that the theories that would give state legislatures unvarnished power has been rejected,” Ben Ginsberg, a Republican elections attorney, told Politico. “State legislatures thinking that they can just, if they feel like it after an election, replace the popular will with a slate of electors is as gone as ‘there can’t be any review of redistricting plans.’”
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Credit: Michael Blackshire /AJC
Credit: Michael Blackshire /AJC
LIMITED MEDICAID EXPANSION. Georgia will open a new Medicaid program to thousands of poor adults who live in the state starting on July 1, an initiative called Pathways to Coverage.
The AJC’s Ariel Hart reports that most of the state’s uninsured poor won’t qualify because they won’t meet the state’s requirements for work and other activities.
The state predicts that fewer than 100,000 uninsured Georgians will be enrolled once the program is fully implemented. That is out of 252,000 currently in the Medicaid coverage gap, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Georgians currently eligible for standard Medicaid will get to keep that coverage without meeting work requirements or enrolling in the new Pathways program.
Thirty-eight states have already expanded Medicaid, including many that implemented various tweaks. But Georgia will be the only one to launch an expansion with built-in work requirements.
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TODAY IN WASHINGTON:
- President Joe Biden will travel to New York City for an interview on MSNBC and some campaign fundraising receptions.
- The U.S. House and Senate are out for a two-week recess for the July Fourth holiday.
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Credit: Greg Nash/The Hill
Credit: Greg Nash/The Hill
OUT AND ABOUT. Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock will hold an event in Savannah today to highlight his efforts to boost Georgia’s aviation industry as part of the process of reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration.
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Credit: Courtesy photo
Credit: Courtesy photo
DOG OF THE DAY. We don’t have a lot of rules around here. Not every Dog of the Day has to be a dog and not every Jolt subscriber has to live in Georgia.
So behold today’s winner — one of the many coyotes in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert that AJC subscriber Merrill Kemp-Wilcox recently spotted on her morning walk, right before she read The Jolt.
Kemp-Wilcox is a recent Georgia-to-Tucson transplant, but she reports she’s still getting her daily dose of Georgia politics from your Insiders. And she’s not the only one.
“I just wanted y’all to know, even the coyotes of the Sonoran Desert are interested in the daily roundup of Georgia Politics,” she wrote.
Merrill, that kind of desert-dwelling loyalty deserves to be the Dog of the Day. Congrats!
Send us your dogs of any political persuasion and cats on a cat-by-cat basis to patricia.murphy@ajc.com, or DM us on Twitter @MurphyAJC.
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AS ALWAYS, Jolt readers are some of our favorite tipsters. Send your best scoop, gossip and insider info to patricia.murphy@ajc.com, tia.mitchell@ajc.com and greg.bluestein@ajc.com.
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