Just when you thought the world might be ready to move on after last week's Delta/NRA fracas in the state Capitol, you find that it's not. Worse, it's contagious. Over the weekend, this arrived from Politico.com – with a Tallahassee dateline:
…Florida lawmakers, borrowing from counterparts in Georgia, have targeted an aviation fuel tax reduction benefiting Delta and proposed late night budget language to rebid a state rental car contract held by Enterprise. The Enterprise contract is not set to expire until September 2020.
"We would do this to any company that wants to engage against political speech, whether it's against the NRA or Planned Parenthood," said state Rep. Blaise Ingoglia (R-Spring Hill), who added the Enterprise Rent-A-Car language Thursday night in House General Government Appropriations Committee deliberations.
Florida NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer, one of the most powerful figures in that state’s political circles, said she was not involved in the matter, but said she backs it.
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On Saturday, we're likely to get a first measure of how Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle's decision to strip Delta of a jet fuel sales tax exemption is going down with Republican voters.
The Gwinnett County Republican Party is hosting a 7 p.m. debate featuring five candidates for governor: Cagle; Secretary of State Brian Kemp; state Sen. Michael Williams of Cumming; former state Sen. Hunter Hill; and businessman Clay Tippins.
The venue: Norcross High School, 5300 Spalding Drive, Norcross. Doors open at 6:15 p.m.
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Merri Brantley, director of governmental affairs at Georgia Gwinnett College and former director of the state Senate press office, died this weekend following a heart attack. She was a constant presence at the state Capitol and will be missed. We'll post memorial service information as we get it.
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A week of qualifying for this year's Republican and Democratic primaries -- and nonpartisan judicial races -- begins today at the state Capitol. Keep an eye on the number of women who sign up, especially in state House and Senate races. A sharp increase over the previous cycle could be a signal of that wave that Democrats are hoping form.
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Secretary of State Brian Kemp made his TV debut in the GOP race for governor Monday with a pledge to "track and immediately deport all criminal aliens so our kids don't become the next victims." Watch here:
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We're sure there are more worth noting, but we need to mention the Crossover Day fates of two pieces of legislation:
-- House Bill 820, authored by state Rep. Beth Beskin, R-Atlanta, would limit the annual increase of city of Atlanta property taxes to no more than 3 percent. The bill sets the initial taxable value at the lowest assessed year of 2016, 2017 or 2018. The bill won overwhelming approval last week in the House.
-- House Resolution 1054, authored by state Rep. Ron Stephens, R-Savannah, would have renamed the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge for Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts. The bill never received a House committee vote.
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On the front page of today's AJC, transportation David Wickert takes a look at the transit debate in Cobb County, made manifest by House Bill 930, which proposed a special transit district that would have avoided a countywide referendum on the topic. That idea has been dropped – for now:
"It is deeply concerning that, right now, Cobb is a blank spot on the transit map," said Rep. Teri Anulewicz, D-Smyrna.
But some say Cobb is doing just fine economically. They fear a regional transit system could exploit Cobb taxpayers without offering them much in return.
"Cobb County has always been concerned that they're loved a whole lot more for their money instead of what their needs are," Sen. Lindsey Tippins, R-Marietta, said during a recent hearing on transit legislation. "That has been the sticking point for almost 50 years."
Cobb appears to have a division between its Republican state lawmakers and its GOP-dominated county commission. On Sunday, the Marietta Daily Journal published a Q&A with Mike Boyce, the commission chairman, on the topic of transit. A taste:
Boyce: ..."I believe what we need to do is structure a bill that allows Cobb County to use some of that new 1-percent sales tax not just for transit issues, but also for transportation issues, and what those transportation issues are is something we would have to put together, because my concern is if I do a referendum, I have to show a project list that the voters are going to support.
And if the project list doesn't float all boats, then my concern is that it will be voted down and I get nothing, and we're right back to where we were before, except now, we're the only ones in this region, unless some other counties vote it down, that isn't part of this partnership. And that economically can't be a good thing. It sends the wrong message to the national and international business community that we have a county here that prefers to address its mobility issues with 20th-century thought patterns, and we need to have 21st-century thought patterns."
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Georgia politicians were disappointed when the Trump administration appropriated roughly half of the $100 million the delegation wanted this year to deepen the Savannah port. Up the road in Charleston, they were downright outraged.
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster accused the White House budget office -- overseen by a former Palmetto State lawmaker -- of shortchanging the Charleston deepening project.
And U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he was infuriated that the harbor deepening project was omitted from the president's budget for the next fiscal year. He told The Charleston Post & Courier that his "No. 1. priority for 2018 is to change the formula" for how those types of infrastructure projects are funded.
South Carolina lawmakers chipped in $300 million to the $529 million dredging project, which is similar to the expansion underway down the coastline in Savannah.
Dredging work to deepen the Savannah harbor from 42 feet to 47 feet to make way for larger container ships is halfway done, work that's funded mainly with the $266 million initially forked over by the state.
The feds are supposed to cover the lion’s share of the project’s $973 million price tag, but the most the state has been able to get Washington to pony up in a single year has been about $43 million.
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More outside funding is about to pour into Georgia's race for governor. The PowerPAC Georgia committee said it will spend $2.5 million to boost Democrat Stacey Abrams' campaign by hiring 250 organizers to turn out an additional 80,000 rural black voters. Abrams could use the air cover; she's already burned through about 80 percent of her campaign cash. Another outside group has already pledged $1.2 million for a volley of ads to boost Republican Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle's campaign. The seven leading candidates have combined to raise or loan themselves more than $20 million.
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A confidante of Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio is plunging into politics himself. Republican businessman Jason Anavitarte said Monday he will qualify to run for a seat on the Paulding County Board of Education. Anavitarte was one of Rubio's top allies in the South and traveled the nation to help his bid for president.
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The U.S. Senate is slated to give its okay to another Georgia-based federal judge later this afternoon. The chamber is expected to confirm Trump administration nominee Tripp Self to a position on the federal district court in Macon. The vote comes less than a week after senators voted to give Self's onetime Georgia Court of Appeals colleague Elizabeth Branch a position on the powerful 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
