Former state Sen. George Hooks celebrated the start of this year by being appointed to the state Board of Regents.
He’ll end it with a new job.
Hooks announced his resignation from the board in a letter Tuesday to Gov. Nathan Deal, saying he had been offered a job to lobby for a “lifelong passion” of his involving historic preservation.
It “will be very time consuming, rewarding, and challenging,” Hooks said in his letter. “This new position will involve some travel that will interfere with my current duties on the Board of Regents.”
Hooks has long been a fixture in both politics and public service in Georgia.
He retired from the state Legislature at the end of 2012 as one of its longest-serving members. A former state representative first elected to the General Assembly in 1980, he left as Dean of the Senate, a title denoting his tenure in that chamber. It was a bittersweet parting: Hooks, who’s from Americus, was one of the Legislature’s few remaining white rural Democrats, and his district had just been redrawn into a Republican stronghold.
It will be up to Deal to announce Hooks’ replacement on the 19-member board, which oversees the 31 colleges and universities that make up the University System of Georgia.
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