The Jolt: Gun law linked to Music Midtown cancellation unlikely to change
When the Music Midtown festival was canceled last August amid legal fallout from a Republican-backed gun bill, critics of the state’s loosening firearms laws vowed to change them to preserve big-ticket shows in Georgia.
So far, those efforts haven’t gained traction.
The latest reminder came this week when our AJC colleague Rodney Ho reported the dramatic downscaling of the SweetWater 420 Fest, which organizers originally planned for state-owned Centennial Park. It will now be a far smaller event on the private grounds of the Sweetwater Brewery.
That festival’s organizers declined to be interviewed, but a statement included this: “Several factors played into this decision, the most important being the safety of our festival goers.”
That’s a similar message to what we heard from Music Midtown’s organizers last year, who cited “circumstances beyond our control” for their decision last year to can the two-day annual festival.
Behind the scenes in 2022, officials explained that a judge’s ruling related to a 2014 Georgia gun law made it harder for Georgia organizers to ban firearms at short-term private events held on public land, including Piedmont Park where Music Midtown was planned.
Republicans talked privately then about bringing legislation to give private events more leeway to ban weapons, even for events on public land. But several key GOP legislators now say there’s no appetite to revisit the gun legislation this year.
Democrats aren’t standing pat. We’re told there are several legislative proposals in the works seeking to fine-tune the 2014 law. But without Republican support, the proposals are bound to be sidetracked.
Meanwhile, the fallout could continue. Music Midtown’s organizers have yet to decide on the future of the event this year. But two other major festivals to be held on public grounds are still on the calendar: Shaky Knees, planned for Atlanta’s Central Park in May, and Re:Set, also scheduled for Central Park in June.
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LISTEN UP. The Friday edition of the Politically Georgia podcast is now in your feeds. We’re talking about the future for Gov. Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams, who made moves separately this week, going through our listener mail bag, and naming our Who’s Up and Who’s Down for the week.
Listen at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Stitcher.
And be sure to check your feeds Sunday for a special edition of the pod with a deep dive into the AJC’s investigation looking at the hedge funds and investors gobbling up swaths of Atlanta homes, with destructive results.
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BUCKHEAD BIG BUCKS. The most provocative element of the measure to carve the Buckhead neighborhood out of Atlanta isn’t the threat of a secession movement, which is doomed to fail without support from GOP leaders, including one who told us it’s “deader than a doornail.”
It’s the proposed salary of the imaginary mayor of Buckhead, who would make $225,000 under the terms of the new city.
That’s more than Gov. Brian Kemp gets. That’s more than Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens earns.
In fact, it’s leaps and bounds ahead of just about every other city in Georgia.
The Georgia Municipal Association conducted an informal survey of city wages last year and found that many mayors of medium-sized cities don’t come close to cracking six figures. (You can find your copy of the report here.)
One of the higher-paid mayors is the leader of Warner Robins, who gets paid $100,000 to lead the city of 80,000 people in middle Georgia. Buckhead’s mayor, with a comparable population, would get paid more than twice that amount.
Beyond public officials, the $225,000 salary for the mayor would also be 125% more than the median household income of Buckhead residents. That means lawmakers would be requiring Buckhead citizens to pay the mayor more than twice as much as they make. Not bad work, if you’d take it.
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UNDER THE GOLD DOME:
- As promised by GOP leaders, the House and Senate are done for the week, with the exception of a single Senate committee that meets at 1 p.m. Both chambers will be back in session Monday.
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LEGISLATIVE UPDATE:
After a lot of wind up, this legislative session is seriously hitting the gas. Among the developments Thursday:
- State Sen. Clint Dixon, R-Gwinnett, introduced Senate Bill 141, a bill that would ban medical providers from providing hormone therapy, surgeries, or other treatments to transgender minors. When our colleague Maya T. Prabhu asked a Republican leader about the notion they’d avoid social issues this year, the leader said: “Everything’s out there.”
- The House Transportation Committee approved the bill to increase weight limits for freight trucks on state and local roads. More than 100 local officials have opposed it, saying the move would damage roads and endanger lives. A representative for the Georgia Farm Bureau, which backs the bill, said Thursday, “We see it purely from an economic standpoint, as putting us on an even playing field with other states.”
- State Sen Sonya Halpern, D-Atlanta, held a news conference on the recommendations of the HBCU study committee she chairs. Among them: A bipartisan HBCU caucus to coordinate state policy recommendations for Georgia’s 10 Historically Black Colleges and Universities, of which three are public and seven are private.
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LOCAL CONTROL? Republicans’ traditional calls for “local control” took a vacation Thursday when the House passed a resolution from U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde rebuking recent changes to the District of Columbia’s criminal code. The bill from the 9th District Republican passed with bipartisan support.
The resolution expresses disapproval of the district’s recent decision to reduce maximum penalties for certain crimes. Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser vetoed those council-passed changes on the grounds they could negatively impact public safety, but the council overrode her. Notably, the entire council and Bowser are all Democrats.
Thirty-one House Democrats joined Republicans in voting for the disapproval resolution. If it passes in the Senate and is signed by President Joe Biden, the criminal code changes would be reversed because of Congress’ authority over the district’s local governance.
“My resolution sends a clear message to the Senate, the White House, and the American people that the People’s House rejects soft-on-crime policies that jeopardize Americans’ safety and security,” Clyde, R-Athens, said in a statement after the vote.
Earlier in the day, Minnesota U.S. Rep. Angie Craig was assaulted in the elevator of her D.C. apartment building. According to Roll Call, the congresswoman suffered bruising but was otherwise unharmed. There was no evidence the attack was politically motivated.
D.C. District Attorney General Brian Schwalb criticized the House vote, saying it was another example of Congress interfering with local D.C. governance. He advocated for D.C. statehood as a way to avoid such actions in the future.
A separate resolution expressing disapproval of the D.C. Council’s decision to allow legal noncitizen residents to vote in local elections also passed with support of 42 Democrats along with every Republican.
Georgia Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Albany, voted “yes” on that measure. Rep. David Scott, D-Atlanta, did not cast a vote at all. The other three Georgia Democrats voted against the measure.
All five Georgia Democrats opposed the resolution seeking to reverse the District’s criminal code changes.
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TODAY IN WASHINGTON:
- President Joe Biden will welcome governors from across America to the White House, and in the afternoon he will meet with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil.
- The U.S. House and the Senate are out today. While the House isn’t scheduled to return until after Presidents Day, the Senate will be in session next week.
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ONE STEP CLOSER. Nancy Abudu was one of 24 Joe Biden judicial nominees approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday now headed to the Senate floor for confirmation.
The committee had been deadlocked with committee control evenly split between Democrats and Republicans for the last two years. But the runoff win by Georgia’s U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock gave Democrats additional seats on committees, including Judiciary, and ended the partisan standoff over Biden judicial picks.
Abudu is nominated to fill a vacancy on the Atlanta-based 11th District U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, with jurisdiction over courts in Alabama, Florida, and Georgia.
Abudu served as the Southern Poverty Law Center’s deputy legal director and stands to become the first Black woman judge to sit on the 11th Circuit. Georgia’s U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, was among the Democrats who supported her nomination.
The committee also advanced the nomination of Jill E. Steinberg to be U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia. She is currently a litigator with the Ballard Spahr law firm and is a former assistant U.S. attorney.
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NOT ATLANTA. All three of the state senators who represent the Buckhead neighborhood have said they’ll oppose the “City of Buckhead City” legislation.
One of them, state Sen. Josh McLaurin, D-Sandy Springs, went to the well of the Senate Thursday to remind his colleagues that none of the senators behind the new Buckhead secession live in Buckhead or Atlanta.
Paraphrasing Atlanta-born rapper Omeretta the Great, McLaurin said, “Just chill and repeat after me: Cataula is not Atlanta; Forsyth, not Atlanta; Tyrone is not Atlanta; Effingham is not Atlanta; Newnan is not Atlanta; Chattooga is not Atlanta. We’re happy with our Atlanta.”
The Georgia cities McLaurin named are the hometowns of the men pushing the effort who are, as the song goes, not Atlanta.
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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.
About the Authors
Patricia Murphy is the AJC's senior political columnist. She was previously a nationally syndicated columnist for CQ Roll Call, national political reporter for the Daily Beast and Politics Daily, and wrote for The Washington Post and Garden & Gun. She graduated from Vanderbilt and holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.
Greg Bluestein is the Atlanta Journal Constitution's chief political reporter. He is also an author, TV analyst and co-host of the Politically Georgia podcast.
Tia Mitchell is the AJC’s Washington Bureau Chief and a co-host of the "Politically Georgia" podcast. She writes about Georgia’s congressional delegation, campaigns, elections and the impact that decisions made in D.C. have on residents of the Peach State.
