Props to Sam Olens
In a statement, Olens said, “I am honored to be elected Vice President of NAAG during the coming year. I want to congratulate our newly elected President, Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen. I look forward to working with him and my counterparts on ways to better our individual states.”
Members of the National Association of Attorneys General consist of the 56 state and territory sttorneys general.
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Jon Richards
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Frankly stunned there is a Federalism Committee. Congrats Mr. Olens.
AG Sam Olens undoubtedly has his eye on higher office in Georgia. During his terms beside Gov. Nathan Deal, Olens has almost always sided with the state’s chief administrator — from how to approach Syrian refugee resettlement to the state’s institutional reaction to the SCOTUS decision on gay marriage.
None of this is by mistake. As mentioned in the post, Olens is shrewdly spending time on the NAAG committees on Human Trafficking and Cyber Security. These issues are near and dear to the voters of Georgia. The conservative grassroots base in Georgia has committed itself to battling human trafficking with activism and legislative support. With the Army Cyber Center at Fort Gordon, cyber security will continue to grow as an important infrastructural investment in the state.
Another sign in this post that Olens might want to take part in state stewardship after his term: he is the co-chair of Law Enforcement and Prosecutorial Relations Working Group. While it might not seem important at first, this will be a source of major frustration within the state as criminal justice reform efforts take root. As reforms get offenders out of prison and back into society, Georgia’s new supervision agency, the Department of Community Supervision, will face obvious hurdles in working with the prosecutors who incarcerated these individuals to make sure that reentry into society is effective and worth the reform efforts. This is tantamount to much of Gov. Deal’s legacy as a criminal justice reformer.
This is perhaps something we should want in our potential future candidate for any office: one who is informed on the issues and has spent time fighting for his constituent interests on the issues. I look forward to seeing where he goes next.