Georgia continues to grow, with 2.5-4 Million people expected to be added during the next quarter of a century. Those people (plus those of us who are already here) are going to need electricity. And tighter regulations from DC aren’t making it terribly easy to get that power from coal. What’s a utility to do?
A apparent change of mind by President Obama means that plans to allow offshore drilling off the southeast Atlantic coast will likely not go forward. In January 1015, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management released a draft five year plan that for the first time included the possibility of awarding a drilling lease off
This week’s Courier Herald column: Georgia’s budget for Fiscal Year 2017 is set to be its largest ever. The House and Senate will negotiate the final details of the $23.8 Billion package between now and March 24th. Along the way they may also consider a couple of plans to cap the budget, taxes, and the
Raising an unstated but obvious threat of a veto over certain versions of “Religious Liberty” bills on the table in the legislature, Governor Nathan Deal today said that Georgia will remain a state that protects the freedom of religion but that does not require allowing discrimination. As tweeted by Greg Bluestein of the AJC: “I
Across from Matthews Cafeteria on Main Street in Tucker sits Cofer Brothers, which is getting ready to celebrate its 100th anniversary in three years. It’s a family run business, providing building materials to contractors for almost four generations. The business went through some tough times during the recession that started in 2008. The building industry
By a vote of 75-20, the U.S. Senate passed a bill that will revise Customs and Border protection, strengthen trade enforcement, and permanently prohibit state and local taxation of internet access. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill in December 2015. Now it awaits the president’s signature before it is put into law. Senator
In the second installment of Become a Budget Expert, we discuss the three areas that make up state funding: taxes and fees, bonds, and the rainy day fund. Taxes and fees make up the yearly state budget in good economic times and are supported in bad times by reserve revenues, called the rainy day fund.
Gov. Nathan Deal announced today that Georgia garnered a record increase in international trade for the sixth consecutive year in 2015. Georgia’s imports increased to $88.55 billion (+5.7%), while it had exports of $38 billion to 217 unique countries and territories. Georgia remains the 7th-largest importing state and the 11th-largest exporting state. In 2015, Georgia
The Supreme Court has ruled the Obama Administration overstepped its authority with new EPA regulations that would affect the coal fueled power plants. This has direct implications for Georgia, and looks to be setting up a possible trend where the Supreme Court begins to assert its own power in an attempt to contain the powers
This week’s Courier Herald column: During the process to approve partial taxpayer financing of Atlanta’s new Mercedes Benz stadium, I was perhaps one of the most frequent and outspoken of the critics. Atlanta had and has many infrastructure needs. The decision to tie up a dedicated revenue stream for three decades in order to replace
