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Request a DemoUpdate, May 10, 2023: The amended Fiscal Year 2023 budget adopted by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Brian Kemp on March 10 included both the income tax refund for taxpayers and the property tax refund for property owners.
The Gist
Georgians are likely to receive two one-time tax refunds this year if lawmakers approve Gov. Brian Kemp’s proposal this legislative session. An income tax refund will mean $250 for single filers and $500 for joint filers this spring, and homeowners are likely to get about $500 in property tax refunds by year’s end.
The tax refunds will cost the state about $2.1 billion, to be drawn from the $6.6 billion in surplus funds from fiscal year 2022, which ended last June. What will an extra $250 to $1,000 in the household budget mean for most people?
What Taxpayers Are Saying
“It would be awesome to get it,” said Corey Cooper, 44, a barber who lives in Conyers. Recent storms and a lightning strike have split a tree and knocked down trees and branches all over his 5 1/2-acre property. He said he’ll put the property tax refund “back into my home” and plans to buy a top-of-the-line chainsaw to cut up all the branches. The chainsaw, he said, will cost about $500. He plans to save the other $250.
A traffic supervisor for a construction company, Chris McCart, 27, plans to use the $250 he’s likely to receive to dig himself out of credit card debt. He’s currently living in a room in his sister’s house in McDonough while he saves and rebuilds his credit. “That money will help me get ahead of the game,” he said.
Adam Wright, a communications expert currently on disability, said he would rather see his family’s $1,000 refund “go to the people in Georgia who need it most.”
“We have a lot of people living on a subsistence level. It would have more impact on them than the rest of us who are doing better,” said Wright, 47, who lives in East Atlanta with his longtime partner Elizabeth Allen, a product manager and owner of their home. Nonetheless, he said they’ll probably end up spending the refunds on home improvement projects.
“A thousand dollars helps, but it honestly doesn’t make a big difference for us,” he added. “I know direct cash payments could help other people stay whole. And that affects crime, it affects health care, it affects everything.”
Debra Saunders, 57, who manages a day care center and owns a home in south Dekalb, agreed.
“They need to send that money where it’s really needed, like permanent shelter for homeless people, and providing Medicaid for the uninsured,” she said. “Everybody in the state doesn’t need to get that back.”
Saunders said she’ll likely end up spending the $750 in funds she’s expected to get on home gas bills, as rates have gone up sharply over last year. But she wishes the working and middle-class parents of the children she serves at her day care could get more money in the form of child care subsidies.
“People are really struggling to pay for child care and make ends meet so they can keep their jobs,” she said. “I wish they would use that surplus on the realities that people are actually struggling with.”
What’s Next
While the state has enjoyed robust tax collections, record surplus and low unemployment over the past year, the state’s chief economist expects state tax revenue to dip as much as $3 billion this year, primarily due to stock market declines. This could limit state funds available for safety net programs in the next fiscal year.
Meanwhile, health coverage provided through Medicaid to hundreds of thousands of Georgians during the coronavirus pandemic via special federal emergency funds will end on April 1. Many of those people could lose their health coverage this year, as they will no longer qualify.
Despite the expected downturn in revenue, the big surplus would allow Kemp to keep his campaign promise of giving some of that money back to Georgians.
Over the next few months, members of both houses of the General Assembly will deliberate and vote on whether to approve the two tax refunds, among other line items in the governor’s proposed fiscal year 2023 amended budget and fiscal year 2024 budget.
Have thoughts on the proposed tax refunds, or how the state should spend the surplus? Contact Jill Jordan Sieder on Twitter @journalistajill or at [email protected].
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Header photo: Conyers resident Corey Cooper plans to buy a chainsaw to help maintain his property with his tax refund. (Credit: Jill Jordan Sieder)
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Watch live: Kemp signs $36.1B budget bill
Today is the deadline for Gov. Brian Kemp to either sign or reject bills passed by the Georgia General Assembly during this past legislative session. Arguably, the biggest of those bills is the annual budget. Kemp and first lady Marty Kemp will be joined by Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, House Speaker Jon Burns, and members …
Bill adds violation to Soil Amendment Act, but will it stop the stench?
After years of enduring intrusive, foul-smelling waste spread on untold tracts of rural land, Georgians living near such sites are finally getting some relief.
On Monday, Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law a bill that adds a new violation to the state’s 48-year-old Soil Amendment Act. Soil amendment is meant to help farmers create healthier soil.
The law’s new provision is being hailed as a small but significant breakthrough in a 15-year battle to rein in abuses and mismanagement and create more safeguards and oversight in the disbursement of soil amendment. Many rural communities have long complained that the state-approved, sludge-like substance smells like “rotting corpses,” draws flies and vultures, and has led to other environmental problems.
Soil amendment is a state-approved additive derived from waste created mostly at chicken-processing and pet food-processing plants. It’s intended to be used as fertilizer on farmland where crops are grown. It’s supposed to help reduce erosion, improve water retention, change soil pH, pump up nutrients and provide other soil-boosting enhancements. Georgia law allows chicken processing waste to be applied to land as a soil amendment. Some farmers use it as a cheap alternative due to the rising cost of fertilizer.
The new provision, which goes into effect July 1, makes it illegal for a company to continue spreading soil amendment if the company or the site in which the waste is being distributed is under some kind of enforcement action from the state Environmental Protection Division or the state Department of Agriculture, the bill’s sponsor Rep. Rob Leverett, R-Elberton, told State Affairs Monday. Violators must be notified by the agriculture department and must resolve the prior problem before they can resume dispersing more soil amendment, he added.
“I’m very excited. I appreciate the governor signing the bill,” said Leverett who lives in Elbert County where some residents have had problems with soil amendment. “The passage of the bill indicates there’s some recognition by the Legislature that we do need to take a look at this. What I’m trying to do is address what I believe to be legitimate complaints. Hopefully, we started to do that this year and we’ll take other incremental steps as needed. I look forward to the Ag department enforcing this new violation once it’s gone through their regulatory process.”
David vs Goliath
In a state where agriculture wields tremendous power — it provides paychecks for 1 in 7 Georgians and contributes about $75 billion a year to the state’s economy, most of it from poultry processors — the new legislation is a milestone, local government officials and activists say.
“It is a very big step,” Tonya Bonitatibus, executive director and riverkeeper at the environmental nonprofit Savannah Riverkeeper, told State Affairs. “This bill made it through the Senate and the House Ag committees, which are traditionally definitely not in the business of overregulating Ag, and it passed almost unanimously [in the Legislature] and that speaks volumes.” Bonitatibus has been tracking the issue for 13 years.
While state lawmakers are recognizing the harsh impact the state’s poultry industry waste is having on some rural communities, leaders in those communities are waiting to see what the Georgia Department of Agriculture does. The department has sole power to regulate soil amendment.
“I hope the new [agriculture] commissioner Tyler Harper brings us more positive results,” said Oglethorpe County Commission Chair Jay Paul, a former state Environmental Protection Division specialist who dealt with soil amendment most of his 17 years with the agency. “I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.”
Shortly after taking office in January 2023, Harper vowed to review the department’s Soil Amendment Program. Since then, he has issued recommendations and is beefing up the program, which when he arrived had only two people, one of whom was the inspector for the entire state. With $550,000 in funding from the state, Harper has added two more inspectors, a program manager and an attorney.
The department is updating its software so inspection reports can be completed digitally and tracked online rather than hand-written. It’s also updating its licensing and registration software to help registrants more easily comply with soil amendment program rules.
“Our team has done a really good job,” Harper told State Affairs. “We’ve really been working to get our arms around it since I walked in the door last year, and we’ve been committed to addressing the issue and ensuring that the agricultural industry can be successful and that we’re protecting our state, our resources and the public all at the same time.”
Rep. Robert Dickey, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee said Leverett’s bill is “about the [state agriculture] department having some teeth in the rules and law to really shut down” companies with abusive soil amendment practices.
The Ag department’s recent efforts are more than what’s been done in the past, critics say, but more needs to be done.
“I really haven’t seen a whole lot of difference. I mean, we’ve heard some good rhetoric,” Wilkes County Commission Chairman Sam Moore told State Affairs.
“Unfortunately, it’s the little bitty counties against the Department of Ag. And we lose every time,” Elbert County Commission Chairman Lee Vaughn said. “The Department of Ag has 100% control over what soil amendments are and what they allow and how they allow them to be applied.”
Local leaders in counties affected by the sludge onslaught say they’ve been kept in the dark for years about soil amendment. To make matters worse, they say they have no regulatory authority to resolve the problem because that’s left up to the state agriculture department.
“We want to know where it’s going. We want to know what it is,” Moore said. “I mean, we don’t even know if they [sludge-hauling companies] have a permit or not. You call the Department of Ag and they act like they don’t know. It’s just the same old thing that’s been going on for years.”
In the last year, some counties have started fighting back, creating local ordinances that discourage the sludge haulers from coming into their communities. At the same time, the problem has sparked activism among local residents in several counties where the problem prevails.
‘Death and Diarrhea’
State Affairs spoke to local government officials, activists, environmentalists, farmers and residents in a half dozen counties where soil amendment has been applied for years. Their stories all seem to align.
They talked about how their communities have been overrun with tractor-trailers hauling millions of gallons of sludge — or as locals call it “chicken blood and guts” — presumably from chicken and dog-food processing plants. The additive is being spread on open land in rural communities — usually small, sparsely-populated counties — across Georgia, with little state regulation, scrutiny or intervention.
The companies bringing in the waste have contracted with or paid farmers or landowners to apply it on their property. Some locals report seeing dozens of tanker-trucks a day hauling the waste into their communities. It’s an endless procession where the sludge is applied throughout the day, all hours of the night and even in the rain.
The usual hoot owls and honey bees have been replaced by vultures and flies, community members say. Millions of flies land on farm animals and get entangled in children’s hair when they play outdoors. In Hancock County, locals have resorted to firing shotguns in the air to scare away the vultures perched atop churches and other buildings. The vultures feast on the land where the soil amendment has been deposited.
“Buzzards or vultures, whatever you want to refer to them as, eat dead rotting flesh,” said Angela Walden who lives in Jefferson County, 45 minutes south of Augusta.
Dirt roads have become muddy, well-worn crevices as dozens of tanker trucks haul tons and of the liquid ooze into communities nonstop.
In most instances, the sludge is spread on top of the soil, locals and officials say, instead of injected into the ground, as the state requires, creating a horrific stench that stretches for miles.
“It smells like death and diarrhea,” said Patrick Dragos, a former Seattle ironworker who moved his wife and daughter to Jewell in August 2022. The family owns an historic wedding venue on a 42-acre estate with an 1895 Victorian home and barn near the Ogeechee River.
Dragos was so incensed after getting nowhere with state and local officials and the sludge-hauling companies that he is now running for chairman of Hancock County Board of Commissioners. The 34-year-old Republican is running against three Democrats, including the incumbent Helen “Sistie” Hudson who has held the seat since 2016.
“If they’re not going to handle our issues and take this seriously, I guess I’m going to have to do it myself,”Dragos said.
Problems began near the Dragos family’s Hancock County property in March 2023 when soil amendment was applied to a farm about a mile away. The smell and flies continued through October, leading Dragos to believe the problem was over. Then, the sludge-filled trucks returned in March of this year and have shown up frequently since then.
The family’s heading into a busy season of weddings, graduations and baby showers and never know when the trucks and smell will show up.
“The threat of the smell and flies is constant. So that stress is always there,” Dragos told State Affairs.
Dragos worries that nonstop application of the soil amendment may eventually seep into the water tables and eventually his well water.
It’s already created one environmental mishap.
In July 2022, some 1,700 fish died in the Little River in Wilkes County after soil amendment runoff from Mar-Leta Farms leached into the river, a Georgia Environmental Protection Division report found. The waste came from washdown water at a Hartwell County Nestle Purina facility provided by a company called Proponic Solutions, according to the EPD report. The report described the waste as “grey, turpid wastewater.” Mar-Leta, also known as McAvoy Farms, was later fined $85,000.
“It’s a major environmental concern,” said Paul, the Oglethorpe County Commission chairman. “And I’m not convinced that the fish kill in Wilkes County will be the last one because nobody really knows what’s in it. It’s just that simple. It comes as wastewater and suddenly goes on a truck and it becomes soil amendment.”
Fighting Back
Unable to get much help from the state agriculture department for years, some counties have taken steps to deal with the problem themselves:
In Warren County, companies wanting to apply soil amendment have to notify the county and get a permit to do so, Commission Chairman John Graham said. The companies also are limited to storing the sludge in certain industrial areas of the county and onsite for no more than 12 hours.
The ordinance was put in place about a year ago so that county officials “ would have more knowledge of what’s going on,” Graham said. “We’re going to stand on our ordinance. Our attorney put it together and he said he followed everything [based on the law]. He feels like we did the right thing.”
The issue had become such a problem that the county was forced to close one dirt road because “they had brought so many tanker-trucks of that stuff in, it messed up the dirt road. With all the rain we’ve had and them bringing in 20 trucks a day and that weight on a muddy dirt road just ruined it,” Graham said, adding that activity has “slowed down in the last little while,” Graham added.
Oglethorpe County created an ordinance last June that requires companies applying soil amendment on a tract of land to be at least 100 feet away from the property line of the nearest private property. During the 2021-22 legislative session, Senate Bill 260, sponsored by then-Sen. Tyler Harper, limited local buffers and setbacks to 100 feet.
“If we get a complaint, we will at least go out there and walk the perimeter of a property and make sure they’re not within 100 feet,” Paul said. “If we see something more egregious, like septage [human waste] for example, we can turn it over to the George Environmental Protection Division. It [Oglethorpe’s ordinance] does give us something new but that’s about it.”
Probably the strongest local government push back comes from Wilkes County. Two months ago, county leaders adopted an ordinance that requires landowners to prove they’re using the land where soil amendment is being applied to grow products, not just as a dumping ground. One soil amendment-application company sued the county two weeks ago saying the ordinance is illegal.
“Who knows what’s going to happen,” Moore, the Wilkes County Commission chairman, said when asked about the county’s chances of winning. “You would think we’d have a good chance. [But] We’ve been dealing with the state for so long, our expectations are not real high.”
Accidental Activists
The ongoing sludge fight has also created a motley mix of NIMBY activists.
Angela Walden and her husband had plans to build their dream home on their family’s nearly 200-year-old farm in Jefferson County. Those plans died on July 13, 2022 when they got the first whiff of a mysterious sludge that had been spread on her cousin’s farm across the two-lane highway dividing their properties.
A month later, Walden’s husband, who often tended the family farm after working his day job, got sick. He was vomiting. He had a sore throat, watery eyes and headaches. He was ultimately diagnosed with thyroiditis, a condition that occurs after coming in contact with hazardous toxins. That was the beginning of the Summer of Hell — 69 days of stomach-churning stench and flies — for Walden and her family.
It was also Walden’s swift induction into activism that would take her to the state Capitol to fight against the substance that ultimately caused a family rift that continues to this day.
“It’s small town, rural Georgians up against big industry,” said Walden, who has appeared in a Rural Georgia Protection Alliance documentary about soil amendment. “The chicken industry is big in our state. You’re going up against them, these lobbyists who have millions of dollars and big time attorneys. And you have the politicians. If I can just inform my county, my residents about what this really is and to try to keep it out of my community … that’s the best way to combat it.”
Walden wants to see regulatory authority over soil amendment removed from the state agriculture department and returned to the state’s Environmental Protection Division.
“That would be a huge win,” she said. “You know, we have to do what we can to try to bring some regulation and some oversight to what they’re doing.”
Have questions? Contact Tammy Joyner on X @lvjoyner or at [email protected].
House speaker Jon Burns hires new communications director
House speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, announced today that he has hired a new communications director. Kayla Roberson, who has served as press secretary at the Georgia Chamber for the past year or so, will now oversee all external communications, media relations and strategic messaging for Burns.
“I’m excited to welcome Kayla to our team,” Burns said in a statement. “Kayla has an excellent background, deep skill set and strong work ethic, and we’re excited to have her on board to continue getting our message out and sharing the House’s priorities ahead of and into the next session.”
A double major in political science and journalism at the University of Georgia, where she graduated in 2022, Roberson interned for U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde, a Republican in north Georgia’s 9th Congressional District, and worked as a consultant for GOP political candidates before joining the Georgia Chamber.
“I’m beyond grateful for the opportunity to work under the leadership of speaker Burns,” Roberson told State Affairs. “Whether it’s improving education opportunities, putting money back in the pockets of hardworking Georgians, creating jobs or supporting our rural communities, speaker Burns always prioritizes doing what is best, and what is right, for Georgia.”
Political strategist Stephen Lawson, who has held the top communications role for the speaker since last December, announced he’s joining Dentons, where starting today he’ll lead the global law firm’s public affairs efforts.
Have questions or comments? Contact Jill Jordan Sieder on X @journalistajill or at [email protected].
Global bird flu disrupts Georgia exports, costing chicken producers millions
ATLANTA — A global bird flu that has rapidly spread from birds to dairy cows, milk supplies and humans has cost untold millions of dollars in lost export business in Georgia, the nation’s leading poultry producer, officials with the state Department of Agriculture and poultry industry said.
Georgia has had only three reported cases of H5N1 avian influenza since it reemerged in 2022. The last of those cases was resolved in November 2023 but ramifications of those outbreaks continue to have a big effect on the state’s ability to export chicken and chicken parts, such as chicken feet, to different countries, including China, one of Georgia’s biggest export markets for chicken feet.
In 2022, frozen chicken feet, for example, accounted for more than 85% of all U.S. poultry exported to China, according to Farm Progress, publisher of 22 farming and ranching magazines.
The $30 billion poultry industry is Georgia’s largest segment in its No. 1 industry — agriculture.
China has also placed a ban on the import of chicken products from 41 other American states. The ban on Georgia products went into effect Nov. 21, 2023. Efforts to reach the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. were unsuccessful.
Georgia Poultry Federation President Mike Giles estimates the state’s loss at “well into the millions of dollars.”
“It’s a significant amount in a significant export market for us,” he said. “Poultry paws [feet] immediately lose value because of the loss of demand.”
The ban has forced Georgia poultry producers to find alternative markets for their products that would normally be headed to China.
“Some are sold domestically, some are frozen and stored, hopefully to find markets later on, and some go to other countries,” Giles said.
This isn’t the first time China has banned U.S.-produced poultry products due to a bird flu outbreak. The country instituted a ban in January 2015 which lasted until November 2019 — even though U.S. poultry products were deemed free of the disease by August 2017.
After that ban was lifted, China’s appetite for American-produced chicken products became voracious.
In 2022, U.S. producers shipped nearly $6 billion in poultry meat and related products (excluding eggs) to over 130 countries. China has emerged as the second largest destination for U.S. poultry exports, increasing from $10 million in 2019 to a record $1.1 billion in 2022, according to Southern Ag Today.
Chicken paws, for instance, are eaten in many Asian countries, including the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and Korea.They can also be found on Chinese dim sum menus throughout the U.S. and are also popular in Jamaica, Trinidad, Russia and Ukraine in everything from soups and curries to fried snacks.
Three Georgia counties have reported H5N1 outbreaks since 2022. The most recent case was late last year. Henry, Sumter and Toombs counties each reported one case of H5N1 bird flu. Those outbreaks are resolved, poultry and state agriculture officials say.
“When HPAI cases are found in any state, that state is given a designation that could lead to foreign countries halting trade on poultry products from that state,” Georgia Department of Agriculture spokesman Matthew Agvent told State Affairs.
Not since 2016 has the United States experienced such a fast-moving case of the H5N1 avian influenza. In the last two months, the virus has spread in parts of the United States from birds to dairy cows, some milk supplies and humans. Two people — a Texas dairy worker and a prison inmate in Colorado who was killing infected birds at a poultry farm — are reported to have caught the virus, according to news reports. The outbreak is the largest in recent history, impacting both domestic poultry and livestock as well as wild birds and some mammal species.
State officials are continuing to monitor the national outbreak and its impact on Georgia.
Georgia’s poultry & egg industry: At A Glance
Annual economic impact: $30.2 billion
Percentage of the Agriculture industry: 58% *
Jobs: 87,900
Counties involved in poultry & egg production: 3 out of 4
National ranking in chicken broiler production: No. 1
Daily production of table eggs: 7.8 million
Daily production of hatching eggs: 6.5 million
Pounds of chicken produced daily: 30.2 million
Pounds of chicken produced annually: 8 billion
Number of chicken broilers processed each day: 5 million
Counties involved in poultry & egg production: 3 out of 4
Source: Georgia Poultry Federation; The Center for Agribusiness & Economic Development, University of Georgia, Ag Snapshots 2024; Georgia Poultry Federation.
Have questions? Contact Tammy Joyner on X @lvjoyner or at [email protected].