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Request a DemoBills to expand hospitals, protect renters, honor former slaves move in Legislature
Georgia lawmakers passed bills this week to expedite hospital construction, create a private school voucher program, monitor undocumented immigrants and reignite gender-based culture wars.
As often happens on the homestretch of the legislative session, which ends March 28, legislators used sleight of hand maneuvers to advance some bills.
Among the ‘Frankenstein bills’ containing parts of bills that were otherwise dead — because they didn’t make the Crossover Day deadline on Feb. 29, mashed together with bills that did make the deadline, was House Bill 1170. Originally aimed to provide drug overdose reversal kits in schools and public buildings, it was hijacked by a Senate committee to include provisions to ban puberty-blocking medications for transgender minors.
The Senate passed House Bill 301, which began as a bill to increase penalties for illegally passing school buses and was later loaded with language to penalize local governments for acting as ‘sanctuary cities’ for illegal immigrants. The bill would impose financial punishments on law enforcement agencies and local governments the state considers to have policies or practices that violate state and federal immigration law. It also gives any state resident the right to sue local governments for not enforcing such laws.
House Bill 1104, providing mental health resources and counseling to high school athletes, was turned by a Senate committee into a bill banning transgender youth from participating in girls’ sports and from accessing school bathrooms, and requiring schools to tell parents what books their children check out from school libraries. The Senate is expected to vote on it next week.
The Senate Finance Committee made changes to House Bill 170, authored by Rep. Kasey Carpenter, R-Dalton. The bill was originally a tax sales and tax use exemption for specified digital works items but was gutted by Sen. Jason Anavitarte, R-Powder Springs, and it now includes parts of Senate Bill 344, adding a sales tax holiday for hunters and exempting sales of firearms, ammunition, gun safes, trigger locks, and related accessories during five days in October each year.
Lawmakers still have three working days left before Sine Die, the final day of the 2024 session, next Thursday.
Here are some highlights from this week under the Gold Dome:
In the House
- The House voted 96-78 along party lines to approve Senate Bill 362, which would deny state tax credits to companies that voluntarily recognize unions through a check of signed union cards rather than through a secret ballot election. Companies would also be punished for sharing their workers’ contact information with unions. Democrats decried both provisions as being in conflict with what federal law requires and said it would invite litigation. It now goes to the governor for consideration.
- After vigorous debate, the House passed Senate Bill 420, which bans foreign adversaries from buying farmland or land near military bases in Georgia. Opponents called the bill, which passed 97-67, xenophobic and said it would invite lawsuits and federal fair housing challenges. It now goes to the governor.
- The House passed Senate Bill 426, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones’ tort reform priority legislation. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, limits the ability of plaintiffs to sue motor carriers and their insurers simultaneously, commonly known as “direct action.”
- The House passed SB 480 which provides student loan repayments for mental health and substance abuse professionals who work with underserved youth or who work in certain areas of the state in great need of behavioral health professionals. In presenting the bill, Rep. Sharon Cooper, R-Marietta said, “We just flat out don’t have enough people to take care of” Georgians with mental health issues. Rep. Ruwa Romman, D-Duluth, said fentanyl- and opioid-related deaths and overdoses “have skyrocketed” and “bills like this give us an important tool to address these crises” by helping to recruit and retain addiction specialists and other mental health professionals who have high student loan debt but receive low pay in Georgia. The bill passed 167-2 and now goes to the governor for consideration.
- Senate Bill 456 is meant to give peace of mind to people who hire home health aides to care for their disabled family members. The bill would add persons with physical or mental disabilities to the purview of the Central Caregiver Registry, which presently partners with the FBI to do background checks on those who care for the elderly in residences. It passed the House 168-0 and now goes to the governor.
- The House and Senate passed House Bill 1425, landmark legislation intended to preserve the legacy of the Weeping Heritage Corridor where 429 enslaved people were sold in Savannah on March 2-3, 1859. The bill, which creates the Weeping Time Cultural Heritage Corridor Authority, was introduced by Rep. Carl Gilliard, chairman of the Georgia Black Legislative Caucus. It now goes to the governor for his consideration.
In the Senate
Each of the following bills are on the way to the governor’s desk for his consideration.
- The Senate and House gave final passage Thursday to House Bill 1339, legislation that updates Georgia’s outdated Certificate of Need laws. The bill, which now heads to Gov. Brian Kemp, allows Morehouse School of Medicine to open a hospital in a badly-needed area of Atlanta that saw the closure of Atlanta Medical Center. The bill also enables a hospital to open without a permit in any rural county where a hospital has been closed for more than a year. Before the passage of the bill, however, Democrats rallied for one last-ditch effort to expand Medicaid. A Senate committee heard testimony about a proposed bill that would have created a Medicaid-style program called PeachCare Plus. It was narrowly defeated, essentially ending any hope of seeing Medicaid expansion this legislative session.
- As expected, the Senate passed its long-sought private school voucher bill, which would provide some Georgia families with children with $6,500 per student per year for private school tuition or homeschooling expenses. The children must attend public schools in the bottom 25% of lowest-performing districts in the state for at least one year, or be rising kindergarteners in those districts.
- House Bill 663, the No Patient Left Alone Act, which mandates that parents can visit a hospitalized child, or at least one designated person can visit a hospitalized adult, passed the Senate by a vote of 49-0. It was created in response to rules at many hospitals that prevented relatives from visiting people who were sick and dying from COVID-19 at the height of the pandemic.
- The Senate passed House Bill 1410, which would create a stable housing accountability program to provide voluntary and immediate housing to homeless persons for up to 18 months while helping them secure permanent housing. It also amends who appoints members to the State Trust Fund for the Homeless Commission. The bill will allow the trust fund to receive state, federal and private funds to provide housing and services to the homeless, which is expected to considerably grow available funds. The bill passed 45-1.
- House Bill 51 would allow local school districts to transport students to and from school and school-related activities in school-owned vehicles with a capacity of five to eight persons, instead of in school buses. It’s aimed in part to help districts where bus drivers who hold commercial driver’s licenses are in short supply. The bill passed in the House last year and was tabled by the Senate, which took it up this week and passed it 50-1.
- A newly divorced woman who wants to use her maiden name will now be able to do that without problem. The Senate passed House Bill 896 which provides additional means for changing a person’s married surname to their previous surname after receiving a divorce decree.
- The Senate passed House Bill 1105, the Georgia Criminal Alien Track and Report Act, requiring law enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws. The vote passed along party lines, 34-19. This bill gained momentum after an Augusta University nursing student was killed in Athens last month.
- The Senate passed Senate Bill 465 — Austin’s Law —which goes after those who make or sell fentanyl and charges them with a felony offense of aggravated involuntary manslaughter if their distribution results in someone’s death. In 2022, nearly 2,000 Georgians died from overdosing on fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine.
- A new Juvenile Treatment Court Division will be established through House Bill 873, which will provide “alternative adjudication” to youth charged with delinquency or offenses or who need services due to addiction, truancy or running away from home. It will be managed by the Council of Accountability Court Judges, which oversees adult accountability courts. Like those for adults, the juvenile treatment courts would provide addiction and mental health treatment, with a goal of keeping kids in school and connected to their families instead of detention or incarceration. The program also aims to prevent and reduce gang involvement. The bill passed 52-0.
- House Bill 827 makes entering into the cage or enclosure of a wild animal at a zoo or other venue where land or sea animals are kept for public visitation an act of criminal trespass. If the animal is injured or killed, sentences range from one to 10 years. The bill also increases fines for stealing livestock to $10,000 from $1,000, and ups the maximum sentence to 15 years from 10 years. It passed in the Senate 52-0.
And this bill made major progress:
House Bill 404, known as the Safe at Home Act, passed in the Senate 44-2. It requires rental property be “fit for human habitation” and for landlords to give tenants who are behind on rent, utilities or other fees three days’ written notice before filing an eviction action. It also forbids landlords from shutting off cooling and other utilities to force a renter out, and caps security deposits at two months’ rent. The Senate updated its effective date to July 1, 2024, so the amended bill will return to the House for another vote, where it is expected to pass.
In other news
Read these related stories:
Correction: This story has been updated to correct the status of House Bill 404. Because the Senate amended its effective date, the amended bill is expected to be voted on in the House next week, and not sent directly to the governor.
Have questions or comments? Contact Jill Jordan Sieder on X @journalistajill or at [email protected] and Tammy Joyner on X @lvjoyner or at [email protected].
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Rural communities hopeful Kemp change to state soil amendment law will curb stink
After seven years and millions of dollars in restoration, Heritage GA opened its door last month to those seeking solitude and a chance to commune with nature. But the constant presence of trucks hauling a noxious concoction of waste byproducts from poultry processing plants threatens to ruin those plans.
The historic Catholic retreat sitting on 200 acres near Sharon is meant to be an economic boon and tourist attraction for Taliaferro (pronounced “Tolliver”) County, a poor, mostly Black county of 1,600, situated 90 miles east of Atlanta.
“It’s a very historic, sacred site. Our business is being threatened by this soil amendment. It’s [the retreat] been a major financial investment in the county and in the state and it’s really helping,” Betsy Orr, chief executive officer of Purification Properties LLC, which restored the retreat — a tribute to the first Catholic settlers who arrived in Georgia in 1790.
The sludge, known as soil amendment, is being transported to a hog farm about 1.5 miles from Heritage. The former hog farm was cited by the state Environmental Protection Division after residents complained that the waste being spread on the farm had polluted a nearby creek. The property owner resolved the consent order requiring him to pay $5,000, mark the buffer area on the farm and ensure no soil amendment is applied to that area, according to EPD spokesperson Sara Lips.
The Heritage property includes a commercial building, barn, cottages, prayer spaces, walking trails and the oldest Catholic Cemetery in Georgia. Orr predicts that if the smell from the former hog farm reaches Heritage, “it’s going to wreck our business.”
On Monday, Orr breathed an inward sigh of relief when she learned that Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill into law that could prove fortuitous for landowners and other businesses battling problems created by soil amendment.
The new law adds a provision to the state Soil Amendment Act of 1976 that stops companies from hauling or receiving soil amendment if they’ve been notified by EPD to resolve an outstanding dispute or complaint. The notification is known as a consent order. The new law is effective July 1.
“It’s good because the state and the Agriculture Department have really prevented that kind of bill from being enacted because they say that it’s to the farmer’s benefit to be able to use the soil amendments,” Orr said.
Orr’s comments are a common refrain from business owners and families with properties in rural Georgia who sit near soil amendment sites and who complain of vultures, hordes of flies and unbearable smells floating across their properties.
“The problem is a lot of the soil amendments are causing pollution. They are stinky, nasty wastewater and other products,” Orr said. “Sometimes it is not even what they are allowed to dump. Finally, they have passed this amendment, and I hope they enforce it. Some of the things that these people are dumping are … ruining the landowners around them and the state has got to start caring about that.”
Doug Abramson, a retired corporate lawyer who lives in Wilkes County where a soil amendment runoff killed 1,700 fish in the Little River July 2022, called the new law “a step in the right direction.”
“Many counties throughout the state are encountering problems with sludge, improper dumping, and [other] soil amendment issues,” said Abramson, who along with his wife Susan have been working to address the problem for about a decade. “This [new law] is at least a recognition that there are problems out there. I do think the state could do better. The Department of Agriculture could do better but it is a step in the right direction.”
Have questions? Contact Tammy Joyner on X @lvjoyner or at [email protected].
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].