Georgia Power’s requested rate increase would add $16.29 — about $200 annually — to the average residential customer’s bill over the next three years, starting in 2023 with a $14.32 hike. (John McCosh / Georgia Recorder)

Georgians will be able to voice their concerns about Georgia Power’s plans to raise electricity rates by 12% during a series of hearings beginning later this month before a final vote in December.

The Georgia Public Service Commission has adopted new procedures that allow each person to speak for up to three minutes during the first hour of each hearing day, but after the time runs out, people who wish to speak must return another day and anyone not directly involved in the case will be asked to leave the meeting room.

There will likely be at least seven hearing days throughout the rate case for people who want to speak their mind and commission meetings are also streamed online, PSC Chairwoman Tricia Pridemore said.

• “We’re limited in space; it’s first come first serve,” she said. “We have a signup sheet for public witnesses so we do it in order of who gets here first and we’ve got an open facility for them."

Pregnant Georgians can now claim their future children as dependents when filling out their tax forms, but what that will mean for their pocketbooks and for the state coffers remains unclear. (Pixabay)

Even with a wave of new state-level abortion restrictions passing or taking effect this summer, Georgia’s law stood out because of its so-called personhood provisions that accompanied the better known six-week ban on the procedure — especially a new tax break for expecting parents.

• “In the state of Georgia, House Bill 481 recognizes the fundamental truth, life begins at conception,” said Cole Muzio, president of the conservative Christian lobbying organization Frontline Policy Action and a backer of the new law. “And so we recognize that throughout our code. That means that a woman, as soon as she’s pregnant, can begin claiming that child on her taxes as a dependent.”

But others say the sweeping changes could have unforeseen consequences.

• “When you are going to start to equate a fetus with a person that is born in the personhood clause, as exemplified by this claiming of a fetus on tax returns, it just opens up a huge host of very thorny questions, constitutional questions, freedom of movement questions that we just haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of, much less answer,” said Atlanta Democratic state Sen. Elena Parent.
   

Georgia was flagged among 32 states that banned a total of 1,600 books from school libraries during the 2021-2022 school year. (File)

More than 1,600 book titles across 32 states were banned from public schools during the 2021-2022 school year, with the bulk of the ban requests coming from a handful of right-wing groups pushing for censorship of books that feature LGBTQ+ characters and characters of color, a new report issued Monday said.

• “What I want to be really clear about is the books are a pretext,” Ashley Hope Pérez, an author of a banned book, said. “(Book banning) is a proxy war on students who share the marginalized identities of the authors and characters in the books under attack.”

In 2015, Pérez wrote Out of Darkness, a young adult romance about a Mexican American girl and an African American boy set in the 1930s, but the book was banned from school districts last year.

Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams greets a supporter May 24, 2022, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File)

Stacey Abrams, Georgia Democrats' nominee for governor, is launching an intensive effort to get out the vote by urging potential supporters to cast in-person ballots the first week of early voting as she tries to navigate the state's new election laws.

The strategy, outlined to The Associated Press by Abrams' top aides, is a shift from 2018, when she spent generously in her first gubernatorial bid to encourage voters to use mail ballots.

It also moves away from Democrats' pandemic-era emphasis on mail voting, a push that delivered Georgia's electoral votes to President Joe Biden and helped Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff win concurrent U.S. Senate runoffs to give Democrats control of Capitol Hill.

The Stone Mountain Memorial Association rededicated the Washington W. King/College Avenue Bridge on the back side of the 3,400-acre park. (Dave Williams / Capitol Beat)

Stone Mountain Park, originally created as a Confederate memorial, now features a historic covered bridge named in honor of the 19th century African American who built it.

The Stone Mountain Memorial Association rededicated the Washington W. King/College Avenue Bridge during a ceremony late last week at the site of the bridge on the back side of the 3,400-acre park.

King, the son of a freed slave, engineered, designed and built the bridge in 1891 to cross the Oconee River in Athens, connecting College Avenue and the University of Georgia with the more rural regions of eastern Clarke County.

Floods damaged the wooden bridge on its moorings in 1910 and again in 1961. The bridge was then replaced with a concrete and steel crossing, and the old bridge was set aside on the banks of the Oconee.