As the pandemic crisis passes, the new orders of life provide opportunities to improve conditions in terms of sustainability, racial equity in placemaking, and more just development practices. These are among the views expressed by the head of the U.N., a national author who examines Atlanta in an upcoming book, and a longtime urban planner now teaching at Georgia Tech.
Tag: politics
Posted inLatest News
Mayor Bottoms cites no intent to enforce social distancing, under query from Councilmember Bond
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has no immediate intent to penalize individuals who break the social distancing laws, she said Thursday in response to a question by Atlanta City Councilmember Michael Julian Bond.
Posted inLatest News
Governor, lawmakers request 14% state budget cuts
Schools won’t be spared the pain.
Posted inColumns
Mail-in voting combines with Postal Service woes to form a new political divide
In the past, both parties have accused the other of rigging elections, sometimes with good reason. What’s new is the rapid increase in mail-in, absentee and early voting, and the rising Republican mistrust of all of these.
Posted inColumns
From the chaos of pandemic policy, regional alliances emerge
Last week marked the first, still sketchy, indications that the COVID-19 pandemic may have begun to recede in the United States. We may also one day look back on last week as a fateful pivot in the way the states of our United States relate to each other.
Posted inLatest News
Virtual Talk: Congress’ new female caucus, as 40 female Democrats seek office in Georgia
The Georgia women campaigning for the state House and Senate represent the type of political dynamic to be discussed Wednesday evening in a virtual talk with the author of ‘The Firsts: The Inside Story of Women Reshaping Congress.’
Posted inColumns
2020 Census lurches forward under the cloud of the pandemic
*expand featured image to view full graphic By Tom Baxter Americans had already grown wearily accustomed to the rituals of counting by the time April 1 — Census Day — rolled around last week. Every day since Leap Day, when the first U.S. coronavirus death was announced, has been filled with tallies of deaths, infections […]
Posted inColumns
As virus advances, the vestiges of Hill-Burton form a tattered line of defense
Lister Hill was an Alabama Democrat, the son of the first American physician to suture a human heart. Harold Burton, an Ohio Republican, was a former Cleveland mayor who was already serving on the U.S. Supreme Court when the legislation he’d co-sponsored with Hill was signed in 1946. The health care system which today faces its greatest crisis is in large part the creature of the law which bears these senator’s names, the Hill-Burton Act.
Posted inColumns
Citizens’ letters question Atlanta’s proposed tree protection ordinance
Frustration among Atlanta tree advocates over the two-year process of writing even the draft version of a tree protection ordinance is bubbling up amid the coronavirus-related shutdown of public conversation – and the clock is ticking toward a final vote on a new city code.
Posted inColumns
Political calendar coinciding with pandemic’s grim timeline
In hindsight, knowing just what we knew then, we could have predicted by the end of January that the COVID-19 epidemic was going to plow into this election year like a drunk driving a truck into a storefront.
Posted inColumns
Modular construction could provide affordable housing, lower costs across the board
I begin with the belief that if the market could build affordable housing, it would. However, the market is obviously not building affordable housing. Why not? The answer is: construction costs (principally labor costs) are just too high for affordable housing to be built – at least built conventionally.
Posted inColumns
FDA letter to Kemp a preview of the hard choices that will come with the pandemic
Last Wednesday, Cobb County Manager Rob Hosack met with representatives of the Federal Drug Administration, and the following day FDA Commissioner Stephen M. Hahn sent a letter to Gov. Brian Kemp. That letter is a good example of the hard choices that await the country in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Posted inColumns
Democracy, interrupted: Election delay complicates local ballot questions
Moving the date of the Georgia Democratic Presidential Primary from March 24 to May 19 may prolong the endgame battle between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, but it isn’t likely to change the final result. That may not be the case with a couple of Metro Atlanta elections which were also scheduled for next week.
Posted inColumns
Coronavirus pauses Ga. Legislature, debate on taxes, criminal justice and the environment
Coronavirus emptied the Georgia Legislature — but not before lawmakers shoved just about 100 bills through a bottleneck Thursday.
Posted inColumns
In the span of a weekend, Georgia feels the impact of the coronavirus
There may be no better example of the dizzying speed with which the coronavirus epidemic is affecting politics than this. On Friday, U.S. Rep. Doug Collins went to a good deal of trouble to make it into the entourage accompanying President Trump on his visit to the CDC Friday afternoon. On Monday afternoon, Collins announced he, like U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and U.S. Rep Paul Gosar, was self-quarantining after coming in contact with someone at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference who later came down with the virus.
Posted inDavid Pendered
Coal ash settlement in N.C. a guideline for Georgia – bury in lined basin or recycle
A legal settlement over coal ash in North Carolina has resulted in the type of outcome Georgia environmentalists would like to reach here – excavation of coal ash from all of a power company’s unlined basins, and placement in an onsite lined landfill or recycled for industrial use.
Posted inMaggie Lee
Georgia House panel moves for more audits on film tax credit, expansion to film music
Georgia will forego something like $1 billion this year in the form of tax credits to TV and movie-makers.
Posted inLatest News
Atlanta-backed plan to waive impact fees on affordable housing advances in Legislature
Impact fees on affordable housing could be waived under a statewide bill that’s endorsed by Atlanta and has been passed by the state Senate. Meantime, the potential state takeover of Atlanta’s airport is in a holding pattern, according to a presentation Wednesday by the city’s chief lobbyist.
Posted inColumns
Collins loses no time rejecting Trump’s overture to be national intelligence director
In the end it was just a reality show too far, the idea that U.S. Rep. Doug Collins could be lured away from a confrontation with U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler with the sourest plum in Washington, the job of national intelligence director.
Posted inColumns
‘Because housing is built with ballots:’ Affordable housing in 2020 elections
By Guest Columnist BAMBIE HAYES-BROWN, president and CEO of Georgia Advancing Communities Together, Inc.
The affordable housing crisis is a choice. We have the resources to solve it. Elected officials must garner the political will and work to end this crisis. The 2020 elections are the focus of a national effort by housing advocates with the motto – “Because housing is built with ballots.”
