Georgia Tipsheet

Attorney General Sam Olens says his advice to state education officials to limit political activity on a contentious charter school referendum had not established new legal precedent but is instead “pretty common sense.”

Olens, on a Thursday afternoon conference call with reporters, said that his recent guidance to school Superintendent John Barge and local system chiefs to not expend state resources “did not break new legal ground.”

After a prominent education reform advocate accused Barge last month of using taxpayer dollars to agitate against a November charter school referendum, the attorney general’s office warned the superintendent in a letter this week to cool his coordination of local school boards in a campaign against the measure.

The letter, Olens said, “simply restated what the Georgia Supreme Court made very clear more than 30 years ago: local governments cannot expend taxpayer resources to tell taxpayers how to vote.”

The result of his advice was a thrush of public interest and questions. Rather than settling the dispute, the letter actually inflamed the debate, with supporters and opponents interpreting it in wildly different ways.

Opponents of charter amendment said Olens was marginalizing their right of expression, but Olens said nothing in his letter represented a new reading of the law.

“This rule applies equally to supporters and opponents of the amendment,” he said. “And this rule also applies only to the expenditure of public resources — government officials and employees have full First Amendment rights to express their personal opinions. They simply don’t have a right, under the First Amendment or any other legal provision, to expend public resources in communicating their personal opinion.”

Olens’ letter is below.

- James Richardson

The state lawmaker who chairs the MARTA oversight committee has asked Attorney General Sam Olens to investigate the transit authority’s search for a new general manager.

Atlanta Republican Rep. Mike Jacobs alleges in a new complaint that the veiled process through which MARTA board members evaluated possible candidates violated the state’s open meetings law, holding what amounted to secret votes.

Jacobs cited an email in which Barbara Babbit Kaufman, the board member steering the selection committee, asked fellow MARTA bigs for their “vote” on which of the two finalists they supported for the top job.

“It is my understanding that a further inquiry into these emails would reveal a split of opinion among members of the MARTA Board as to their individual votes between the two remaining candidates for the CEO position,” Jacobs says in the letter. “Notwithstanding this split of opinion, it is my further understanding that the MARTA Board intends to cast a final unanimous public vote — its only vote in the public eye — at a meeting that has been called for this Thursday, October 4, 2012.”

In the September 13th email, which Jacobs said he received through a whistleblower, Kaufman asks board members who among the four–the final two were only announced late last month–has earned their “vote.”

“On Monday we decided by that close of business today we would have decided on our successor,” Kaufman wrote. “I plan to call each of you soon. It would make my life easier if you send me an email with your vote or the best phone number and time to reach you.”

The attorney general’s office confirmed to Tipsheet it had received the complaint and “opened a file.”

- James Richardson

The state’s top law enforcement agency has formally launched a criminal probe into the alleged ethical transgressions of a top Georgia Republican lawmaker.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigations confirmed Tuesday it had opened an investigation into Senate Rules Committee chief Don Balfour for false travel vouchers.

The first criminal probe of a state senator in seven years, the investigation came only after Georgia’s top lawman Sam Olens, also a GOPer, requested the action.

- James Richardson

Even as Republican elders spent the weekend defending a yet unapproved party platform with an uncompromising posture social issues, one Georgia drafter said the document was almost uniformly informed by the poor state of the U.S. economy.

“Items such as requesting an audit of the [Federal Reserve] were certainly not issues that would have been talked about four years ago,” Attorney General Sam Olens said, a reference to the rally cry of perennial libertarian presidential hopeful Ron Paul, “but everyone knows they are very much needed now.”

“There is significant discussion about reforming government,” he said of the shift from contentious issues of reproductive health and marriage equality. “Everyone understands there’s total dissatisfaction with the governmental process.”

- James Richardosn

Republican convention organizers announced Wednesday that Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens would deliver a primetime address to delegates the night Paul Ryan formally accepts his party’s vice presidential nomination.

Olens will share the stage with another southern attorney general, Pam Bondi, who was likewise an early supporter of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign and factored prominently in the legal challenge to the nation’s recent health care reforms.

The pair will succeed Sen. John McCain on the dais.

- James Richardson

Republican elders huddled this week in Tampa, Florida, a week before the masses descend on the Sunshine State, to cement their party’s positions on the most contentious issues in the public square.

Among the roster of those entrusted with hashing out the GOP platform is Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens, who was offered a coveted speaking role at the nominating convention next week.

Issues of Constitutional weight–gay marriage, abortion and health care reform, the subcommittee for which Olens co-chairs–dominated Tuesday’s agenda for platform writers.

But contemporary platforms, like national nominating conventions themselves, are shadows of their former selves, once able to fracture a party with errant language. (South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond bolted the Democratic Party in 1948 when its platform committee adopted a civil rights resolution.)

They can still cause heartburn, though, as it did today for Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown. The pro-choice Bay Stater objected to a strict anti-abortion plank approved today by Olens’ compatriots.

- James Richardson

A federal appeals court on Monday authorized Georgia law enforcement to begin enforcing a controversial element of the state’s recent immigration law that provided for immigration status verification of criminal suspects.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta overturned a preliminary injunction by a lower court stalling the legislation’s implementation, though the exact timing when the hold would be lifted was not immediately apparent.

Despite lifting one legal challenge to the tightened immigration reforms, the court left in tact another injunction blocking a separate provision in the 2011 bill that provided for harsher punishments for those persons who knowingly transport or harbor illegal immigrations during the commission of another crime.

Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens commended the court’s ruling, though he said his office was evaluating the appropriateness of further appeals to the hold that was left in place.

“I am pleased that the 11th Circuit has reversed the lower court’s injunction and allowed Section 8 of HB 87 to stand,” Olens, the state’s top lawman, said in a brief statement Monday afternoon. “While I disagree with the Court’s decision on Section 7, after over a year of litigation, only one of 23 sections of HB 87 has been invalidated.

“We are currently reviewing the 11th Circuit’s ruling to determine whether further appeals would be appraise at this stage of the case.”

- James Richardson

The campaign of Republican Lee Anderson unveiled on Thursday a spate of prominent endorsements, including nods from a former rival and the state’s popular attorney general, in the GOP contest to challenge incumbent Democratic Rep. John Barrow.

Anderson, whose vote plurality in the four-way July primary was insufficient to forgo a runoff, rolled out in rapid succession the endorsements of ex-opponent Wright McLeod, Attorney General Sam Olens and Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens.

In a midday email to supporters, McLeod confirmed rumors he would endorse Anderson over Rick Allen, with whom he repeatedly tangled on the question of campaign finances, in the August 21 primary.

The former candidate, himself narrowly excluded from the runoff, said he supported Anderson because the two men subscribed to principle of “service over self.”

“My campaign was a natural expression of my life-long dedication to Service over Self,” McLeod wrote. “Lee subscribes to this same principle… He has never run for elected office to enrich himself, and he understands that votes are won by trust, hard work and principled leadership.”

With McLeod’s endorsement, Anderson has locked up the support of both GOP contenders felled by the runoff. Maria Sheffield, who came in fourth with fifteen percent, endorsed the Augusta-area state lawmaker last week.

But the campaign had also been working pols with a heavier statewide footprint.

Olens, the state’s top lawman, described Anderson as a “common sense conservative” capable of defeating Barrow.

“Lee Anderson is a strong, common sense conservative who has fought for our shared values in the General Assembly,” he said in a statement provided to Tipsheet by Anderson campaign aides. ”I endorse Lee Anderson and I look forward to working with him further as he represents Georgia’s 12th Congressional District in Washington, where he will fight to repeal Obama Care and institute a balanced budget.  I hope you will join me in supporting Lee as he takes on John Barrow, Barack Obama, and the do nothing Washington elite.”

It was the most recent political move by a man whose star has rocketed into the national stratosphere in the last year, his prominent role in the legal challenge to President Barack Obama’s health care reforms landing him a coveted speaking role at the Republican nominating convention later this month.

No statement by Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens was immediately available, though Sheffield was promoting the news on Facebook. (“Join me and Georgia Commissioner of Insurance Ralph Hudgens in endorsing and supporting Lee Anderson for Congress,” she wrote.)

Amid the parade of endorsements, Anderson emailed campaign supporters Thursday morning a quote from Republican Gov. Nathan Deal promoting the pair’s legislative cooperation on tax reform.

“Lee Anderson strongly supported my conservative tax reform agenda, which cut taxes on Georgia families and businesses,” Deal said. “With Lee’s help, I was able to enact one of the most pro-jobs laws in our state’s history.”

The affectionate quote was even accompanied by a picture of the two men glad-handing, though the governor’s aides later confirmed that while the quote was accurate it did not amount to an endorsement.

- James Richardson

Georgia’s top lawman has been offered a coveted speaking role at his party’s nominating convention later this month.

Republican National Convention aides confirmed on Wednesday that Sam Olens, who endorsed presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney last year, would address delegates to the vaulted Florida confab.

He was one of two state attorney generals, both of whom played prominent roles in the recent Supreme Court legal challenge to President Barack Obama’s health care reforms, to earn the exclusive rite.

Olens’ name was floated among a who’s who of the conservative constellation, including Ted Cruz of Texas, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Luis Fortuno of Peurto Rico and Pam Bondi, his lateral in Florida.

It was the second occasion convention organizers had released the names of headliners, though in neither billing was one-time Peach State pol and White House hopeful Newt Gingrich included.

- James Richardson

A pair of Georgia Republican pols had historic, if depressing, vantages of today’s Supreme Court decision in which key elements of President Barack Obama’s signature health care reform were upheld, planted in the two epicenters–the courtroom where the ruling was delivered, and the hotel room of Republicans’ choice for the White House–of the affair.

Roswell Congressman Tom Price was posted inside the high court by Speaker John Boehner, while Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens was reportedly in the Washington hotel suite of GOP’er Mitt Romney as the much-anticipated opinion was released.

A Romney aide confirmed to Tipsheet Olens was in the company of Romney, but as much was clear when the attorney general retweeted a message by an editor at the Boston Globe.

RT @mviser: Romney watched Supreme Court decision from his Washington Hilton hotel room with staff and Georgia AG Sam Olens, aide says.

— Glen Johnson (@globeglen) June 28, 2012

In spite of their red-letter postings, both were deeply frustrated with the court’s decision to leave the legislation largely intact.

“I call on Congress to act swiftly, repeal the law and replace it with real reform that respects the Constitution as written,” Olens, who was among 26 state chief law enforcement officers who challenged the legislation, said in a joint press release Thursday with Governor Nathan Deal.

Price, himself an orthopedic surgeon, said today’s ruling established a “dangerous precedent” that threatens personal freedom. “We have no choice but to exercise every possible legislation option to repeal this disastrous law,” he said, “and the American people should know that House Republicans will continue to advocate on their behalf to restore personal control over health care decisions.”

- James Richardson

Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens said Wednesday he may soon be in court defending a legal challenge to the state’s looming transportation tax referendum.

While no details of the case were provided, Atlanta’s WSB Radio reports opponents of the measure are upset over a provision–attached to the legislation that first provided for the ballot initiative–that bars the appropriation of newly-raised funds for existing MARTA maintenance projects.

- James Richardson