Speakers told those gathered last week at the Human Trafficking Awareness Forum sponsored by the North Oconee Rotary Club that they have the power to combat the dual problems of labor trafficking and sex trafficking.
Deborah Richardson, executive director of the International Human Trafficking Institute of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, presented the group with a list of indicators so they can identify victims of sex trafficking.
Gov. Brian Kemp has set a Feb. 20 deadline–a week from today–for applications for the position of district attorney for the Western Judicial Circuit consisting of Clarke and Oconee counties.
Brian Patterson, currently chief assistant district attorney, has said he will apply for the appointment.
Deborah Gonzalez, former House District 117 representative, has said she will not submit her application.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told Oconee County Republicans last month that he wants the experience of voting with the newly rolled-out equipment at the presidential primary on March 24 to be equivalent to a positive experience at a fast food restaurant.
“We want it to be a great experience, just like when you go to Chick-fil-A,” Raffensperger said. “Who’s ever had a bad experience there? It’s like one in a billion. That’s the kind of experience we want voters in Georgia to have.”
District Attorney Ken Mauldin’s announcement last week that he would resign on Feb. 29 rather than retire at the end of his current term in December has scrambled plans for the election of a successor and given Gov. Brian Kemp control over the outcome.
Before that announcement, Deborah Gonzalez and Brian Patterson were contending for the Democratic nomination for district attorney in the May 19 Democratic primary. No one has declared for the Republican Party nomination.
Oconee County’s expenditures and revenue for the first half of the 2020 Fiscal Year were on target with one exception, county Finance Director Wes Geddings said Tuesday in making his quarterly financial report to the Board of Commissioners.
The exception is sales tax collections, which were lower in November and December of 2019 than they were a year earlier, Geddings said.
Oconee County has abandoned plans to build a roundabout at the parent entrance to Malcom Bridge Middle School, cutting in half the number of planned or constructed roundabouts on Malcom Bridge Road between Mars Hill Road and Lenru Road.
Construction of the roundabout at the bus and staff entrance to Malcom Bridge Middle School and Malcom Bridge Elementary School will begin in spring and be completed before school starts in August, according to Oconee County Board of Commissioners Chair John Daniell.
Deborah Gonzalez and Andrew Ferguson used the opportunity of the meeting of the Oconee County Democratic Party last month to introduce themselves to those in attendance.
For Gonzalez, it was a matter of a re-introduction, and she said she was going to respond to the “first question most people ask me.”
