Georgia

Hello, my name is John, but you can call me Trip. A lobbyist’s name or nickname is the most prominent piece of information on each Georgia lobbyist’s disclosure page, enabling site users to know, for example, that lobbyist John Martin is called “Trip,” even if they can’t know how much he was paid by his clients or the bills on which he lobbied.

Martin lobbies on behalf of the Georgia Hospital Association and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Martin also lobbies on behalf of the Georgia Power Company, whose Bowen coal plant was rated the second-deadliest in the U.S. in a recent multi-university study that attributed 7,500 deaths to pollution from Bowen. GPC’s other coal plant, Scherer, has also been rated one of the dirtiest in the country. GPC also operates seven gas plants. Exposure to chemicals released during gas extraction and gas transmission have been increasingly linked to cancer.

In 2023, GPC argued as part of its updated Integrated Resource Plan that the retirement of two units at Bowen should be delayed from 2028 to 2035 because of an expected increase in electricity demand. Prolonging the life of this second-deadliest-in-the-country coal plant would prolong its harm to human health.

To what extent has Martin been lobbying for hospitals and health care while lobbying to extend the life of this coal plant? Georgia makes it hard to know. State lobbyists must file activity reports every month, but the information they actually disclose is minimal and fails to capture the roughly 90% of all lobbying expenditures that are made in the form of lobbyist salaries.

Best feature: expenditures on meals, lodging, and gifts are searchable by client making the expenditures.

Worst feature: lack of current information. During research for this report card, from April-May 2024, Georgia’s lobbyist disclosure site would not return any reports for 2024, only for 2023 and earlier. As of August 2024, a complete lobbyist-client list for 2023 was still not available.

Additional Findings

Finding the lobbyist search page is difficult through Google, but slightly easier through the State Ethics Commission site. The first result on Google when searching for “Georgia lobbyist search” is an old version of the site that only includes 2005 and 2006 results. It appears that the most current lobbyist search function still exists on the older version of the site and not the most updated version that appears to be the current SEC hub.

It’s possible to search by year, name, city, and filer ID. Individual results returned include lobbyist address, reports, years active, and lobbying firm. The download itself can be done in either Excel or PDF format, and includes a decent amount of information – though is missing lobbying firm information. There’s also no way to sort out terminated lobbyists beforehand, and that information can only be accessed in columns R and S. The lobbying level information can also be confusing with abbreviations used for certain levels that aren’t spelled out or explained anywhere. Overall, the site itself is outdated and confusing, listing years to search before data is uploaded.