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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTwo economic recruits abandon Georgia over ‘religious liberty’ bill
An expanding list of corporate chieftains and Hollywood heavyweights have urged Gov. Nathan Deal to veto the controversialreligious liberty legislation and threatened to pull investments from Georgia if he doesnt. Now, though, we have evidence that the debate may have cost the state regardless of whether he signs the legislation.
An email exchange between the top aides to Deal and House Speaker David Ralston, a supporter of the measure, offered a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes fallout from the legislation since it passed more than a week ago.
In the March 19 email, obtained through an open records request, Ralston chief-of-staff Spiro Amburn forwarded a dispatch to Chris Riley, his counterpart in Deals office, that included a copy of talking points about House Bill 757 describing criticism of the measure as exaggerations or misinformation.
Within 30 minutes, Riley thanked Amburn for the note with this addendum:
We received official notification this morning that Georgia was dropped from contention from two pending economic projects we had been working at gdec prior to any decision being made on the bill, Riley wrote, referring to the Georgia Department of Economic Development. Both projects cited Hb 757 as why they were removing Georgia from consideration.
http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2016/03/27/state-two-economic-recruits-abandon-georgia-over-religious-liberty-bill/
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)one can only hope that this continues, until this nonsense is finally put to rest and that legislators in other states take careful note.
NCjack
(10,279 posts)and his GOP Legislature for their newly passed anti-LGBT law. GA and NC lose. Blue states win.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)Georgia's right-wing legislators are ideological extremists and usually fundamentalist Evangelical Christians. They see a changing world and truly would rather Georgia disintegrate into an impoverished state than change with it.