One Man’s Opinion: There’s a New Speaker in Town

By Bill Crane

State Representative Jon Burns (R-District 159) of Newington, Georgia in Effingham County is not new to the State House, having joined the body in 2005. Nor is he new to leadership, having served as the GOP House Majority Leader since 2015. But he is new to the Office of Speaker, arguably the second most powerful elected position in state government, and he will be bringing a slightly new approach to wielding that big gavel.

Burns was a close friend and confidante of the prior Speaker, David Ralston, and will be retaining much of his office staff, demeanor, and decorum in the well of running the chamber with an eye toward bettering the lives of all Georgians. This helps explain his selection as Speaker by a unanimous vote of acclimation on the first day of this legislative session, while our Speaker in the U.S. Congress squeaked into office by one vote on the 15th ballot.

Burns is also a farmer and small businessman, very successful and visible within the timber industry in southeast Georgia. In the words of his peers in the House and elsewhere, he is a “classic conservative.”

From Dan Snipes, a Statesboro attorney who has worked previously with Burns, “He doesn’t have an extreme bone in his body. He is a principled, classic conservative.”

Burns is inheriting this gavel following a dear friend’s sudden and unexpected death, but the state and the State House are in otherwise good stead. A budget surplus of more than $6 billion is being sifted through and divvied up first: more reserves, some big-ticket one-time expenses, and another pay raise for educators and most all-state employees. There are fissures within the Georgia GOP, but they have a very comfortable majority, and almost all are at least on speaking terms.

When Ralston followed the first GOP Speaker since Reconstruction, who was leaving the office in a cloud of building scandals, the economy was in the midst of a deep recession, and budget cuts were the order of the day. The GOP’s ability to govern was in question and Ralston brought transparency, an open ear, common sense, and some occasionally cen-

Continued on page 16