ATLANTA — One hundred Effingham County residents rubbed some powerful elbows on Jan. 28.

Two of the elbows belonged to new Gov. Brian Kemp, who addressed the Effingham Day at the Capitol group in Floyd Towers. 

“I am very excited about what we have going on,” said Kemp, who was inaugurated Jan. 14. 

The governor plans to deliver on what he promised during the 2018 campaign, he said.

“We’ve rolled out a teacher pay raise,” he said, “and we’ve rolled out school safety grants that go complete local control to keep all our public schools — 2,294 of them — safe.”

 Kemp has called on $3,000 raises for Georgia teachers and a 2 percent pay hike for other state employees. He pledged $69 million for the safety grants.

“We are dealing with mental health issues, too,” Kemp said, “by funding $8.4 million into the APEX program, which is an existing program that is going to help with mental health and disruptive behaviors in our high schools — not only to identify it, but to get treatment for those individuals.”

Kemp said $28.1 million of “new” money will be spent on mental health.

“That will help all local communities with addictions and other things that are going on,” he said. “I think our whole state will benefit from that. It is a problem that we hear about from a lot of different areas, certainly from folks at the local level.”

 The governor has proposed spending $4.3 million to expand the state’s accountability courts. The General Assembly established accountability courts in 2012 to provide alternatives to sentencing for nonviolent offenders and reduce the state’s prison population.

Kemp spent the bulk of his remarks focused on street gangs and drug cartels.

“There was a recent study by the Gang Investigators Association that says we have over 71,000 gang members in our state and over 1,500 gang networks in our state,” he said. “This is affecting literally all parts of our state.”

To combat the problem, the governor vowed to create a Gang Investigator Task Force in the GBI. He pledged that the task force will work with the Attorney General’s Office and other local, state and federal agencies designed to curb gangs.

“This whole platform is designed to help our local prosecutors, your local community, if they need it,” Kemp said. “We are not going to ram it down their throat but we want to have resources from a prosecution standpoint and from an investigative standpoint available to local law enforcement and prosecutors who need it.”

Kemp said gangs are a driving force behind multiple crimes.

“They are contributing to our drug epidemic, the opioid problem, sex trafficking — you name it,” he said. “They are all involved in it because it is all something they are making money off of. We are absolutely going to go after those people.”

Kemp said rural Georgia will always be at the forefront of his agenda and he intends to work with the legislature to boost it.

“Your ZIP code or the county you live in should not dictate the opportunities that you have in our state,” he said.

Kemp said he looked forward to working with Effingham County’s General Assembly delegation — Sen. Jack Hill, Rep. Jon Burns and Rep. Bill Hitchens.

“They just do a great job, not just representing Effingham County, but, really, that whole area of the state and our state in general,” Kemp said. 

Hill has high hopes for the governor. The senator introduced him to the Effingham Day at the Capitol group.

“He’s just a person who cares about small business and the people who make this state go,” Hill said. “We are wishing him the very best. He is off to a great start.”

Effiingham Day, and Effingham County Chamber of Commerce event, was sponsored by the Effingham County Industrial Development Authority, Effingham Health System, Georgia-Pacific, Joe Marchese Construction and DRT America.