U.S. Representative for Georgia’s 9th Congressional District Andrew Clyde was making the rounds around the district on Wednesday, coming on WDUN’s “The Martha Zoller Show” and hosting a roundtable at the Lake Lanier Association.
Clyde took the opportunity to speak about House Resolution (HR) 4432, or the Lanier Parks Local Access Act.
The bill was introduced in July and is sponsored by Clyde and co-sponsored by fellow Republican Rep. Rich McCormick (GA-7).
The bill will look to mitigate the impacts of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE’s) staffing shortages that threatened the closures of parks on the lake.
“One of the big problems that we heard was that … one park that actually has user fees, they’re not able to use that money from one park to another park that may be like a day-use park,” Clyde told AccessWDUN. “McCormick and I … introduced the [act] to allow movement of money between parks.”
The last update on the parks from AccessWDUN came in late June when Hall County entered a cost-sharing agreement with USACE to reopen the parks after over 20 were initially closed in May due to staffing shortages.
According to budget data from USACE, $12.213-million was allocated for Lake Lanier in fiscal year 2026, slightly down from $12.223-million in fiscal year 2025. The difference is $10,000 in money allocated to the lake, which does not explain the staffing shortages.
Clyde said he also passed two appropriations related to the lake. One prohibits USACE from using taxpayer funds to rename civil works projects such as Lake Lanier. The other one mirrors the effort in the Lanier Parks Local Access Act.
Clyde did not immediately know if the cost-sharing agreement was still in place since it’s not on the federal side, but did say Hall County does an “incredible job” of managing the parks that they do own.
“I want to remove that prohibition to give more flexibility to local governments,” Clyde told AccessWDUN. “Everything above the revenue that we take in is borrowed money, and at some point there is going to be a financial crisis in this country. We can’t maintain the status quo, we have to address the addiction to spending in Congress.”
Clyde and WDUN’s Martha Zoller spoke more on the lake, the federal deficit, spending cuts, and more on her Wednesday edition of the show which is available here on YouTube or at the SoundCloud embedded audio above.
