[ September 20, 2020 ] During these unprecedented days with Covid19 and unemployment and economic stress on lots of folks, it's great to find a positive thing to talk about. Lisa Fountain is our Administrative Assistant in the office I share with Rep. Mandi Ballinger (R-Canton) in the Capitol. Lisa started with us in January, coming from a very broad background in previous work.

We have a busy office, with me, Chairman of Education, and Mandi Ballinger, Chairman of Juvenile justice. There are lots of people wanting to see us and discuss critical issues that will be addressed in the legislature. Lisa had lots of new faces to meet, and she needed to learn each of us and how we wanted things taken care of.

For me, coming from the County Agent world where each day you have the opportunity to help someone solve easy issues and sometimes very difficult issues, I am pretty clear on what I want an aide to do for me: help the people who contact us with their problems with State government and follow up on the problem to make sure it was solved.

Lisa and I were on the same page early on, and she absolutely adopted what I wanted to do when constituents call needing help. We work to help them just like it was our mom?s issue. Like I said above, some are easy, but some ?. Oh, my! They are complex and require a bit of research. Lisa excelled at this and learned the contacts and developed relationships with many others in state government to help our folks in the 11th District.

Who knew we would be tested like we were, during the shutdown, related to the Covid attack on our country? Those relationships and research work have come in handy during the past five months as Lisa helped dozens of you with many issues, especially?. Unemployment. Since our economy had been doing so well the last five years with unemployment being very, very low, the size of staff at the Dept of Labor had been reduced to match the work load. I would normally get one unemployment question a month up until March of this year, and as the Department of Labor?s systems became overwhelmed, we became the only source of contact with a Real Person to many of you.

Lisa was working from home as the Capitol was closed and answered many, many calls and emails from folks in our district and beyond when the word got out that she was so good and caring about the folks in the 11th District. It was very comforting to know that when I would get a call here at home or asked about it in town, Lisa would work on it for the unemployed person to the best of her ability.

Now, we haven?t solved all of the issues immediately that people had with getting their unemployment, but Lisa has kept with it; and as we talk sometimes daily, we figure out different ways to help. It?s great to have a partner with the same goals.

I wanted to brag on Lisa Fountain; she has helped many Georgians living in the 11th House District. It has been a difficult situation for many, and she has excelled.

So, as always, we are here to help, working with State of Georgia issues like we have for the past ten years. Very glad we have Lisa on our team to help you. We can be contacted at rick.jasperse@house.ga.gov or 404-656-7153 or through my website rickjasperse.org. Of course, you can ask me when you see me around town, but Lisa lives in Fayette County, so it will be hard to run into her.