Meet Laura Khurana

Army brat, clinical researcher, community advocate, data nerd, and proud mom of two.

Civic Engagement

Laura has a track record of thoughtful engagement in local government, always aiming to push our community towards better.  Here are a few highlights of the times she has addressed local government bodies.

15 September 2020 - After concluding her service on the advisory committee to the City of Brunswick on the topic of the Confederate Monument in Hanover Square, Laura calls on the mayor and city commission to remove the monument. Over the course of two public meetings that each ran hours long, the vast majority of comments from citizens of Glynn County also supported the monument's removal. In April 2021, the city commission voted to remove the monument, and it was finally removed from Hanover Square on 17 May 2022.

4 February 2021 - Less than a year after Ahmaud Arbery was murdered and his killers walked free for 74 days before finally being arrested, the Glynn County Board of Commissioners was tasked with hiring a new chief of police. The community was rightfully interested and wanted to be engaged in this candidate search, but the Board was not interested in engaging the public. After these public comments (from Laura and many others) and a lot of public pressure, the Board agreed to include the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) in the search for a candidate. This eventually led to the hiring of the first Black chief of police in the history of the Glynn County Police Department.

8 March 2021 - Laura addresses the County Board of Commissioners, two days after Glynn County voters rejected SPLOST 2021 at the polls, voting not to implement a new sales tax to fund infrastructure projects. In this public comment, she explains her personal reasons for voting no on SPLOST 2021, and what it would take for her to vote yes on a future SPLOST.

6 May 2021 - *Content Warning: not suitable for young children* Laura calls for the county board of commissioners to urgently hire a new chief of police who will turn around the culture of impunity and unaccountabiilty within the Glynn County Police Department. As recent examples of this, Laura cites some sexually explicit public comments and behaviors by current police officers. She then urges the Board to hire a chief from outside Glynn County, to keep the public informed about this hiring process, and for the new chief to implement the recommendations from the 2018 report from the IACP (International Association of Chiefs of Police), which would bring the department in line with industry policing standards.
Since these comments over 3 years ago, there has been some progress related to the culture of the department and transparency in reporting officer misconduct, but there is much more room for improvement. Laura would like to see regular updates from the GCPD on their progress in implementing the recommendations from the IACP report, as well as their progress towards certification and accreditation by the GACP (Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police) and CALEA (Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies). The department was pursuing these as recently as 18 months ago, but has not issued a public update since the current chief came on board.

15 July 2021 - Laura calls for professionalism and transparency from the County Board of Commissioners, during the process of hiring a new county manager.

10 August 2021 - Laura asks the Glynn County Board of Education to start the 2021 school year in the yellow zone of Covid prevention measures (masks and social distancing required). This request was based on the fact that there was not yet enough data from the school system to know our true test positivity rate (students had just started back to school that day, 10 Aug), but there was community data from the county at large, which was showing very high test positivity rates.
Laura said, "If we don't implement preventive measures now, before things get bad, then they will get bad. We're going to blow straight through yellow to red. And we'll be right back where we were 18 months ago, when my 3rd grader was a 1st grader, doing distance learning in the spring of 2020."
The board did not change their decision to start the school year in the green zone (no masks required). 13 school days after this meeting, the test positivity rate in the school system shot up to 3.69%, the school system was in the red zone, and schools moved to distance learning.

17 November 2022 - Laura addresses the Glynn County Board of Commissioners soon after the voters of Glynn County approved SPLOST 2022. Her comments focused on what citizens expect from the county government as they move forward with implementing this SPLOST. For Laura, "transparency and accountability" are not just buzz words - for a long time she has been pushing our elected officials to actually show us these behaviors, and giving them specific examples of how they can do this.
A few updates (from the perspective of June 2024, 18+ months later) on some topics she mentions during this comment:● The county did not set up a citizens advisory board for SPLOST 2022● The county did correct their organizational chart, and added back "Electorate of Glynn County" in July 2023.

6 June 2024 - Laura addresses the Glynn County Board of Commissioners and makes two simple recommendations for improving accessibility at their public meetings: remove the computer screens that are covering their faces (from the perspective of the public gallery), and move the public comment period back to the beginning of the agenda.
When the BoC moved the public comment period to the end of their agenda, participation dropped by over 60%. Before the move, there were 1.3 public comments per meeting on average, and after the move, there were 0.5. The BoC says that they made this move to save citizens money on hourly fees from lawyers, engineers, etc who are attending these meetings. Considering the 5-minute limit on public comments, and the fact that there are still other items at the beginning of the agenda (like awards presentations), that rationale doesn't hold water. The BoC should reverse this policy change, and move the public comment period back to the beginning of the agenda.