ATLANTA – Budget
writers in the Georgia House of Representatives Tuesday restored some of the
spending cuts Gov. Brian Kemp has requested in his mid-year state budget to
help offset sluggish tax revenues.
The $27.4
billion fiscal 2020 mid-year budget members of the House Appropriations
Committee adopted puts back funding for food safety, mental health services,
Georgia’s public defenders and the state’s accountability courts.
Since
receiving Kemp’s budget proposals last month, lawmakers have expressed concerns
that the depth of some of the cuts would hit state agencies that have yet to recover
from the spending cuts they were forced to absorb during the Great Recession
more than a decade ago.
Those fears
were reinforced when state agency heads warned during budget hearings of the
impacts the cuts would have on programs and services.
The list of
worried department heads included Commissioner of Agriculture Gary Black, who
asked lawmakers not to reduce his food safety workforce. On Tuesday, the
appropriations panel added back five food safety inspectors who had been cut from
the mid-year budget.
In the
criminal justice arena, the House committee transferred $1.5 million from the Georgia
Prosecuting Attorney’s Council to the state Public Defender Council to avoid job
losses among Georgia’s public defenders.
The popular
accountability courts then-Gov. Nathan Deal launched several years would see a
$1.3 million cut restored.
Rep. Terry
England, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said depriving the
accountability courts of the funding they need would send more criminal
defendants to prison rather than managing them through a less costly
alternative.
“They would
certainly wind up with a less cost-effective method of dealing with what
they’ve done,” said England, R-Auburn.
The
Department of Natural Resources, in charge of state parks and environmental
compliance, had funds added back for maintenance and law enforcement following
concerns its budget had not recovered yet from the recession. The DNR was hit
particularly hard when the economic downturn sent tax collections plummeting in
2008.
“We’re
trying to keep them still fully in play,” said Rep. Sam Watson, R-Moultrie,
chairman of the House Appropriations General Government Subcommittee.
Lawmakers
have been particularly worried about the potential impacts of cuts to mental
health services. On Tuesday, the Appropriations Committee reduced proposed reductions
to the number of residential treatment beds and added $2.8 million for behavioral
“ health core” services.
“We’re able
to make some improvements,” said Rep. Katie Dempsey, R-Rome, chairman of the
Appropriations Human Resources Subcommittee. “It’s a very, very good day for
this part of the budget.”
The
committee also added $44,111 to the $200,000 the governor recommended for the Georgia
Access to Medical Cannabis Commission. The General Assembly created the
commission last year to oversee the growth, production and sale of cannabis oil
in Georgia for treatment of a variety of diseases, but it is off to a slow
start.
The full
House is expected to take up the mid-year budget on Wednesday.
Staff
writer Beau Evans contributed to this report.
Georgia Chief Turnaround Officer Eric Thomas resigned last month amid completion of an audit into his performance. (Photo credit: Georgia Department of Education)
ATLANTA – After resigning last month, the head of efforts to turnaround struggling schools in Georgia has filed a lawsuit against the state Department of Education to block public release of a damaging audit the agency completed that led to his resignation.
The lawsuit was filed two days after the
education agency notified Chief Turnaround Office Eric Thomas last Friday that
the 64-page audit of his office might soon be released publicly, though that
has not happened yet.
The agency refused to provide Capitol
Beat News Service with a copy of the audit following an open-records request
last week.
The audit probed allegations of
bid-rigging in Thomas’ office, issues with travel expenses and workplace
harassment, according to a letter last month from Georgia Inspector General
Deborah Wallace.
“Overall, it appears that the chief
turnaround office was mismanaged and that policies and procedures in place were
routinely ignored by Dr. Thomas,” the letter says.
But Thomas claims the audit’s findings
were flawed from the start since he was never interviewed as part of an
internal investigation by the agency. The lawsuit calls the audit “a
retaliatory sham,” disclosure of which would violate Georgia’s Whistleblower
Protection Act.
Thomas also claims the audit’s release
would damage his reputation and chances for future employment. The lawsuit
describes his experience as “extremely marketable” after years of work in
public school systems including a stint as the turnaround chief for the
University of Virginia.
“As a result, publication of the
investigative report would result in publication of irreparably damaging
information about Dr. Thomas based on an investigation that was not undertaken
in good faith, and which would invade his privacy by defaming him,” the lawsuit
says.
Thomas gave the agency a 35-page response
to the audit last week, according to the lawsuit. He may address the Board of
Education at a meeting Wednesday.
The dispute centers on control over a
branch of the state education agency tasked with improving the worst-performing
schools in Georgia. Thomas alleges in the lawsuit that state School
Superintendent Richard Woods sabotaged the turnaround office in order to bring
its functions under his administrative control.
A Savannah native, Thomas has headed up the turnaround office since state lawmakers passed legislation creating it in 2017. He tendered his resigned last month amid the audit’s completion and is poised to step down May 30.
Now, the chief turnaround office will be
folded into a different arm of the education department run by Stephanie
Johnson, the deputy superintendent for school improvement. Woods told lawmakers
last month the change should not cause any hiccups for 13 low-performing
schools the office was supporting.
ATLANTA – Georgia lawmakers capped a hiatus week at the state Capitol by pulling back on some of Gov. Brian Kemp’s ordered budget cuts, which have dominated talks so far in the 2020 legislative session.
The governor’s proposed cuts – rounding out to $557 million through the 2021 fiscal year – inspired the General Assembly to set aside bill-wrangling for 10 days and focus almost exclusively on the budget.
Lawmakers held a fresh round of hearings
to dive deeper into the budget. Dozens of state agency heads explained to
members of the House and Senate Appropriations committees how they’ll manage
the cuts.
Changes to the governor’s budget began Thursday, when members of the House Economic Development Appropriations Subcommittee voted to restore funding for nearly half of 13 vacant food-safety inspector positions slated to remain unfilled because of the cuts.
The subcommittee’s chairwoman, Rep. Penny
Houston, previously had said she felt wary of shortchanging food inspectors
amid a proliferation of Dollar General stores opening in Georgia that now sell prepared
food – and thus ought to face more scrutiny.
“It’s not really a glamorous thing when
you go to a convenience store and you see rats everywhere,” said Houston,
R-Nashville. “I mean, it’s tough.”
More budget tweaks likely ahead could set
up head-butting between lawmakers and Kemp, who has veto power over spending
items that the legislature passes.
The House version of the amended
$27.4-billion budget for the current fiscal year is headed for a floor vote
Wednesday that will likely see more cuts rolled back, said House Appropriations
Committee Chairman Terry England, R-Auburn.
“You’ll probably see more restorations,”
England said, declining to elaborate further Thursday. “That’s the way this
process is supposed to work.”
With the cuts, Kemp aims to stave off a budget shortfall amid sluggish tax revenue collections while leaving wiggle room to give public school teachers a $2,000 raise.
Revenues picked up last month but still lag far behind the roughly $800 million boost officials originally projected.
Kemp’s budget director, Kelly Farr, told lawmakers Wednesday the agency belt-tightening was carefully calibrated to minimize impacts on everyday Georgians. He highlighted a total of $140 million in savings achieved by leaving vacant staff positions unfilled, plus millions more by eliminating landline phones and travel.
Many agencies are poised to have their
budgets stay largely the same by trimming proposed increases in spending last
year rather than cuts to existing services, Farr said.
“We tried to be very diligent about
things that we consider to be public-facing [and] service-impacting,” Farr
said. “This was not done haphazardly.”
But some lawmakers argued that kind of
budget-crafting could dampen the rebuilding process those agencies have
undergone since the 2008 economic recession, which spurred deep cuts throughout
state government.
“We’ve tried to make sure over the last
couple of years that we paid attention to those agencies that took
extraordinarily harsh, harsh cuts over the recession,” said Rep. David Knight,
R-Griffin. “All of a sudden we come back down and there’s a drastic change.”
Concerns have continued to mount from
social workers, doctors and others worried the proposed cuts would hit
Georgia’s most vulnerable populations the hardest.
State mental health services face around $80 million in cuts through June 2021 that would largely affect programs meant to prevent crisis situations that could land someone in jail or a psychiatric ward.
Those cuts have unsettled many lawmakers
and mental health advocates who support pumping more money into services for
people with mental and physical disabilities, rather than keeping the budget
flat.
“There are ways we can cut back,” said
Pauline Shaw, executive director for the nonprofit special-needs group
Effingham County Navigator Team. “But it should not come on the backs of people
who are the most vulnerable.”
Critics have also homed in on cuts that could affect some law enforcement and criminal justice reform initiatives like alternative sentencing programs, public defenders and a huge backlog of forensic lab tests needed for rape investigations.
Elsewhere in the budget, Kemp has taken
especially fierce heat for proposed cuts to county health boards and physician
training programs in rural areas – a key voter base for the governor and many
lawmakers from both parties.
“We do not want to see a greater burden
placed on our rural hospitals because of budget cuts,” said Damien Scott, CEO
of Emanuel Medical Center in Swainsboro. “When you’re barely making ends meet,
even $15,000 to $20,000 can be significant.”
Rep. Clay Pirkle agreed, noting many underserved
health boards in rural counties might be in a serious bind without full state
funding.
“If we are cutting in an area, the
unintended consequence is we are cramming down to the local level,” said
Pirkle, R-Ashburn. “And a lot of them can’t afford it.”
Some officials pointed out the full
extent of the cuts can be deceptive since state funds are often paired with
federal dollars.
For instance, the state medical director
for the Georgia Poison Center, Robert Geller, said an estimated $50,000 cut to
his office could swell to more than $150,000 with the loss of matching federal
funds.
Rep. Butch Parrish, who chairs the House
Health Appropriations Subcommittee, said he wants to steer clear of small cuts
that could lead to inadvertently larger costs down the road.
“Let’s continue to talk about the
consequences of some of these cuts,” Parrish, R-Swainsboro, said at a hearing
Wednesday. “And maybe if we look at it in a different light, we can come up
with a better solution that we can all be happy about.”
The Kendeda Building on the Georgia Tech campus. Photo by The Miller Hull Partnership
ATLANTA – Georgia’s
timber industry, which already tops the nation in a number of categories, may get
a boost from new technology that lets developers construct mid-rise office
buildings made mostly of wood.
The General
Assembly is considering legislation asking the state Department of Community
Affairs to recommend whether Georgia should adopt a provision in the International
Building Code that allows buildings constructed of “mass timber” to rise as
high as 18 stories. The state building code limits wood office buildings to six
stories.
Other
countries and some states already are taking advantage of the international
provision to put up mid-rise office buildings well above Georgia’s height
limit, said Rep. John Corbett, R-Lake Park, chief sponsor of House Bill 777 and
a timber farmer.
“Out on the
West Coast, Washington and Oregon have done it. Canada has been using it for
some time,” he said. “It’s going to be a good fit for our Southern yellow pine.
It’s a good opportunity for us.”
Georgia
already is the No. 1 state in commercially available timberland, with 22
million acres of privately owned forests. The Peach State also is tops in the
nation in exports of pulp, paper, wood fuel and wood pellets.
Forestry generates
an annual economic impact of $36.3 billion and is Georgia’s second largest
industry, accounting for 148,414 direct and indirect jobs, according to the
Forsyth-based Georgia Forestry Association.
Andy Barrs,
president and CEO of Watkinsville-based Barrs Industries, which owns stretches
of timberland throughout the Southeast, said the science of building with mass
timber has existed for decades. But the market for mid-rise office buildings
made mostly of wood is still emerging, he said.
Builders
glue cross-laminated timbers together to create a strong material that can be
used for floors, ceilings and load-bearing walls, Barrs said.
“They can
cut the pieces exactly, so the preciseness is very high,” he said. “It allows
buildings to occur in urban areas with a smaller footprint. It’s a very efficient
way to build, kind of like Lincoln Logs.”
Bill de St.
Aubin, CEO of Sizemore Group, an architectural firm based in Atlanta, said concerns
over fire protection have prompted some hesitation to use wood in mid-rise
office buildings. But mass timber – unlike the wood used in stick-built
residential construction – is actually more fire resistant than steel, he said.
“The new law
recognizes wood is a protective material,” he said. “Mass timber doesn’t light
easily. … Mass timber is very thick. It’s a really strong material.”
Mass timber
has yet to make significant inroads in Georgia. Some cities passed ordinances
in recent years limiting the height of buildings made of wood, but the General
Assembly passed a bill in 2018 prohibiting local governments from imposing
height restrictions below what the state code provides.
Use of the
technology currently is limited to two buildings in Atlanta. The recently
completed T3 West Midtown building at Atlantic Station consists of a concrete
ground floor and six stories made of wood.
The recently opened 47,000-square-foot Kendeda
Living Building on the campus of Georgia Tech won last year’s top prize for
innovative sustainable design from the Atlanta Regional Commission.
Sizemore
Group currently is building a new church for Our Lady of Lourdes in Atlanta’s
Old Fourth Ward, the city’s oldest African American Catholic church.
“Every
project I do now, I look at mass timber first,” Aubin said.
Andres
Villegas, president and CEO of the Georgia Forestry Association, said the
ability to construction mid-rise office buildings from wood would go a long way
toward sustaining the state’s timber industry.
“It will
give landowners a reason to continue planting trees,” he said. “It’s a great
opportunity for us, especially in Atlanta where we have so much construction
this can be applied to.”
The House
bill calls for the Department of Community Affairs to begin its review of the
International Building Code this summer and complete its work before July 1,
2021.
Villegas
said he’s not surprised by the length of the process.
“It takes a
little time for new technology to be accepted,” he said. “There’s a lag time
that occurs with the international building codes being adopted at the state
level.”
House Bill
777 passed the House Agriculture & Consumer Affairs Committee unanimously early
this month and is expected to before the full House soon.
ATLANTA – The
top executives of the Atlanta Braves, Falcons and Hawks pitched legislation to
legalize sports betting in Georgia Thursday at a luncheon sponsored by the
Atlanta Press Club.
Derek
Schiller of the Braves, Rich McKay of the Falcons and Steve Koonin of the Hawks
said sports betting wouldn’t spur a direct windfall of revenue for their teams.
Rather, the benefit would come from increasing fan engagement, they said.
“Somebody
who bets on a game is 19 times more likely to watch it,” said Koonin, the
Hawks’ president and CEO.
Sports
betting is a relatively recent arrival on the legalized gambling scene. It
wasn’t possible until a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2018 struck down a federal
law that banned commercial sports betting in most states.
Since then,
11 states have legalized sports betting, seven others have approved but are yet to launch sports betting and 24
states – including Georgia – are considering legalization legislation.
State Rep.
Craig Gordon, D-Savannah, has introduced a constitutional amendment asking
Georgia voters to decide in a statewide referendum whether to legalize sports
betting.
A separate
“enabling” bill sponsored by Rep. Ron Stephens, R-Savannah, one of the biggest
supporters of legalizing gambling in the General Assembly, contains specifics
on how sports betting would operate in Georgia. For one thing, betting would be
conducted through cellphones and other mobile devices, since Georgia has no brick-and-mortar
betting facilities such as casinos.
“The phone is where a lot of consumption is going on in the digital world,” said McKay, the Falcons’ president and CEO
Stephens’
bill also would prohibit betting on amateur sports, including college games. A
portion of gambling proceeds would go toward education in Georgia.
The
prospects for getting sports betting through the General Assembly this year are
not encouraging. Georgia Senate Majority Leader Mike Dugan, R-Carrollton, said
last month that legalizing gambling is not a priority in his caucus.
Lobbyists
for religious groups oppose legalized gambling in any form – sports betting,
casinos or pari-mutuel betting on horse racing – as an immoral activity that carries
hidden social costs including increased crime and gambling addictions.
But Schiller, the Braves’ president and CEO, said gambling is already going on in Georgia.
“Sports
betting is happening today illegally, and the state of Georgia is receiving no
tax dollars for it,” he said. “It’s really found money that’s not happening
today.”
Schiller
also argued that legalizing sports betting rather than allowing it to go on
illegally would give the state the tools to regulate the activity, including
setting age limits and putting restrictions on the use of credit cards.
