Chris Clark, president and CEO, Georgia Chamber of Commerce
ATLANTA – As Georgia dine-in restaurants and theaters prepare to reopen Monday, Gov. Brian Kemp continues to be hit with criticism over businesses including barbershops and hair salons he let reopen Friday.
Public health experts, mayors across Georgia and legislative Democrats are questioning the logic of making such “close-contact” businesses the first to reopen when the state has yet to see a 14-day decline in COVID-19 cases as specified under federal coronavirus guidelines for reopening the economy.
But the criticism of Kemp’s handling of the crisis misses the fact that bars and nightclubs, gyms and fitness centers, dine-in services at restaurants, theaters, bowling alleys and the close-contact personal care shops are the only businesses the governor shut down to discourage the spread of COVID-19, said Chris Clark, president and CEO of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce.
The shelter-in-place order Kemp issued early this month allowed all other businesses – including those in the retail sector – to remain open, subject to a lengthy list of restrictions aimed at preserving social distancing. The restrictions include screening employees for illness, disinfecting the premises, requiring employees who come into close contact with customers to wear masks and requiring at least six feet of space between workers and between workers and customers.
Some businesses have stayed open by complying with the restrictions, including providing curbside service to customers or limiting the number of customers allowed inside the business at any one time. Other businesses have chosen to close while the shelter-in-place order remains in effect.
Clark suggested allowing the approximately 20,000 businesses throughout the state that were shut down by law to reopen is a matter of fairness.
“These are small mom-and-pop [businesses], most of which ran out of capital 14 days ago,” Clark said last week. “Many of them are minority- and immigrant-owned businesses. Most of them are sole proprietors. … They’re really struggling.”
Judging by the response of affected business owners to Friday’s reopening, many theaters and restaurants likely will remain closed on Monday out of concern over potentially spreading the virus.
Clark said that’s their choice.
“Businesses have a responsibility if they want to open to follow the guidelines, take the temperatures of their employees, disinfect and provide masks,” he said. “The governor’s not forcing any business to open that doesn’t want to.”
Kemp’s shelter-in-place order is due to expire this Thursday unless he decides to extend it.
Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan outlines his agenda for the 2020 legislative session at the State Capitol on January 13, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Disagreement has emerged between Georgia House and Senate leaders on when to resume the 2020 legislative session as many local businesses are poised to possibly reopen after weeks of closures prompted by coronavirus.
House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, has called for reconvening the session on June 11 to give state lawmakers more time to wrangle the state budget before June 30, the legal deadline for the 2021 fiscal year budget to be passed.
In a letter Friday, Ralston told House lawmakers the June 11 date would give them the most updated financial picture for the state, given that tax revenue collections for April will not be available until the end of May.
“It is a given that substantial cuts will need to be made in the budget,” Ralston said. “I do not believe it is sound practice to make these difficult decisions without the best and most current information.”
However, his counterpart in the Senate, Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, prefers a May 14 date for the General Assembly to resume work. Doing so would help state agencies and school districts start planning for the upcoming fiscal year sooner, said Duncan’s chief of staff, John Porter.
“We owe it to the teachers and students of our state not to wait until the last minute,” Porter said Friday afternoon.
The earlier date also figures as a show of support for businesses like restaurants, gyms and barbershops that Gov. Brian Kemp has given the green light to reopen after weeks of statewide mandatory closures.
“Our chamber is ready to get back to work for the people,” Porter said. “We can abide by the same safety guidelines we have asked Georgia’s businesses to adhere to.”
The legislative session has been suspended since March 13, leaving hundreds of bills and critical budget negotiations in limbo. Georgia is also under a statewide shelter-in-place order issued by Kemp that runs through the end of April.
How many bills the legislature would consider upon reconvening remains up in the air. Per state law, the General Assembly’s only legal requirement is to pass a balanced budget for the upcoming fiscal year by June 30.
Restarting the session on June 11, as Ralston wants, would give Georgia hospitals and health officials more time to curb the spread of coronavirus. But it would also give lawmakers less time to hand in a budget that will be heavily influenced by an expected nosedive in tax revenues, due largely to the coronavirus-prompted economic slowdown.
In his letter Friday, Ralston said House Appropriations Chairman Terry England, R-Auburn, will start scheduling budget committee meetings “over the next couple of weeks.”
Last week, Ralston tapped five state lawmakers and several key Capitol staffers to serve on a committee tasked with looking at how to close out the remainder of the session. That committee has not met yet, according to an official with direct knowledge of its activities.
When they do meet, the committee members will dive into the logistics of how to hold the session in a way that reduces the risk of exposure to coronavirus. Some officials have already reached out to the National Conference of State Legislatures for insight on what other state legislatures are doing to hold their sessions safely and transparently.
Nearly half of the country’s state legislatures have postponed their sessions or rewritten rules for convening amid coronavirus, according to the national conference. Several have met in unorthodox circumstances to conduct business in recent weeks, such as in sports arenas or outdoor tents.
In some cases, lawmakers in other in-session states have voted by proxy. For instance, lawmakers in Kentucky changed rules for the state’s House of Representatives to let members located outside the chamber text photos of their votes to a few members inside the chamber.
The story was updated to include additional comment from House Speaker David Ralston.
Georgia restaurants will be allowed to reopen dine-in service on Monday.
ATLANTA – Restaurants across Georgia will be allowed to reopen dine-in areas starting Monday, more than three weeks after Gov. Brian Kemp imposed a shelter-in-place order shutting them down.
But restaurant operations will be a far cry from normal, thanks to 39 restrictions listed in an executive order Kemp issued Thursday aimed at discouraging the spread of COVID-19.
Many of the restrictions are similar to those the state is applying to such close-contact businesses as barbershops and hair salons, which were allowed to reopen Friday for the first time since April 3.
All restaurant employees must wear masks at all time, and workers exhibiting signs of illness such as a fever, cough or shortness of breath must be screened and evaluated. Employees who become sick at work or show signs of illness must be sent home.
Restaurants owners will be required to modify their floor plans to ensure at least six feet of separation between tables and use physical barriers for booth seating if possible. Parties at tables must be limited to no more than six, and reservations-only or call-ahead seating should be practiced where practical.
Patrons will not be allowed to congregate in waiting areas or bar areas. Salad bars or buffets will be prohibited, and self-service drink, condiment and utensil stations should be removed.
Restaurants must be thoroughly cleaned and sanitized before reopening to dine-in customers, with cleaning and sanitizing maintained regularly moving forward.
The executive order encourages restaurants to use disposable paper menus whenever possible. Customers should be provided with hand sanitizer, including sanitizing stations when available.
Despite the restrictions, Kemp has drawn criticism from many quarters for reopening businesses too soon, from President Donald Trump down to mayors across the state, from Democratic lawmakers and from public heath experts.
State and local Republican leaders and some business groups have defended the decision as a first step toward a more robust reopening of Georgia’s economy that will get the growing ranks of unemployed back to work and collecting paychecks.
Kemp’s statewide shelter-in-place order is due to expire next Thursday unless he acts to extend it.
ATLANTA – The U.S. House of Representatives gave final passage early Thursday evening to a $484 billion economic stimulus package to help offset the financial impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.
House members voted overwhelmingly 388-5 to send the package to President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it as early as Friday.
Most of the funding – $310 billion – will go to benefit small businesses through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). The initial $350 billion Congress put toward the new program late last month – part of a $2.2 trillion stimulus package – ran out a week ago, just two weeks after the initiative was launched.
“This new funding for the Paycheck Protection Program will offer a lifeline to small businesses and the millions of hardworking women and men they employ,” U.S. Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., said earlier this week after the stimulus package cleared the Senate. “By providing cash flow assistance, we are helping businesses keep their employees and preventing a liquidity crisis from becoming an insolvency crisis.”
“For weeks, I’ve heard from small business owners, farmers, nonprofits and charities across Georgia that they need these critical loans immediately to keep their employees on payroll and their doors open,” added Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga. “This new funding will help businesses get back on their feet.”
Small business owners left out when the first package of PPP money was depleted are hoping loans from the new funding will be processed more smoothly than were the initial loan applications.
While the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) had approved more than 48,000 PPP loans to Georgia businesses as of Tuesday, many business owners have complained their loans are being held up by incompetence if not outright deception.
Complaints have been focused particularly on the largest banks participating in the program. A federal lawsuit filed last weekend accuses Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and U.S. Bancorp of prioritizing applications for the largest loan requests because they would generate higher fees for the banks.
When the program was launched early this month, the SBA assured small businesses their loan applications would be accepted and processed on a first-come, first-served basis.
“The little guys are not being treated fairly because it’s not worth their time,” said Brint Fanizza, president of Famoré Cutlery of Gainesville.
Fanizza said the company applied for a PPP loan from Bank of America within minutes after the program’s online portal went live on April 3, but the bank still hasn’t even sent the application to the SBA.
“We did $1.8 million last year,” he said. “We’re small potatoes but were a growing business.”
Bank of America spokesman Bill Halldin disagreed with the allegations contained in the federal lawsuit. The bank has about 8,000 employees working on processing applications, Halldin told the Charlotte Business Journal earlier this week.
Besides the $310 billion addition to the PPP, the stimulus package also includes $60 billion in forgivable loans of up to $10,000 to individual small businesses under a separate SBA program, $75 billion for hospitals and $25 billion for COVID-19 testing.
Rep. Vernon Jones (R-Lithonia) has sparked controversy following his endorsement of President Donald Trump. (Official House of Representatives photo)
State Rep. Vernon Jones backtracked Thursday on plans to resign from his General Assembly seat, a day after announcing he would step down in the wake of fierce criticism for his endorsement of President Donald Trump’s reelection bid.
“That was emotional and that was motivational,” Vernon said, shortly before noting he will remain in the primary to hold his state House seat.
The remarks came a day after Jones said he is tired of “being attacked and harassed by the Democrat Party” in the wake of his public show of support for the firebrand Republican president.
“Turn the lights off, I have left the plantation,” Jones said in a statement announcing his resignation Wednesday. “Someone else can occupy that suite.”
Jones is angling for a third consecutive term in staunchly Democratic House District 91, based in east metro Atlanta. He drew one opponent, Rhonda Taylor, a community activist who owns a consulting company in Conyers and ran unsuccessfully against Jones in 2016.
He is on his second stint in the Georgia House of Representatives that began in 2016, following a longer House tenure from 1993 to 2001. The outspoken Jones was also DeKalb County’s CEO from 2001 to 2009.
In recent comments, Jones criticized the Democratic Party as a stifling influence on conservative black Americans. He also hailed Trump’s economic record, his support for historic black colleges and universities, and for signing legislation to release low-level federal prisoners.
Jones has also lashed out against Democratic lawmakers for their stances on immigration, noting he prefers the crackdown approach Trump takes on illegal border crossings.
In a radio interview Wednesday morning, Jones said he plans to remain a Democrat despite the fact his statements of late have met with intense criticism from Georgia Democratic leaders.
“What are they going to do, spank me?” Jones said on The Rashad Richey Morning Show. “I don’t care what the Democratic Party is going to do.”
Georgia Democratic leaders were quick to denounce Jones after his endorsement of Trump’s campaign last week, framing his public comments as a decisive break with the party.
State House Minority Leader Bob Trammell, D-Luthersville, promptly backed Taylor’s campaign to unseat Jones. And state Sen. Nikema Williams, chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia, called Jones “an embarrassment” to the party who “does not stand for our values.”
“Never has that been clearer than this moment, when he chose to stand with the racist president who has made an all-out assault on black Americans, who has tried to rip away American health care, and who has failed our country in its greatest time of need during the most important election in our lifetimes,” said Williams, D-Atlanta.
