Georgia Democratic lawmakers are urging Gov. Brian Kemp to roll back his decision to reopen several categories of businesses including gyms and restaurants as coronavirus continues to sicken and kill people in the state.
Democratic caucuses in both the state House and Senate have asked Kemp to rescind his reopening orders, which will allow many businesses like dine-in restaurants, gyms, barbershops and bowling alleys to resume operations by Monday.
The governor has framed the phased-in reopening as a “measured action” that will help businesses get back on their feet after weeks of financial turmoil brought on by forced statewide closures.
In an unusual turn of events, many Georgia Democratic leaders also found their views on the matter aligned with one of their most ardent foes, President Donald Trump.
The president said Wednesday night Kemp’s decision was “just too soon” in light of federal guidelines that call for reopening businesses only after a decline in positive coronavirus cases has been seen for 14 consecutive days, which has not happened yet in Georgia.
“I think the president said exactly what we said on Tuesday, which is it’s too much, too soon,” said Georgia House Minority Leader Bob Trammell, D-Luthersville.
Kemp and state officials have also taken heat for not having a robust enough system for testing and contact tracing to quickly pinpoint where outbreaks may occur once people go back to work.
Many of those points against a swift reopening were made by members of the House Democratic Caucus, who held a video news conference Thursday to criticize Kemp’s approach to reopening businesses.
“Given what we know, this decision to reopen is a bad decision and we need to not go forward with it,” said Rep. Roger Bruce, D-Atlanta.
The live meeting followed a letter penned earlier this week asking the governor to reverse course and keep the mandatory business closures until the state has seen a 14-day decline in cases.
The letter also urged Kemp to allow city and county governments to impose their own economic restrictions, which they cannot do under the governor’s statewide order.
On Thursday, Rep. Karla Drenner said municipal governments should intervene by imposing strict local rules if they want, regardless of Kemp’s overriding order.
“I call upon our mayors, our county commissioners, to step forward with bold safety plans that protect our businesses and the least among us,” said Drenner, D-Avondale Estates. “We as a community need to intervene and take care of each other.”
Thursday’s news conference by House Democrats followed a separate letter sent Wednesday by the Senate Democratic Caucus, which also pressed Kemp to “immediately rescind” his reopening order.
On top of health concerns and limited testing, the letter by Senate Democrats warned reopening businesses too soon might backfire if a second coronavirus wave hits and customers lose confidence that they can be safe in public.
“History shows that reopening these businesses too soon will slow our efforts to create healthy communities,” the Senate letter says.
Meanwhile, many Republican state lawmakers and officials have come to Kemp’s defense, including House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan.
The governor’s backers point out businesses are not being required to reopen but may do so if they choose in order to start recovering from the economic toll the closures have had on Georgia over the past month.
“I’m very proud of Gov. Brian Kemp’s leadership throughout this whole [coronavirus] situation!” Rep. David Clark, R-Buford, said on Facebook. “He and the experts know what’s best for GA and I stand with him 100%!”
ATLANTA – Nearly 250,000 Georgians filed initial unemployment claims last week as the coronavirus pandemic and Gov. Brian Kemp’s shelter-in-place order continued to shut down businesses across the state, the Georgia Department of Labor reported Thursday.
While marking a decline from the almost 320,000 who filed for unemployment the previous week, that brought the number of claims for the past month up to almost 1.1 million, more than the combined total for the last three years.
Of the 247,003 initial unemployment claims filed last week, 94% were submitted by employers.
“Employer-filed claims have proven to be beneficial not only for employers wishing to provide financial support for employees until they can get them back to work, but also employees who are able to work a few hours a week and still recover state and federal benefits,” state Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler said Thursday. “Despite claims to the contrary, returning to work does not automatically eliminate an individual’s state unemployment eligibility.”
Butler explained that Georgians can earn up to $300 per week without reducing their weekly benefit amount, under an emergency rule issued late last month. Employees also can still receive the federal supplement of $600 each week while working reduced hours.
“We are working very diligently to come up with solutions to get Georgians back to work as soon as it is safe to do so,” Butler said. “Although some people are returning to work, the [labor department] will continue to process and make payments for all weeks an individual was eligible for benefits.”
The accommodations and food services sector accounted by far for the most initial unemployment claims last week, with 67,774 out-of-work Georgians in those industries submitting claims. Health care and social assistance was next with 31,266 claims, followed by retail trade with 30,672, and manufacturing with 28,597.
The agency issued $101.4 million in regular state unemployment benefits last week, up $32 million over the previous week. The $309 million the state has paid out so far this year is already more than the annual total for each of the previous two years.
Georgia senators huddle after Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan announced plans to suspend the legislative session over coronavirus concerns on March 12, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Top state lawmakers in Georgia are eying June 11 as a possible return date for the General Assembly to wrap up the 2020 legislative session, which was put on hold as concerns grew in March over coronavirus.
The June 11 date is being discussed as a possibility among several officials involved in talks over when to reconvene the session, according to several people with direct knowledge of those talks. Resuming the session on May 15 is also being discussed as an option.
Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, favors reconvening the session on June 11, his spokesman confirmed. That date would give lawmakers more time to wrangle the state budget.
Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, the state Senate’s presiding officer who shares authority with Ralston in deciding when to resume the session, has not yet said what day he would like to reconvene.
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 Gov. Brian Kemp 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 current and upcoming fiscal years by June 30.
Restarting the session on June 11 would give Georgia hospitals and health officials more time to curb the spread of coronavirus. But it would also run close to the deadline for lawmakers to hand in a budget that will be heavily influenced by the economic impacts of coronavirus-prompted business closures.
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 that let members located outside the chamber text photos of their votes to a few members inside the chamber.
This story was updated to note Speaker David Ralston publicly supports reconvening on June 11.
Coronavirus cases continue to climb in Georgia. (Image: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
ATLANTA – President Donald Trump said Wednesday he disagrees with Gov. Brian Kemp’s decision to let some Georgia businesses open late this week and early next week despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Kemp announced Monday he would let “close-contact” businesses including barbershops and hair salons reopen on Friday. Dine-in restaurants and movie theaters will be allowed to reopen on Monday.
The state board that regulates barbershops and hair salons released guidelines Tuesday to govern the reopening of those businesses, requiring employees to wear masks and thoroughly clean their premises. Guidelines for restaurants are expected later this week.
After speaking with Kemp by phone late Tuesday, Trump said Wednesday he believes it’s too soon to be reopening businesses in Georgia.
“When you have spas, beauty parlors, tattoo parlors and barbershops … maybe you want to wait a bit longer,” Trump told reporters early Wednesday evening during his daily coronavirus press briefing at the White House.
Kemp also has come under fire from public health experts and mayors across Georgia for moving ahead with reopening businesses while deaths from COVID-19 continue to mount and new positive cases remain on the rise. As of 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, 21,102 Georgians had tested positive for coronavirus and 846 had died.
However, the governor also has drawn support from some local elected officials. The Monroe County Commission adopted a resolution this week endorsing reopening businesses, and several members of the Cobb County Commission have individually voiced their support.
Kemp has defended his decision as a “measured action” to get Georgians back to work safely, given the social distancing restrictions that will apply to reopening businesses and his commitment to ramp up testing for COVID-19 and contact tracing patients who have tested positive to identify people with whom they have come into contact.
Trump said he has a good relationship with Kemp and noted he helped Kemp get elected by endorsing him before the 2018 Republican gubernatorial primary at a time he was trailing.
“Do I agree with him [on reopening businesses]? No,” the president said. “But I respect him and will let him make that decision.”
ATLANTA – State energy regulators are rolling out the rules that will govern the deployment of broadband service to communities in rural Georgia.
The Georgia Public Service Commission is directing the state’s electric membership corporations (EMCs) to submit a “cost allocation manual” that must be approved by the commission before they can start providing internet service.
The General Assembly passed legislation last year authorizing EMCs to deliver broadband service to their customers. The PSC signed off Tuesday on the first EMC service application, voting to approve a cost allocation manual submitted by LaGrange-based Diverse Power.
The lack of internet connectivity in rural Georgia has long been a concern, but broadband service has become even more critical amid the coronavirus pandemic, with students and businesses more reliant upon online communications.
“This is a major issue,” said Commissioner Jason Shaw of Lakeland, who represents mostly rural South Georgia on the PSC. “Hopefully, what we’re doing here will move the needle on rural broadband, which I think is the No.-1 issue facing rural Georgians.”
EMCs must show in their cost allocation manuals that they will not raise energy prices to their customers to support developing broadband service, not charge customers who subscribe to broadband less for energy than their other customers and that they have the financial assets to provide broadband.
While last year’s legislation lets EMCs get into the broadband business, the state House of Representatives passed a bill last month aimed at giving them financial incentives to do so. The measure, which cleared the House just before the General Assembly suspended the 2020 session because of COVID-19, will move to the Senate when lawmakers reconvene under the Gold Dome.
