Rep. Vernon Jones (D-Lithonia) announced he will resign his Georgia House seat on April 22, 2020. (Official Georgia House photo)
State Rep. Vernon Jones announced Wednesday he will resign his seat effective immediately following his endorsement of President Donald Trump’s reelection bid last week.
Jones, D-Lithonia, 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 Wednesday. “Someone else can occupy that suite.”
The resignation marks the end of Jones’ 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.
Before his resignation announcement Wednesday, Jones was angling for a third consecutive term in the staunchly Democratic 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.
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.
Georgia barbershops and hair salons will be allowed to reopen this Friday.
ATLANTA – A frequently asked question since Gov. Brian Kemp announced some businesses will be allowed to reopen in Georgia this Friday is how people are supposed to get a haircut while practicing social distancing.
The Georgia Board of Cosmetology and Barbers has addressed that issue by releasing a set of guidelines the state’s barbershops and hair salons should follow that combines social distancing with screening, cleaning and the use of personal protective equipment.
“Under our sanitation laws and rules, we are charged with the responsibility of protecting consumers from the spread of contagious diseases everyday in our salons,” board Chairman Kay Kendrick said in a prepared statement. “By adding the safety guidelines that have been developed by the board and some of our industry leaders in the cosmetology and barber profession, we feel that our professionals will be able to do an even better job of protecting themselves and their clients.”
While common sense dictates a barber or hair stylist cannot remain at least six feet from a customer, the guidelines require employees to wear masks at all times and suggest shops consider providing masks to customers. Also, customers should wear masks “to the extent possible” while receiving services.
The guidelines also suggest shops use touchless infrared thermometers to take the temperature of employees each day and of customers entering the premises. Shops should additionally screen customers by asking them whether they have experienced a cough or fever or been near anyone exhibiting these symptoms within the last 14 days.
Shops also should consider seeing customers by appointment only and limit the number of customers in their waiting areas.
All shops should be thoroughly cleaned and disinfected before reopening. Shops should then maintain regular disinfection of all tools, shampoo bowls, pedicure bowls, work stations, treatment rooms, and restrooms.
“As we begin the process of safely reopening our economy, it is critical that business owners, operators, and contractors adhere strictly to increased safety and sanitation guidelines to mitigate the spread of COVID-19,” said Kemp, whose reopening announcement drew criticism both inside Georgia and nationally, particularly over reopening barbershops and hair salons. “Working together, I am confident that we can get these sectors back online and work to ensure the health and safety of all Georgians.”
Coronavirus has sickened thousands and killed hundreds in Georgia. (Image: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
By Dave Williams and Beau Evans
ATLANTA – Public health experts and local elected officials raised concerns Tuesday over whether Georgia businesses are ready to reopen safely while the coronavirus pandemic continues to chalk up new infections and deaths.
But business leaders welcomed Gov. Brian Kemp’s announcement Monday that some businesses will be allowed to reopen as soon as the end of this week as a first step toward getting critically needed cash back into their coffers.
Kemp said Monday a host of businesses including gyms, fitness centers, bowling alleys, tattoo parlors, barbershops and hairdressers will be allowed to reopen this Friday. Dine-in restaurants and movie theaters can throw open their doors next Monday.
While the number of Georgians who have died from COVID-19 was up to 799 as of noon Tuesday and positive cases had risen to 19,881, Kemp said the number of new cases is flattening and emergency room visits are declining. He also announced a plan to increase both testing for the virus and the contact tracing that follows patients who test positive for coronavirus.
“Our citizens are ready for this,” the governor said Monday. “People know what social distancing is.”
“We have the hospital bed capacity and the ramped-up testing and contact tracing,” he said. “I believe we will be able to stay on top of it.”
Georgia mayors criticize Kemp
Mayors across Georgia criticized reopening businesses as premature and potentially dangerous.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said during an interview broadcast by CNN that any progress Georgia has made against the spread of coronavirus stems from the statewide shelter-in-place order Kemp imposed through the end of this month.
“If we’re in a better position, it’s because we’ve been aggressive in asking people to stay home,” she said. “I’m perplexed that we have opened up in this way. I don’t see that it’s based on anything that’s logical.”
Athens Mayor Kelly Girtz, who issued a shelter-in-place order two weeks before the statewide order went into effect early this month, said it’s too soon to reopen businesses while there’s still a lack of adequate testing.
“It’s like sending a football player onto the football field saying, ‘Eventually, we’re going to give you some pads and a helmet. Eventually,’” he said.
Barbershops, beauty parlors and nail salons are exactly the type of settings where it’s impossible to maintain social distancing, said Albany Mayor Bo Dorough, also in an interview with CNN.
Dorough worried Albany, one of the hardest-hit outbreak areas in the country, could see a reversal of gains made recently toward curbing hospital admissions and viral transmissions due to social distancing.
“I understand the governor had a difficult decision to make,” Dorough said. “I do, however, think he made the wrong decision.”
Health experts fear another outbreak
Several public health experts also cast doubt Tuesday on whether the state is ready to reopen social gathering spots like restaurants.
Georgia has not met the federal criteria for seeing a steady decline in cases over a 14-day period before many businesses should start reopening, said Carlos del Rio, who chairs the Hubert Department of Global Health at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health.
“Clearly, we’re not there,” del Rio said on Facebook. “We haven’t even met that requirement.”
That opinion was echoed by Grace Bagwell Adams, an associate professor of health policy and management at the University of Georgia. She also noted testing still is not comprehensive enough to quickly track where the virus is spreading.
“In all likelihood, we’ll see the cases go back up,” Adams said Tuesday. “That’s just the reality of the way this virus spreads.”
Federal and state officials often cite modeling from the University of Washington that shows Georgia has passed its peak in the number of COVID-19 cases and hospital admissions. But other models compiled at the University of Georgia paint a different picture of the transmission rate, said Andreas Handel, an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at UGA’s College of Public Health.
That modeling shows COVID-19 cases appear to be flattening, but it’s not clear yet whether they have started to decrease, Handel said Tuesday. Until a steady decline happens, reopening businesses where people tend to congregate too soon could spark another outbreak, potentially worse than what Georgia has seen so far, Handel said.
“In my opinion, it’s too early,” Handel said. “I don’t see the numbers cropping up to where it would be comfortable for reopening.”
While infection rates will likely go up if restrictions are relaxed now, it’s tough to predict how dramatically they might go up due to the small pool of test results the state has so far, said Isaac Fung, an associate professor of epidemiology at Georgia Southern University’s Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health.
The trade-off, Fung said, is the elderly and people with chronic health issues who are most at risk from the virus have to keep isolated from the rest of the world longer than they would if popular gathering spots were to stay closed.
“The transmission is still going on in the community,” Fung said Tuesday. “Technically, there’s no end in sight until we have a very effective vaccine.”
Business leaders praise reopenings
While public health experts are worried about reopening businesses, one provision of Kemp’s order stands to benefit the health-care industry. Hospitals in Georgia will be allowed to resume elective surgeries, an important component of their revenue streams the COVID-19 outbreak has cut off.
Piedmont Healthcare’s 11 hospitals canceled elective surgeries back in early March.
“We took all of our resources, and really the services that provide the economic funding for the organization, and shut it off to build capacity in the system to be able to take care of the COVID patients as the pandemic rolled through Georgia,” Piedmont CEO Kevin Brown told the Atlanta Business Chronicle earlier this month.
“It’s an enormous fiscal cost to the organization, as well as other health care systems here in Georgia and across the country,” Brown said.
Chris Clark, president and CEO of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, said Tuesday the criticism of Kemp’s decision to reopen businesses ignores the “measured and reasonable approach” the governor is taking.
Businesses that wish to reopen will have to follow a lengthy set of guidelines, including taking their employees’ temperatures, practicing safe distancing, disinfecting the premises and providing masks, he said.
“[Kemp] didn’t just say, ‘The economy is open,’ Clark said. “Every business has to figure out how to operate in this new normal.”
Clark said the safety guidelines will require many businesses to limit the number of customers they can serve at a time.
“What they’re asking is just to do enough to get by in the short term,” he said. “This still isn’t going to save some businesses.”
Clark pointed out Kemp’s decision does not require businesses to reopen. In fact, he expects some will choose not to because they don’t feel ready.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger outlines absentee ballot initiatives in Georgia on April 9, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Georgia’s postponed primary election has drawn a federal lawsuit that seeks another delay to the end of June.
The suit, filed by a group of voters and advocates often at odds with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, also calls for his office to take several sanitation and security steps, including shelving a key component of the state’s new voting machines.
The Coalition for Good Governance is seeking to delay the June 9 primary until June 30 in the face of coronavirus, which has sickened thousands of Georgians and killed hundreds since last month.
The suit also asks the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia to force the state to scrap its new touchscreens for the primary in favor of all-paper ballots, which opponents of the new machines have sought in prior litigation.
The touchscreens, which figure as a critical part of the state’s 30,000 new ballot-marking devices, cannot be scrubbed and sanitized thoroughly enough to ensure the virus will not spread when voters use the screens to cast their ballots, the suit argues.
“The coronavirus will survive on the surfaces of touchscreen [devices] for days,” the suit says, “and using the [devices] for in-person voting will obviously enable the transmission of the COVID-19 virus.”
Additionally, the suit calls for the state to reimburse counties for providing Georgia’s roughly 8,000 poll workers with protective masks and gloves on Election Day and during early voting, and to expand several provisions for voting precincts to accept absentee ballots.
The 85-page complaint argues state elections officials are not prepared to hold the primary on June 9, even as Raffensperger’s office ramps up mail-in voting options amid the coronavirus scare.
“Unless in-person voting is carefully planned, regulated, and diligently managed, and unless significant changes are made to how people vote in Georgia, voting in Georgia will remain dangerous to voters and poll workers for the foreseeable future,” the suit says.
In a statement, Raffensperger dismissed the coalition’s claims and attributed the suit largely to political motives, particularly the push by many election advocates for all-paper ballots in Georgia.
“Groups across the country are disingenuously using a crisis to push their failed policies through the court system,” Raffensperger said. “For the liberals, it’s eliminating options for voters and moving to vote by mail.”
The Colorado-based coalition has clashed in the past with Raffensperger in court over the new machines, which opponents argue do not provide enough of a paper trail to guarantee voting integrity.
Raffensperger has repeatedly said the machines will be secure, noting they are the type of devices that the General Assembly last year mandated should be bought.
In recent weeks, Raffensperger postponed federal, state and local primaries originally scheduled for March and May until June 9, amid indications many poll workers might not show up for in-person voting and in the face of pressure from top Georgia lawmakers.
His office has pointed to federal law requiring deadlines for runoff results and ballot creation for the Nov. 3 general election as the reason why the June 9 primary likely could not be delayed again.
Raffensperger also touted steps his office has taken to expand mail-in voting, including by sending applications for absentee ballots to Georgia’s roughly 7 million registered voters – though the lawsuit argued thousands of voters have not received those applications since they were sent to residential addresses and not mailing addresses.
“As our secretary of state, I will continue to fight disingenuous groups who seek to take away options for voters,” Raffensperger said.
Raffensperger also said state officials are taking steps to “encourage the counties to maintain a clean and healthy in-person experience.” He did not specifically address what counties may do to keep the touchscreens clean throughout the voting process.
The lawsuit, citing directions from the device manufacturer, Dominion Voting Systems, claims the new voting machines would have to be shut down, wiped clean and dried after each time a ballot is cast to ensure proper sanitation.
Abiding by that cleaning protocol for every voter would “inevitably derail the in-person voting process and disenfranchise voters,” the suit says.
The suit also highlighted election issues seen earlier this month in Wisconsin’s primary election. News reports showed long lines of Wisconsin voters wearing face masks in the middle of the worst period of the coronavirus outbreak, sparking anguish over the potential health dangers and accusations of voter suppression.
“Unless injunctive relief is granted immediately, Georgia citizens will find themselves in the same position as Wisconsin citizens: unable to vote in person without exposing themselves to the virus [and] unable to vote absentee by mail because the state has not planned for and is not equipped to accurately process and count the anticipated deluge of absentee mail ballots,” the suit says.
Coronavirus has killed hundreds and sickened tens of thousands in Georgia. (Image: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
ATLANTA – Restaurants, gyms, barbershops and other popular gathering spots in Georgia will be allowed to reopen in the coming days amid signs the spread of coronavirus is slowing down, Gov. Brian Kemp announced Monday.
However, several businesses hit hard by virus-prompted closures will have to stay shuttered for the foreseeable future including bars, nightclubs, music venues and amusement parks, the governor said.
The phased approach follows guidelines from federal officials and President Donald Trump, who has urged states to reopen many businesses following weeks of widespread shutdowns.
Kemp stressed at a news conference Monday that businesses set to reopen must abide by the same social-distancing and sanitation measures as other businesses that were not forced to close amid Georgia’s shelter-in-place order.
“I think this is the right approach at the right time,” Kemp said. “It’s not just throwing the keys back to business owners.”
A host of businesses will be allowed to reopen on Friday including gyms, fitness centers, bowling alleys, tattoo parlors, barbershops, cosmetologists, hair designers, nail salons, estheticians, massage therapists and schools for those trades.
Dine-in restaurants and movie theaters will be allowed to reopen next Monday, Kemp said. Elective surgeries that were put on hold to help hospitals tackle COVID-19 patients will also be permitted to resume.
Additionally, churches will be allowed to hold in-person services so long as worshippers keep their distance from each other.
Meanwhile, many other establishments will not be allowed to reopen yet. They include bars, night clubs, amusement parks and live-performance venues.
Public schools in Georgia will “absolutely” remain closed for the rest of this school year despite the gradual reopening of other activities in the state, Kemp said.
The governor indicated he may not extend the statewide shelter-in-place order again after it expires at the end of this month. But he also urged seniors and people with chronic health issues to continue staying home until at least through May 13, when the state’s public health emergency is set to expire.
As of noon Monday, nearly 19,000 people in Georgia had tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel strain of coronavirus that sparked a global pandemic. The virus had killed 733 Georgians.
Still, national modeling and local data are starting to show a slowdown in the number of positive cases, hospital admissions and deaths traced to coronavirus, said Dr. Kathleen Toomey, the state’s public health commissioner.
On Monday, Toomey said Georgia is on track to see enough of a decrease in the rate at which the virus is spreading to likely be able to safely lift the statewide shelter-in-place order by month’s end.
By then, state officials working with volunteers and medical students should be well underway with a new effort to undertake massive statewide “contact tracing,” which will track in detail the web of interactions that those who contract coronavirus have with other people, Toomey said.
“This is the way we’re going to stop the virus,” Toomey said Monday. “This is the way we’re going to keep spread from occurring even as we begin to gradually open up the state.”
The governor also highlighted a push to increase the number of tests that can be done per day by local universities and the Georgia National Guard. More state testing should help reduce Georgia’s heavy reliance on commercial tests, which often come with slow result turnaround times.
As part of the testing push, Kemp touted a mobile screening app created by Augusta University that lets doctors diagnose a person’s symptoms via live video and, if necessary, formally refer that person to a nearby testing site.
The university has also started producing mouth swabs from 3-D printers to expand the availability of diagnostic testing supplies, Kemp said.
Augusta University will also host an operation center run by the National Guard that aims to tighten coordination between several state agencies on COVID-19 testing and information-sharing efforts.
“That will serve as Gov. Kemp’s unblinking eye on coronavirus,” said National Guard Adj. Gen. Thomas Carden.
At Monday’s news conference, the governor batted back skepticism from some health officials and experts over whether states like Georgia are ready to emerge from mandatory closures of gathering places like restaurants.
Kemp noted the phased-in reopening approach is meant to ease financial hardships for workers and business owners while giving health officials more time to ramp up testing and tracking programs, which will prove key once more people go back to work.
“These are tough decisions, no doubt,” Kemp said. “But we’ve also got to think about the effects on our economy and on these individuals from a mental health perspective, from a physical health perspective and literally for people being able to put food on their tables.”
The governor was backed in the decision by top state leaders like Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, who emphasized the challenge of balancing concerns for people who are losing loved ones to the virus with the possibility of many residents losing their livelihoods.
“These are measured, balanced steps,” Ralston said. “They don’t go as far as some would like. But I think they go as far as we can responsibly go at this time.”
