ATLANTA – Initial unemployment claims in Georgia fell again last week as the jobless rate declined throughout the state.
Out-of-work Georgians filed 125,725 first-time unemployment claims last week, down 6,272 from the previous week, the state Department of Labor reported Thursday.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate fell in all of Georgia’s Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and regions. Statewide, joblessness in May declined to 9.7%.
“These positive indicators are promising for Georgia’s job market,” state Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler said. “I believe we are beginning to stabilize our economy, allowing Georgians to again focus on employment and spending.”
The improving jobs numbers follow several months of highly volatile economic performance statistics. After posting the lowest unemployment rate in Georgia history early this year, the business lockdown resulting from the coronavirus pandemic forced the state’s jobless rate to a record high.
As the economic downturn deepened, the labor department processed more than 2.7 million initial unemployment claims during a 14-week period beginning in mid-March, more than during the last seven years combined. More than 1 million were determined to be valid, and 91% of those claims have been paid.
Since mid-March, the most initial claims by far – 677,982 – have come from the accommodation and food services job sector. The health and social assistance sector has accounted for 322,892 claims, followed closely by retail trade with 308,934 claims.
The labor department has paid out more than $6.9 billion in state and federal unemployment benefits during those 14 weeks.
More than 101,000 jobs are listed online at EmployGeorgia.com for Georgians to access. The labor agency offers online resources for finding a job, building a resume, and assisting with other re-employment needs.
ATLANTA – The Georgia House of Representatives has given final passage to two health-care measures aimed at improving outcomes for new mothers and elderly Georgians.
The House voted unanimously late Wednesday to expand Medicaid coverage for low-income mothers in Georgia and impose additional regulations on the state’s elder-care homes in the era of COVID-19.
In both cases, the state Senate made changes to the bills, which had originated in the House earlier in this year’s legislative session, before the General Assembly took a three-month hiatus to discourage the spread of coronavirus.
House Bill 1114 authorizes the state to apply for a federal waiver that would allow Georgia to offer Medicaid coverage to income-eligible women up to six months post-partum. The current Georgia Medicaid program only permits coverage for up to two months.
The bill also would extend Medicaid coverage to lactation specialists for mothers having trouble feeding their babies.
The Senate amended the bill to make the expanded coverage subject to the availability of funding for the initiative, a key consideration in light of the state’s current budget woes.
House Bill 987 increases training requirements for staff members in elderly care facilities and raises the number of staff who would have to be on site at any given time to watch over residents. It would also increase fines for violations or if a facility causes a resident’s death.
When the bill reached the Senate, it was amended to require elderly care homes to report when residents or staff members have tested positive for COVID-19. Senators also set out specific cleaning procedures and put in a provision requiring facilities to keep on hand at least a seven-day supply of protective equipment including masks and gowns.
“We’re going to be a leader in this country on taking care of our elderly in assisted-living facilities,” said House Health and Human Services Committee Chairman Sharon Cooper, R-Marietta, who sponsored both bills.
Both measures now head to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk for his signature.
Tonya Anderson (D-Lithonia) sponsored second-chance legislation that cleared the General Assembly on June 24, 2020. (Official Georgia Senate photo)
Second-chance legislation allowing Georgians to clear minor offenses off their criminal records in the interest of helping them secure jobs and housing passed out of the General Assembly Wednesday.
The measure by Sen. Tonya Anderson, D-Lithonia, aims to give people with first-time misdemeanor and non-violent felony convictions in Georgia the ability to petition superior courts to have those records shielded from public view.
Senate Bill 288 cleared the state Senate by a unanimous vote Wednesday afternoon after gaining passage in the House earlier in the day. It now heads to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk for his signature.
“This bill is intended to give people a second chance, have their records restricted and position them for reemployment, for housing and to go back to school,” Anderson said from the Senate floor Wednesday.
If signed into law, Anderson’s bill would require qualified ex-offenders to wait until four years after completing their sentences before filing a petition. They would have to keep a clean record during that time.
It would not apply to people with convictions for certain domestic and nuisance charges like family violence and stalking, plus other major offenses like sex crimes, drunk driving and child molestation.
State law currently requires people with certain downgraded charges, vacated convictions and cases that have languished for years to petition a court to restrict access to their records. But only certain misdemeanor convictions can be shielded such as alcohol-related charges, first-time drug possession and crimes committed before age 21.
More than 4.4 million people have a criminal record of at least an arrest in Georgia, totaling nearly half the state’s population, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Allowing many of them to block prospective employers or landlords from seeing minor crimes for which they have completed sentences should improve the state’s economic and social environment, Anderson has said.
Rep. Houston Gaines, who co-sponsored the measure in the House, framed the bill’s passage Wednesday as a win for criminal justice reform.
“This bill is one of the most important criminal justice reforms we’ve made as a state,” said Gaines, R-Athens.
Anderson’s bill was scaled back from its original version in mid-March that proposed automatically restricting public access to most kinds of criminal convictions and arrest histories, including for convicted felons who completed their sentences long ago.
The final version of Anderson’s bill, which limited the kinds of convictions eligible for records shielding, marked a compromise with prosecutors that gained backing from the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia.
Asked in March about the changes, Anderson said her measure was a step forward in a longstanding push by criminal justice advocates to help many Georgians avoid being denied good jobs and housing due to a criminal record.
“Bite the elephant one bite at a time,” Anderson said. “It’s something to get people started.”
ATLANTA – Legislation intended to put some transparency into the discharge of harmful ethylene oxide gained final passage in the General Assembly Wednesday.
The state House of Representatives voted 150-1 to require manufacturers that use ethylene oxide to report any waste spills or gas releases to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) within 24 hours. The director of the EPD then would post the information on its website.
Ethylene oxide is used primarily to sterilize medical equipment, a particularly important function in the era of coronavirus, said Rep. Don Parsons, R-Marietta, chairman of the House Committee on Energy, Utilities & Telecommunications. Parsons presented Senate Bill 426, a bipartisan measure that the Senate passed in March, on the House floor on Wednesday.
State Sen. Brian Strickland, R-McDonough, introduced the legislation last winter after public concerns were raised over unreported releases of the cancer-causing chemical at a Sterigenics plant in Smyrna and a facility in Covington operated by BD Bard.
Georgia lawmakers are mulling a proposed excise tax for vaping products in the 2020 legislative session. (Stock photo by Lindsay Fox)
Georgia House lawmakers revived a proposal Wednesday to slap an excise tax on vaping in Georgia and raise the minimum age for who can purchase tobacco and vaping products from 18 to 21.
A bill sponsored by Rep. Bonnie Rich, R-Suwanee, was shot down on the state House floor in March over a late change that cut the proposed 7% excise tax in half for so-called “modified-risk” tobacco items, like smokeless dip.
Lawmakers in the House Ways and Means Committee picked Rich’s proposal back up Wednesday with the full 7% tax restored for all tobacco and nicotine products, including vaping devices.
It was inserted into a measure by Sen. Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, that aims to raise the statewide minimum age to 21 for both cigarette and vaping purchases.
The committee sent Mullis’s measure, Senate Bill 375, to the full House for a vote. If passed, it would then need approval from the Senate.
Rich, whose House Bill 864 originally carried the tax proposal, said in committee Wednesday the charge on vape sales would help promote safety for kids as more and more youth acquire a taste for vaping in Georgia and the U.S.
“We need to get in front of this and start regulating this industry to protect our youth,” Rich said.
Vaping manufacturers and store owners opposed Rich’s bill earlier this year, warning that higher prices on vaping products could drive smokers back to tobacco after using vaping devices to kick the habit. They also argued certain licensing rules in the bill could kill small businesses in Georgia.
“When you raise the price of this product, people will go back to smoking,” said Keith Gossett, owner of Bucky’s Vape Shop in Columbus, at a hearing in February.
Nearly 500,000 people die each year in the U.S. from tobacco-caused diseases, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But supporters of a tax and tighter rules on vaping have stressed the need to protect children from vaping, particularly in light of the risk that kids who get hooked on nicotine could gravitate to cigarettes.
They point to data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration showing nearly 4 million middle and high school students used vaping products in 2018, a large increase from the prior year.
“The vape epidemic among our youth has not subsided,” Rich said Wednesday.
The return of Rich’s vape-tax proposal comes as lawmakers mull raising the current sales tax on cigarettes to help plug the state’s budget deficit amid the economic slowdown spurred by coronavirus.
A separate measure to boost the cigarette sales tax from 37 cents per pack to $1.35 that backers say could raise hundreds of millions of dollars for the state passed out of the Senate Finance Committee in recent days and now awaits consideration on the Senate floor.
