ATLANTA – Initial unemployment claims in Georgia fell below 100,000 last week for the sixth week in a row, the state Department of Labor reported Thursday.
During the week ending Sept. 5, unemployed Georgians filed 50,320 first-time claims, down 963 from the previous week. That brought the total number of initial unemployment claims filed since March 21 to almost 3.65 million, more than during the last eight years combined.
Meanwhile, the labor department announced claimants who qualify for the Lost Wages Assistance federal program President Donald Trump unveiled last month will be issued their first checks early next week.
Trump turned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for the $300 weekly unemployment supplements after Congress failed to extend an earlier program that had been providing Americans thrown out of work amid the coronavirus pandemic $600 per week.
FEMA announced Wednesday that all states will be limited to six weeks of benefits. The Georgia Department of Labor plans to issue checks for the first three weeks early next week and benefits for the final three weeks by late next week.
“We understood the president’s executive order was contingent upon the availability of funds,” state Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler said Thursday. “Although the six weeks of benefits wasn’t what many had hoped for, the additional support will make a big difference to some struggling to avoid eviction.”
Eligibility for the new program is based upon an individual’s weekly benefit determination – an amount calculated by a claimant’s reported wages. Individuals must have received a weekly benefit of at least $100 to be eligible.
Also, the recipient must be unemployed or partially unemployed due to disruptions caused by the pandemic.
Since March 21, the accommodation and food services job sector has accounted for the most initial unemployment claims in Georgia with 872,074. The health care and social assistance job sector is next with 426,927 initial claims, followed by retail trade with 391,387.
Nearly 150,000 jobs are listed online at EmployGeorgia.com for Georgians to access, a 50% increase over pre-pandemic levels. The labor department offers online resources for finding a job, building a resume and assisting with other reemployment needs.
Georgia’s public high school class of 2020 outperformed their counterparts around the nation on the SAT despite empty classrooms because of COVID-19.
ATLANTA – Georgia public-school students outperformed their peers around the country on the SAT for the third year in a row, the state Department of Education reported.
The Georgia high school class of 2020 recorded a mean score of 1043 on the standardized test, 13 points higher than the mean nationwide score for public schools.
The Georgia students scored 12 points higher in Evidence-Based Reading and Writing and one point higher in Math.
“The class of 2020 has faced unprecedented adversity and uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic,” State School Superintendent Richard Woods said. “Given all they have overcome, I am so proud of these students for becoming the third graduating class in Georgia history to beat the national average on the SAT.”
Members of the class of 2020 were forced to abandon their classrooms in mid-March when the coronavirus pandemic took hold in Georgia. The students ended up completing their final high school semester online.
On the down side, the state’s public-school students did experience a slight decrease in the SAT compared to 2019. The mean score of 1043 for 2020 was down five points from last year’s 1048.
However, the nationwide decrease in 2020 was nine points at 1030, compared to 1039 in 2019.
Public-school minority students in Georgia posted strong gains on the SAT this year.
Black students recorded a mean composite score of 946, well above the national mean of 914. Georgia’s Latino students recorded a mean composite score of 1010, compared to the national mean of 958.
ATLANTA – Georgia tax collections rose in August for the second month in a row after three straight months of declines at the height of the coronavirus-driven business lockdown.
The state took in nearly $1.89 billion last month, up $134.5 million – or 7.7% – over August of last year. August’s positive numbers followed a 17% increase in tax revenues in July.
Last month’s results were strong all around. Individual income taxes rose by 10.3% over August of 2019, while net sales tax collections were up 10.8%.
Corporate income tax revenues soared by 115.9%, driven by a 112.2% rise in tax return payments and a 29.1% decrease in refunds issued by the Georgia Department of Revenue. Corporate income taxes typically are more volatile than individual income and sales taxes.
With Georgians still driving and traveling less because of the pandemic, motor fuel and hotel/motel tax receipts declined in August compared to the same month last year. Motor fuel taxes were down 2.5%, while hotel/motel tax payments dropped by 30.4%.
The $25.9 billion state budget that took effect in July cut spending by $2.2 billion to help offset the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
The last two monthly revenue reports are seen as a sign Georgia’s economy is bouncing back from the business shutdown prompted by the COVID-19 outbreak and that further budget reductions might not be required.
Gov. Brian Kemp said last month he would not ask state agencies for additional spending cuts next year.
Georgia’s top elections official is facing backlash from voting rights groups and a former secretary of state over allegations he made this week on double voting in the state’s June 9 primary.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger held a news conference Tuesday to announce his office had launched investigations into 1,000 alleged instances of people intentionally voting twice in the primaries: once by absentee ballot and once in person on Election Day.
Raffensperger presented no evidence to support the double-voting allegations and stressed the investigation was in its early stages, leading several voter advocates to slam the Republican secretary of state for going public with the claims before bringing proof of wrongdoing.
Former Secretary of State Cathy Cox on Wednesday called Raffensperger’s announcement “highly irregular” and “improper”, and suggested his actions aimed to “sow chaos and cast doubt” on mail-in voting ahead of the Nov. 3 general election.
Cox, a Democrat who served as Georgia’s elections chief from 1999 to 2007, said typically investigations into voter fraud involve oversight from the state board of elections and are not directed entirely by the secretary of state. She said Raffensperger “seems to have already pre-judged these matters.”
“We don’t know those facts because there has been no investigation to this point,” Cox said in a news conference Wednesday.
“Instead, we had a secretary of state who jumped to the conclusion that a thousand people had committed a crime and would be prosecuted.”
Raffensperger’s office batted back criticism Wednesday and argued the only aim of the investigation is to curb chances for double voting.
“For Secretary Cox to say we shouldn’t investigate 1,000 attempts to steal an election is ridiculous and tone deaf to the needs of election integrity,” said Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs.
This election season has seen vote-by-mail skyrocket in Georgia amid health concerns brought by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The primary elections in June drew historic numbers of absentee ballots. The upcoming general election is also poised for huge mail-in voting turnout.
Raffensperger did not outline Tuesday how his office might know for certain that 1,000 people intentionally voted twice, other than to note that “we know one person was bragging about it down in Long County.”
He said around 150,000 voters applied for absentee ballots for the June primaries, then showed up to vote in person. Of those, he claimed 1,000 voters intentionally cast an absentee ballot before voting in person without first canceling their absentee ballots on Election Day as is required.
“We’ll be investigating all 1,000 [double-voting allegations] and we’ll get to the bottom of it,” Raffensperger said at Tuesday’s news conference.
He added results from the investigation should be ready “in the next couple of weeks.”
Shortly after, the Democratic Party of Georgia’s executive director accused Raffensperger of pushing “voting conspiracy theories and disinformation” that threatened to undermine confidence in the upcoming election’s integrity.
Raffensperger’s announcement was also called “a deliberate distraction” by the Georgia Voter Empowerment Task Force, a voting-rights group composed of representatives from several other groups including the NAACP and Fair Fight Action, which was set up by 2018 Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams.
“Under his so-called leadership and the ‘meltdown’ of an election over which he presided, Georgians faced barriers in casting their votes and having their votes counted,” the task force said in a statement. “Now, unsurprisingly, Georgia’s failed top elections official has decided to push a right-wing narrative spreading across the country rather than focusing on protecting the Constitutional rights of every Georgian.”
The Georgia chapter of the ACLU also urged anyone “threatened with prosecution” over double-voting allegations to contact them for legal assistance.
State lawmakers are pushing for Georgia voters to pass a ballot measure that would in set in stone how certain taxpayer dollars can be used for dedicated funds like cleaning up tire dumps.
Georgians will decide in the November election whether to approve a constitutional amendment that requires state funds reserved for specific purposes to be spent on those purposes, rather than funnel back into the all-purpose general fund.
The amendment’s approval would be a boon for Georgia environmentalists and local government officials who have watched large chunks of state funding meant to clean up discarded tires and remediate landfills steer away from those uses in recent uses and redirect into the general fund.
“Passage [of the bill] is going to be the answer to a conundrum that has been around for decades,” said Rep. Debbie Buckner, D-Junction City.
“Georgia law has never allowed for the dedication of funds to be collected by the state and to be used by the state agencies without a constitutional amendment. So therefore, it was left up to the goodwill of the General Assembly to try to make it happen.”
The amendment proposal, sponsored by the late Rep. Jay Powell, R-Camilla, would automatically require dedicated funds to be used for specific purposes without need for the General Assembly to pass additional legislation defining that purposes, as has been the practice in recent years.
State lawmakers aired their thoughts on the proposal in a meeting Wednesday of the Georgia Senate Interstate Cooperation Committee.
Several environment advocates and local government leaders highlighted how dollars have been pulled from a solid-waste trust fund meant to clean up tire dumps and other blight, and instead put toward broader uses as Georgia struggled to rebound from the economic recession more than a decade ago.
Roughly 40% of the $366 million raised for the dedicated fund since its creation in 1990 has not actually gone into the fund, said Fairburn City Councilwoman Hattie Portis-Jones.
“What we’d like to see is every dollar collected be used for its intended purpose,” Portis-Jones said at Wednesday’s meeting.
There would still be some caveats for spending funds if the amendment passes. Dedicated funds could not exceed 1% of total state revenues from the previous year. And in a financial emergency, the governor and legislature would have the authority to temporarily suspend the dedication of funds.
Gov. Brian Kemp signed the trust-fund ballot measure after the lawmakers passed it in March. It requires final voter approval in the Nov. 3 general election before taking effect.
