ATLANTA – Georgia has joined a 48-state legal settlement requiring C.R. Bard Inc. and its parent company to pay $60 million for the deceptive marketing of transvaginal surgical mesh devices.
Thousands of women implanted with surgical mesh have made claims that they suffered serious complications resulting from the devices, including erosion of mesh through organs, pain during intercourse, and voiding dysfunction.
“Failing to adequately inform patients and health-care providers of the serious risks associated with these devices put the welfare of countless women in jeopardy,” Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said. “This settlement sends a strong message that these practices are unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”
The lawsuit filed by the state alleged that C.R. Bard and parent company Becton, Dickinson and Company misrepresented or failed to adequately disclose serious and life-altering risks of surgical mesh devices, including chronic pain, scarring and shrinking of bodily tissue, recurring infections and other complications.
Although C.R. Bard has stopped selling transvaginal mesh, the settlement requires the company to adhere to certain terms if they reenter the transvaginal mesh market.
The company must provide patients with understandable descriptions of complications in marketing materials; train independent contractors, agents, and employees who sell, market, or promote mesh regarding their obligations to report all patient complaints and adverse events to the company; and make sure its practices regarding the reporting of patient complaints are consistent with federal requirements.
Georgia’s top school official aims to make year-end standardized tests count “essentially zero” toward students’ final grades in the 2020-21 school year amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
State School Superintendent Richard Woods is also poised to recommend waiving performance consequences for teachers tied to the annual Georgia Milestones exams and let local schools decide when to administer the year-end tests.
Woods immediately pledged to water down the tests in defiance and urged that students and teachers “not worry about the tests.”
Next week, Woods plans to recommend the state Board of Education approve lowering the 20% course grade weight that the tests normally carry to 0.01% — or “essentially zero” since state law prevents the tests’ weight from being 0%, according to a news release from the state Department of Education.
“Georgia will abide by federal law, but we are not going to layer additional stress and burden onto our students and teachers during this time,” Woods said in a statement. “In this environment, these tests are not valid or reliable measures of academic progress or achievement, and we are taking all possible steps at the state level to reduce their high-stakes impact.”
The board’s next meeting is scheduled for Oct. 1.
In a letter sent Sept. 3, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told Georgia school officials they “should not anticipate” receiving approval to scrap the annual assessments this year, citing the need to maintain performance standards and data-tracking for student achievement.
Georgia officials submitted the testing waiver request in June to abstain from year-end tests as the state’s roughly 2,800 public schools grapple with resuming classes online and in-person amid the virus. The waiver request drew broad support from students, parents, teachers and other Georgians who were recently surveyed.
On Thursday, Woods reiterated his strong opposition to DeVos’ decision on the testing waiver.
“I remain disappointed and disheartened by the federal directive to administer high-stakes tests in a pandemic,” Woods said.
The Georgia Association of Educators backed Woods’ move to reduce testing grade weights and urged Gov. Brian Kemp to sign an executive order allowing education officials to relax the performance consequences for teachers tied to the tests.
“This action would not eliminate accountability for teachers and administrators, but rather promote shared accountability and mutual support amongst educators, families and the community to ensure students emerge from this crisis physically, socially, emotionally and academically healthy,” said the association’s president, Lisa Morgan.
ATLANTA – Deteriorating public support for law enforcement is driving police officers away from the profession and making it harder to attract new recruits, representatives of state and local police agencies said Thursday.
While cops expect criminals to see them in a negative light, bad feelings about the police are spreading to ordinary citizens and even elected officials, Butch Ayers, executive director of the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police, told the state Senate Study Committee on Law Enforcement Reform at its kickoff meeting.
“Officers are asking themselves, ‘Why am I staying here?’ ”
Ayers said. “We cannot attract people to this noble profession if we continue to vilify the profession.”
Police officers in cities across America have been targets of violent elements of otherwise peaceful protests since the death of George Floyd last May, a Black man who died after a white police officer in Minneapolis kneeled on his neck.
In the most recent incident, two Louisville, Ky., police officers were shot and wounded Wednesday night hours after a grand jury indicted a former city police detective for wanton endangerment for allegedly shooting into the home of a neighbor of Breonna Taylor but did not charge any officers in the fatal shooting of Taylor.
“We have bad actors, but we do not systematically do wrong,” Terry Norris, executive director of the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association, told committee members. “We’re not the enemy.”
The Senate formed the study committee in June to consider whether state laws governing policing need to be changed. Practices the panel plans to review include use-of-force policies, police chokeholds, no-knock warrants and the use of “certain chemicals or projectiles” for crowd control, according to the resolution creating the committee.
Much of Thursday’s discussion focused on police officer training.
Chris Wigginton, director of the Georgia Public Safety Training Center in Forsyth, said his facility’s 275 active training courses include instruction in community policing and how to de-escalate confrontations.
“These are geared toward understanding your community and diverse groups,” he said.
All law enforcement trainees in Georgia must complete 408 hours of instruction at the Forsyth facility or one of more than two dozen other training academies across the state before they can hit the streets, said Mike Ayers, executive director of the Georgia Peace Officer Standards Training Council, which oversees certification of police officers.
But the average training requirement nationwide mandates 650 hours, he said.
“There are topics we are not able to address,” he said.
Ayers said one reason police officers in Georgia are leaving law enforcement in increasing numbers is they’re not getting enough “resiliency” training to help them cope with the mental stress that comes with the job.
“Police officers see the worst in society,” he said. “We have a tendency to project that onto everyone we encounter. … Hopefully, we can address these issues before they appear on the front page of a newspaper.”
Some of the law enforcement officials who testified Thursday pushed back on reform proposals that have surfaced across America during the recent protests, including defunding the police.
“Right now, there isn’t enough funding to have the police officers we need or the training they need,” Butch Ayers said.
Norris said taking away “qualified immunity” from police officers, which shields them civil lawsuits for actions they take that would be considered reasonable under the law, is also a non-starter in the law enforcement community.
“If you eliminate qualified immunity, you wouldn’t have anybody who wanted to do this job,” he said.
The study committee plans several additional meetings this fall. The panel is due to make recommendations by Dec. 15.
ATLANTA – Jobless Georgians filed 49,421 initial unemployment claims last week, up 7,341 from the previous week, the state Department of Labor reported Thursday.
First-time claims had been on the decline for seven weeks in a row, as Georgia businesses shut down last spring by the coronavirus pandemic reopened and brought back many of their employees.
More than 3.7 million Georgians have filed first-time unemployment claims since March 21, more than were filed during the last eight years combined.
On the positive side, most of those claims came early in the pandemic. As the state’s economy has reopened, unemployment has fallen from 12.6% last April to 5.6% last month, seventh lowest in the nation. Only Nebraska, Utah, Idaho, South Dakota, Vermont and North Dakota had lower unemployment rates than Georgia in August.
“As we continue to rebound from the economic devastation of COVID-19, we have seen our unemployment rate plummet the past several months on the statewide level and across Georgia in all our cities and communities,” state Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler said.
Meanwhile, eligible unemployed Georgians received a final round of supplemental payments this week through the federal Lost Wages Assistance (LWA) program, an initiative President Donald Trump announced last month after Congress failed to extend an earlier program that expired in July.
The LWA provided $300 weekly checks for six weeks, half of the $600 checks the earlier program had been providing.
Since March 21, the accommodation and food services sector has accounted for the most jobless claims in Georgia with 896,606. The health care and social assistance sector is next with 434,738 claims, followed by retail trade with 398,924.
More than 161,000 jobs are listed online at EmployGeorgia.com for Georgians to access. The labor department offers online resources for finding a job, building a resume and assisting with other reemployment needs.
“We have highly experienced staff to help to help get Georgians back into the workforce and business owners looking for employees to fill critical positions as we continue to recover from the pandemic,” Butler said.
Drop boxes to deposit absentee ballots ahead of the Nov. 3 general election have been set up by the dozens across Georgia as an option for voters who prefer not to show up in-person at a polling place during the COVID-19 pandemic.
First rolled out for the June 9 primaries, the secure drop boxes have been installed in roughly three-fourths of Georgia’s 159 counties over the past few months. They are located on government properties like county elections offices, courthouses, city halls and local commissions.
So far, around 1.2 million Georgians have requested absentee ballots for the Nov. 3 election, according to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. State election officials expect to see record turnout for the coronavirus-troubled election.
Many of those asking for absentee ballots were voters who voted by mail for the primaries in June and opted to automatically receive an absentee ballot for November. Others have used the state’s new online portal to request a mail-in ballot.
The drop-box option has been pitched as a way to motivate more Georgians to vote early in the general election rather than flood polling places on Election Day. Officials expect long lines even with a large vote-by-mail and early voting campaign.
The drop boxes are anchored to the ground, monitored by constant surveillance video and can only be opened by a team of two poll workers. They will be emptied at least once every 72 hours until Oct. 26, after which they will be emptied every 24 hours.
Beyond the drop boxes, county election officials will be able to scan absentee ballots starting two weeks before Election Day to help tabulate huge numbers of ballots more easily.
Casting ballots early should help “relieve that pressure valve” poised for local polling places for in-person voting, Raffensperger said this week.
“Everyone is working together to make sure we have as smooth a process as possible,” Raffensperger said.
