ATLANTA – A coalition of mental health and substance abuse organizations is pushing for Georgia to do something about the state’s dismal status as 51st in the nation in access to mental health care.
The Georgia Mental Health Policy Partnership and Substance Use Disorder Community Monday unveiled a “unified vision” for how to improve mental health and substance abuse care.
The coalition is asking Gov. Brian Kemp and the General Assembly to make a series of policy changes taking advantage of $170 million in federal coronavirus relief funding allocated to Georgia since last year.
“The unified vision sets out a transformational roadmap that will significantly improve the lives of Georgians with mental health and substance abuse disorders,” Jeff Breedlove, chief of communications and policy for the Georgia Council on Substance Abuse, said during a news conference at the state Capitol.
Improving mental health and substance abuse services has been on state elected officials’ radar screens for several years. In 2019, Kemp formed a commission of state lawmakers, health-care professionals, mental-health advocates and criminal-justice officials to address the issue.
This year, the General Assembly unanimously passed legislation aimed at increasing the delivery of care via telemedicine. Among other things, the bill prohibits requiring patients to receive in-person medical consultation before getting telemedicine services and prohibits separate insurance deductibles for telemedicine care.
The measure was sponsored by Rep. Sharon Cooper, R-Marietta, chairman of the House Health and Human Services Committee, who has written two textbooks on psychiatric nursing. Cooper said Monday her late mother and sister have suffered from mental illness.
“I understand what it’s like to be a family member trying to help someone who’s having a problem in this area,” she said.
The coalition’s unified vision makes a series of recommendations, including addressing a severe shortage of mental health care workers and improving access to mental health care by improving broadband service.
“If we’ve learned anything from COVID-19 … that public health emergency has underscored the need for high-speed broadband connectivity, particularly in rural Georgia,” said Kim Jones, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Georgia chapter.
The coalition also is recommending that the state put greater emphasis on early identification of people suffering mental illness or substance abuse issues and require insurance companies to treat patients with mental illness the same as those with a physical illness.
State Rep. Gregg Kennard, D-Lawrenceville, said another step will be finding ways to treat Georgians suffering from mental illness or substance abuse without throwing them in jail.
“The biggest mental health provider in our state is the prison system,” he said. “We need to turn that ship around.”
Jones said the coalition will push for comprehensive legislation addressing its recommendations during this winter’s General Assembly session.
ATLANTA – Former Gov. Nathan Deal endorsed Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black Monday for the U.S. Senate.
“I’ve known Gary for over 20 years. We worked together for the entire time that I was governor,” said Deal, who served as Georgia’s chief executive from 2011 until the beginning of 2019. “He’s done a great job representing everyone in our state. That’s the kind of leadership we need in Washington.”
Black, elected agriculture commissioner in 2010, entered the race for the Republican nomination last month. The winner of next spring’s GOP primary will challenge incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock.
Several other Republicans with high name recognition are said to be thinking about running. However, they are waiting to see whether University of Georgia football icon Herschel Walker enters the contest.
Former President Donald Trump has been pushing for a Walker candidacy, but Walker has yet to make a decision.
Black, like Deal, hails from northeastern Georgia. He has a long background in farming, including a stint as president of the Georgia Agribusiness Council before running for agriculture commissioner.
Two lesser-known Republicans also have entered the Senate race: Latham Saddler, an Atlanta banking executive, and Kelvin King, a small business owner and Air Force veteran from Atlanta.
While U.S. senators normally serve six-year terms, Warnock is being forced to run for the seat next year even though he just won a runoff election in January. The Democrat is currently completing the unexpired term of former Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., who retired at the end of 2019 due to health issues.
ATLANTA – Former state Rep. Meagan Hanson is running for Congress in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District in Atlanta’s northern suburbs.
Hanson, a Republican from Sandy Springs, served one term in the Georgia House of Representatives before losing her reelection bid in 2018. A lawyer by profession, she went on to serve as executive director of Georgians for Lawsuit Reform, a conservative legal activist group.
Hanson is seeking to unseat two-term U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Roswell, who flipped the seat from Republican control in 2018 for the first time in decades.
“With the direction the country is going, the America I had growing up will not be the same America my kids will live in. I’m not content to watch this nation’s promise slip away,” Hanson said Monday. “We need a congresswoman who will fight for Georgia’s families, not [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi’s liberal agenda. I’ll work every day to lower taxes, end out-of-control government spending and get America back on track.”
The 6th District, covering East Cobb, North Fulton and North DeKalb counties, is one of two north of Atlanta now in Democratic hands that Republicans will be targeting next year. The other is held by Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux, D-Suwanee, a freshman who won the open 7th Congressional District seat after Republican incumbent Rob Woodall retired.
Eric Welsh, a retired U.S. Army colonel and former Coca-Cola executive, is also vying for the Republican nomination to oppose McBath next year. Welsh entered the race in May.
ATLANTA – The state of Georgia has given the green light to plans to build a commercial spaceport in southeastern Georgia.
In a letter dated Thursday, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR) agreed with officials from Camden County that no insurmountable environmental concerns stand in the way of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issuing an operator license for Spaceport Camden.
The go-ahead from the DNR marks a major step toward making the project a reality.
“With DNR’s concurrence and the release of the Final Environmental Impact Statement by the FAA, regulators at all levels of government have given Spaceport Camden a thorough review and found it consistent with state and federal environmental regulations,” Camden County Commission Chairman Gary Blount said Friday.
“For over 50 years, nature and space activities have coexisted at other spaceports. We aim for that same type harmonious relationship at Spaceport Camden! We look forward to a final decision from the FAA on our application later this month.”
Supporters are counting on Spaceport Camden to create up to 2,000 jobs and help convince the next generation of aerospace engineers, many of whom graduate from Georgia Tech, to stay in Georgia. The project has the backing of Gov. Brian Kemp and the state’s congressional delegation.
The DNR letter cited a series of steps Camden County has agreed to take to minimize environmental damage associated with commercial satellite launches. For one thing, the state agency cited the county’s decision to launch only small rockets from the site rather than medium-to-large rockets, which will reduce the “debris dispersion radius” and decrease the area to be closed to the public before and during launches.
The county also agreed to use “turtle-friendly” lighting to avoid disturbing nesting sea turtles, work with the DNR to limit launches during bird-nesting season and limit closings of public waterways during weekends and holidays, and during organized fishing tournaments.
Such provisions don’t go nearly far enough, said Dick Parker, one of a group of property owners on nearby Little Cumberland Island who oppose Spaceport Camden.
“Georgia DNR is giving Spaceport Camden permission to use more than 2,700 pristine acres of state-owned salt marsh, tidal creeks, and the Satilla River for debris dispersion, allowing exploding rockets and fuel to fall into the marsh, creeks, and river,” he said. “It’s hardly different from letting someone back a dump truck up to the marsh and empty their trash.”
Parker also pointed to the potential rocket-failure rate of up to 20% Camden County officials projected in their license application.
“With plans for 12 launches per year, that’s more than two failures every year,” he said. “Hundreds of gallons of fuel and hundreds of rocket parts will penetrate the soft marsh mud and pollute the tidal creeks with each failure.”
ATLANTA – Six years ago, the General Assembly passed legislation allowing Georgia property owners to use third-party financing to install rooftop solar panels at their homes and businesses.
Now, representatives of solar installers and their environmentalist allies are warning the momentum the industry has built since 2015 could grind to a halt unless the state Public Service Commission (PSC) orders Georgia Power to lift a cap on a pilot rooftop solar program limited to 5,000 customers. The program is about to hit that cap because of an unexpected surge of interest.
“It’s a very popular program,” Don Moreland, policy chairman for the Georgia Solar Energy Association and owner-operator of Solar CrowdSource, told the PSC during a recent hearing. “[But] once we hit this cap … it is going to cause the rooftop market to completely crash.”
The commission approved the pilot program as part of Georgia Power’s 2019 rate case. It got off to a slow start, with just 1,347 applications last year.
But interest has taken off this year. Just in May and June, Georgia Power received as many applications as in all of 2020 and three times the number that came in during 2019.
“The large volume of applications have been, quite frankly, surprising,” said Steven Hewitson, a lawyer representing the Atlanta-based utility at the July 1 hearing. “That’s slowed down the processing time.”
The pilot program is due to be reevaluated next year when Georgia Power brings its next rate case before the PSC. The utility wants to keep the cap at 5,000 customers until then.
“The limitations specifically were put in place so the company and the commission could evaluate the impact of … the program to the system and other customers,” Hewitson said. “There’s no reason to revisit that limitation now.”
But Moreland said the PSC isn’t expected to issue a ruling in the rate case until late next year. Waiting 18 months for a decision on lifting the cap would create a long period of uncertainty that could “chill the [solar] market,” he said.
“This is a popular policy right now,” added Russell Seifert, founder and CEO of Creative Solar USA. “It’s working.”
Seifert and others point to neighboring states that are more aggressively pursuing rooftop solar than Georgia. Florida leads the way with more than 85,000 installations, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
More than 23,000 rooftops in South Carolina sport solar panels, and more than 21,000 solar installations have taken place in North Carolina.
A coalition of solar installers recently sent a letter asking Georgia Power to lift the cap on its rooftop solar pilot program.
“Rooftop solar means local jobs. It puts money directly into Georgia’s economy,” Seifert said. “[Lifting the cap] will allow the industry to continue its steady growth, provide clear market signals to promote additional investment and allow the pilot to continue until the commission is able to fully review it.”
Mark Woodall, legislative chair for the Georgia chapter of the Sierra Club, said Georgia Power has emphasized large “utility-scale” solar projects over rooftop solar because the larger projects are less expensive per kilowatt-hour of power they produce.
“Utility-scale is cheaper, but we need all the solar we can get,” he said.
Jill Kysor, a senior attorney with the Atlanta-based Southern Environmental Law Center, praised the PSC for supporting utility-scale solar investment. The latest example came July 7 when the commission approved Georgia Power’s plan to buy 970 megawatts of solar power from five other utilities.
“We have become a solar leader on utility-scale solar because of commission action,” Kysor said. “There’s an opportunity to follow through with rooftop solar without any big risk.”
Even if the PSC doesn’t lift the cap on rooftop solar installations in Georgia, the General Assembly may step in. Legislation introduced in the state Senate in March would limit the fees utilities can charge property owners who install rooftop solar and allow the commission to lift any cap a utility places on the number of solar installations under certain circumstances.
Senate Bill 299 didn’t receive a hearing because it was introduced so late in this year’s legislative session. But it’s still alive in the Senate Regulated Industries and Utilities Committee with the influential bipartisan backing of Senate Rules Committee Chairman Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, and Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler, D-Decatur.
