ATLANTA – The General Assembly will meet Nov. 3 to begin a special session to redraw Georgia’s congressional and legislative districts.
Gov. Brian Kemp announced the date for the session in a proclamation late Thursday.
Under Georgia law, the legislature must adopt new district boundaries every 10 years to account for population shifts reflected in the U.S. Census.
Two legislative committees, one from the Georgia House of Representatives and one from the state Senate, held hearings across the state during the summer to gather public feedback ahead of drawing the new maps.
Lawmakers heard an earful from representatives of civil rights and voting rights groups calling for new district lines that accurately reflect population gains by minority groups during the last decade.
But if the past is any indication, the party in control of the General Assembly – in this case, the Republicans – will draw maps aimed at regaining losses during the last two election cycles in both the legislature and the state’s congressional delegation.
With dramatic growth having occurred in metro Atlanta and some parts of North Georgia since 2010, the maps also are expected to shift more legislative districts north of Interstate 20. Rural counties in the southern half of the Peach State likely will see a reduction in the number of districts reflecting losses in population sustained by those areas.
Among other things, lawmakers during the special session also will be asked to ratify executive orders Kemp issued in May to suspend the collection of state gasoline and diesel fuel taxes. The governor acted after the shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline disrupted fuel supplies.
However, the special session will not include legislative proposals to address the crime wave that has hit Georgia during the past 18 months. Kemp had indicated in July that he planned to put crime on the agenda for the special session.
Also absent will be discussion of whether the state should expand its Medicaid program to cover more uninsured Georgians. Democrats have been calling for adding Medicaid to the special session agenda, but the governor has consistently opposed the idea due to the costs.
The special session likely will run at least into the week of Thanksgiving. The last redistricting special session, which took place in 2011, lasted for two and a half weeks.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia’s prison system needs a total overhaul to stem the neglect and violence rampant inside prison walls, a Democratic member of the General Assembly said Thursday.
State Rep. Josh McLaurin, D-Sandy Springs, chaired a hearing that included jarring testimony from mothers of Georgia inmates who have died while in the state’s custody or suffered serious neglect.
“The level of human rights abuses is intolerable,” said McLaurin, chairman of the Georgia House Democratic Caucus Committee on Crisis in Prisons, which was formed to raise public awareness of conditions in the prisons. “We want to change the system. We want there to be a reckoning.”
Thursday’s hearing came a week after the U.S. Justice Department announced it has opened an investigation into conditions inside Georgia’s prisons following complaints from civil rights groups and others who have expressed concerns about inmate safety.
The federal agency cited deaths of at least 26 inmates in state custody by confirmed or suspected homicide last year and 18 so far this year.
The Georgia Department of Corrections responded to the announcement with a statement denying has failed to protect inmates in its charge from harm due to violence.
On Thursday, Jennifer Bradley told the committee she is still seeking answers following the stabbing death of her son, Juwon Frye, at Macon State Prison in March of last year. She said it was inmates – not prison officials – who first notified her of his death – and she still has not received his belongings.
Stephanie Lee testified that her son, Justin Wilkerson, who suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, made multiple suicide attempts before being killed last January after he was placed in a cell with an inmate serving a life sentence without parole for malice murder.
“The GDC (Georgia Department of Corrections) failed to address and treat his mental illness,” Lee said. “[Then], the GDC failed to protect Justin.”
Atteeyah Hollie, a lawyer with the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights Georgia’s prison system is guilty of a glaring lack of transparency.
Hollie said the agency hasn’t issued a press release following an inmate suicide in two years. Thirteen inmates died in state custody during the first half of this month, again with no word from the department, she said.
“We shouldn’t have to search Facebook to learn about deaths in state-run institutions,” she said.
That lack of transparency includes information on the spread of COVID-19 inside the prison system.
Hope Johnson, a data specialist with the UCLA School of Law’s COVID Behind Bars Data Project, said the Georgia prison system’s 2.4% case fatality rate for COVID-19 – which compares the number of individuals who die from COVID to the number who contract the disease – is second worst in the nation.
However, the data is incomplete because the department stopped reporting new deaths from the virus last March, Johnson said. The agency also removed data on the number of COVID cases among Georgia inmates in July, she said.
A correctional officer at Lee Arrendale State Prison, who declined to identify himself for fear of retaliation, testified via cellphone the prison system is plagued by a shortage of guards and medical staff.
He said Arrendale has six to seven correctional officers on duty “on a good day” to watch 1,200 inmates.
“In these situations, you have to take into consideration your own safety versus their safety,” he said.
McLaurin said Georgia Corrections Commissioner Timothy Ward was invited to testify at Thursday’s hearing but declined to attend.
At the end of the hearing, McLaurin said Democrats will continue pressing the agency to make needed reforms.
“The only way we can get change is telling these stories,” he said. “These problems won’t go away if we ignore them.”
This story available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Georgia’s two U.S. senators and a metro Atlanta congresswoman are pushing to include an expansion of Medicaid in the final version of a budget reconciliation bill now before Congress.
“Health care is a right, and if you believe health care is a right, you don’t believe it’s a right in 38 states,” Sen. Raphael Warnock said Thursday, referring to the states that have already expanded Medicaid, a list that does not include Georgia. “Can you imagine Social Security being a right in only 38 states? Can you imagine Medicare being available in only 38 states?”
Warnock was joined at the Thursday morning announcement by Sen. Jon Ossoff and U.S. Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux, D-Suwanee. Also attending were Democratic U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina.
It’s not just the name of the bill, it’s a fact: Medicaid saves lives.⁰⁰Alongside a bicameral group of colleagues, I’m urging the Senate to include a comprehensive, stable Medicaid fix in the upcoming reconciliation package.
“We’re urging Congress to include Medicaid expansion in the reconciliation to ensure every American has access to the health care they need,” Ossoff said, “and end the needless suffering and death in states where politicians, out of contempt for low income people and vain partisanship, refuse to do what’s right.”
State Democratic lawmakers are asking Gov. Brian Kemp to include Medicaid expansion in the legislature’s upcoming redistricting special session.
A letter 67 Democratic members of the Georgia House and Senate signed in July called the need for legislative action to expand Medicaid coverage “urgent.”
Georgia Democrats have pushed for Medicaid expansion since then-President Barack Obama steered the Affordable Care Act through a Democratic Congress in 2010 with no Republican votes.
But Georgia remains among 12 Republican-run states that have chosen not to expand Medicaid, with former Gov. Nathan Deal and now Kemp citing the program’s costs.
Kemp prefers a more limited expansion, which the Trump administration approved last year. But the new Biden administration has put that plan on hold because of concerns that it includes a work requirement for Medicaid recipients.
“One of my top priorities in Congress has been ensuring that Americans of all backgrounds have access to quality, affordable health care, which is why I introduced the Medicaid Saves Lives Act in the House,” Bourdeaux said Thursday. “In Georgia’s 7th [Congressional] District, across the state, and around the entire country, too many people are unable to access the medical care they need due to the Medicaid coverage gap.
“Despite significant financial incentives provided by the Affordable Care Act and the American Rescue Plan, Georgia and the 11 other non-expansion states still have refused to act,” she said. “Expanding Medicaid has the potential to provide health care coverage to over four million Americans, including 646,000 Georgians. We must change the notion that the state you live in can dictate your access to affordable health coverage.”
Georgia Democrats’ July letter claimed a full-blown Medicaid expansion for those with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level would cover nearly 500,000 Georgians who make too much to qualify for traditional Medicaid but can’t afford to buy private health insurance.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
The Arch on the campus of the University of Georgia
ATLANTA – The University System of Georgia is trying to fend off a rebellion from a group of University of Georgia faculty determined to impose a mask mandate in violation of system policy.
A letter from Jeffrey Bennetzen, a geneticist at UGA, dated Sept. 20 served notice of plans for the mask mandate to discourage the spread of COVID-19.
“In order to protect our students, staff and faculty colleagues, we will wear masks and will require all of our students and staff to wear masks in our classes and laboratories until local community transmission rates improve, despite the ban on mask mandates and the USG policy to punish, and potentially fire, any faculty taking this action,” the letter stated.
Georgia Democrats are siding with the faculty on the issue. Democratic members of the state House Higher Education Committee called on Gov. Brian Kemp last week to drop his opposition to mask mandates on university system campus and leave the decision to local administrators at the system’s 26 colleges and universities.
Kemp has consistently opposed both mask and vaccine mandates as divisive, instead urging Georgians to wear masks and get vaccinated voluntarily.
Teresa MacCartney, the system’s acting chancellor, defended that policy at a Board of Regents meeting two weeks ago and again in a written response to Bennetzen’s letter dated Wednesday.
In the letter, MacCartney reported that cases of COVID-19 are declining at campuses across the university system. The 77 cases reported at UGA this week marked a sharp decrease from previous weeks, she wrote.
At the same time, only eight of 1,167 tests for the virus came back positive, the lowest rate since UGA began surveillance testing last year, she wrote.
“Due to this decline in transmission, your interest to disregard USG policy and require masks ‘until local transmission rates improve’ is not necessary,” MacCartney wrote to Bennetzen.
MacCartney also cited an executive order Kemp issued in May prohibiting any entities affiliated with state government – including the university system – from imposing vaccine mandates.
“We know the single most effective way to keep from getting the virus that causes COVID-19 is to get vaccinated, and the system has committed to making the vaccines as accessible as possible to everyone,” she wrote. “This effort is critical, and I am asking for everyone’s help as we focus on vaccination to protect our communities.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – A veteran nurse who was allegedly attacked by a violent patient was one of several speakers Thursday before a state Senate study committee formed to look into violence against health-care workers.
“I was attacked by a patient who had already attacked one of our technicians,” a nurse who identified herself only as Destiny, said. “While I was trying to de-escalate the situation, the patient lunged at me, grabbed my hair and twisted it in her hands. I was punched and kicked several times; I was bit; and she tried to drag me into the bathroom.”
Destiny, who works at Northeast Georgia Health System’s Braselton location, said it took five nurses and three security guards to restrain the patient. She said she suffered a back injury, multiple scratches and bruises, and weeks of headaches and anxiety as a court date nears.
“I’ve been asked multiple times, am I sure I want to press charges,” she said. “The patient and her family have requested my home address, and now they know where I am. I work 12- and 14-hour shifts, and I have a son and daughter who are sometimes home alone.
“We are here to take care of patients,” she said. “We are not here to be harmed.”
According to a study from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, health-care workers account for approximately 50% of all victims of workplace violence.
But Deborah Bailey, executive director of government affairs at Northeast Georgia Medical Center, told the committee 75% of all workplace assaults in the U.S. involve health-care workers.
“Only 30% of nurses and 26% of physicians actually report those incidents,” Bailey said. “Violent altercations are so common now that most employees consider them just part of the daily job.”
Workers in health-care settings are four times more likely to be assaulted than workers in private industry, according to the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
“Alarmingly, the actual number of violent incidents involving health care workers is likely much higher because reporting is voluntary,” the commission stated.
Kevin August, a veteran former police officer and FBI official and now director of security at Grady Memorial Hospital, said any legislation addressing attacks on health-care workers must come with enforcement powers.
“Training and more staffing are imperative, but if police aren’t enforcing the laws and judges aren’t punishing it, this problem will never be solved,” he said.
Lindsey Caulfield, chief marketing and experience officer at Grady, said health care is the fastest-growing industry in the nation, and health-care and social service workers are five times more likely to suffer violent workplace injuries than other workers.
“Eighty percent of these workplace violence incidents in healthcare settings are patient on provider,” Caulfield said.
Anna Adams of the Georgia Hospital Association (GHA), said rising cases of violence are occurring throughout the state, not just metro Atlanta.
“The pandemic has highlighted our major workforce shortage,” she said. “These types of attacks are often covered under worker’s comp, and figures show 22% of these claims are filed due to injuries inflicted by a patient, a member of a patient’s family, or a co-worker.”
Dr. Kathleen Toomey, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health, said stresses brought on by the pandemic, coupled with easy access to social media, are also factors.
“One nurse who was involved in an attack had her home address posted on social media, where the public was invited to harass her,” Toomey said. “At one north Georgia mobile vaccination site, the staff were heckled and intimidated to such a degree they were forced to close the site.”
Adams said a GHA survey shows most Georgia hospitals see violence against healthcare workers from mentally ill patients or patients suffering from behavioral health issues.
State lawmakers passed a resolution creating the study committee earlier this year. Its mission is to look into the problem of violence against health workers in the state.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
