ATLANTA –– In a nation’s capital seemingly more hopelessly split by violent partisan rhetoric than ever, Georgia Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff and Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley from Iowa have introduced a bill designed to help rural communities fight the opioid epidemic.
On Wednesday, Ossoff and Grassley introduced the Rural Opioid Abuse Prevention Act, which they said would help ensure rural communities experiencing a high level of opioid overdoses have the resources they need to respond to the crisis.
The program aims to reduce opioid overdose deaths in high-risk rural communities while raising awareness about local opioid use and substance abuse.
“Like so many Georgians, I’ve lost friends to the opioid epidemic,” Ossoff said. “My bipartisan bill with Sen. Grassley will fund efforts in rural communities to prevent and treat addiction and to save lives.”
“We’ve made some progress in fighting the opioid crisis, but with overdose deaths rising, Congress needs to act,” Grassley said. “Our bill will help communities in Iowa and across the country to prevent and handle any surge in opioid overdoses.
The two senators said their bill would:
Identify current gaps in prevention, treatment, and recovery services for individuals who interact with the criminal justice system in rural areas.
Increase or create new efforts to address the opioid crisis in the community.
Dedicate funding to local governments and organizations with a documented history of providing services to rural communities or regions highly impacted by substance abuse.
Several national health and law enforcement praised the senators’ effort.
“This legislation will help rural communities across the nation receive grant funding to reduce opioid deaths by formalizing the Department of Justice rural responses to the opioid epidemic initiative,” said Alan Morgan, CEO of the National Rural Health Association. “As the opioid epidemic continues to worsen, it is critical that the federal government continues to invest in successful programs that help save lives, particularly in rural areas.”
“The opioid epidemic in rural America is unprecedented in our history,” according to a statement from the Small & Rural Law Enforcement Executives’ Association. “Many lives have been lost and families torn apart. Rural and tribal communities across our country continue to struggle with this epidemic and the COVID pandemic has made the drug overdose epidemic worse.
“Rural and tribal law enforcement are dealing with an increase in overdoses from illicit fentanyl, prescription opioids and heroin. Passing the Rural Opioid Abuse Prevention Act would provide resources to help rural communities combat opioid overdoses and provide alternatives to incarceration.”
“Additional substance abuse and addiction resources are desperately needed in all communities but particularly in rural communities where services and resources are lacking,” the Partnership to End Addiction wrote. “We hope this program will help to reduce the devastation of opioid overdoses on individuals and their families in rural communities.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The longest serving member of the General Assembly is about to leave the legislature for a post in the Biden administration.
President Joe Biden nominated Georgia Rep. Calvin Smyre, D-Columbus, Wednesday as U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic.
Smyre, elected to the House in 1974 at the age of 26, has held a number of leadership positions over the years. He is currently chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and served as the first Black chairman of the Georgia Democratic Party.
Smyre chaired the powerful House Rules Committee before Republicans took control of the chamber in 2004. He remains a member of that committee as well as the House Appropriations Committee, which is responsible for producing state budgets every year.
His legislative record is highlighted by the critical role he played in replacing Georgia’s segregation-era state flag featuring the Confederate battle standard and by his sponsorship of legislation making Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a state holiday.
Smyre also has been active in national Democratic politics, co-chairing Bill Clinton’s Georgia presidential campaigns in 1992 and 1996. He also served the 2000 Al Gore campaign as a deputy.
A banker by profession, Smyre rose through the ranks at Columbus-based Synovus to his current role as executive vice president of corporate external affairs. He also serves as president of the nonprofit Synovus Foundation.
“If confirmed, I look forward to advancing the interests of the United States in the Dominican Republic and our relationship with the Dominican government,” Smyre said in a prepared stastement. “As a longtime businessman and public servant, I will bring my background and experience to continue the significant work with an important economic partner in the Caribbean.”
Smyre would become the second Georgia legislator in recent years to serve as a U.S. ambassador. Former Democratic state Sen. David Adelman was U.S. ambassador to Singapore from 2010 until 2013.
On the Republican side, Atlanta lawyer and longtime Georgia GOP insider Randy Evans served as ambassador to Luxembourg from 2018 until early this year.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Legislators studying the issue of raising Georgia’s mandatory age for school attendance from 16 to 17 were met with tough, complex questions from some metro Atlanta school officials on Wednesday.
“The first question for us is, what is the reason for raising the age for compulsory attendance?” asked Gretchen Walton, compliance and legislative affairs officer for the Cobb County School District. “Our research shows raising the age for compulsory attendance doesn’t increase high school graduation rates. So what are some of the other reasons for doing so?”
“What can you do at age 16?” asked Nicole Holmes, chief academic officer for Cherokee County schools. “What else is out there except fast-food and retail jobs? You can’t join the military. Our own research shows that raising the mandatory attendance age has to be coupled with other programs that support the student. So what is the impact you are hoping for by raising the age?”
The meeting was the fourth of five by a Senate study committee formed earlier this year after state Sen. Lester Jackson, D-Savannah, introduced a bill to raise the school attendance age.
“This is an idea for which we’ve seen support in every meeting so far,” Sen. Chuck Payne, R-Dalton, the committee’s chairman, told Capitol Beat before the meeting.
Payne said the committee plans to file its recommendations for consideration in January, when the legislature reconvenes.
“We can already spot kids who are heading down the wrong path by middle school,” he said. “The question is, what more can we do to get them back on the right track?”
“The goal for all of us is to see every student graduate high school,” said Kevin Daniel, chief of staff for the Cobb school superintendent’s office. “The true challenge is seeing a student who doesn’t want to be there.”
Walton also asked how a new mandatory attendance age would be enforced.
“We have to determine if current high school truancy efforts are effective,” she said. “In Cobb, we have three truancy officers serving 17 high schools. That’s three officers for tens of thousands of students.”
State Sen. Gail Davenport, D-Jonesboro, said she thought every Georgia school district has truancy resources, but Walton said those decisions are left to individual districts.
State Sen. Lindsey Tippins, R-Marietta, said the reason Georgia hasn’t raised the mandatory age before now is because of “too many unanswered questions like these in the past.
“Keeping kids in school is going to take a much more comprehensive effort than this,” Tippins said. “Just raising the age from 16 to 17 is going to open a lot more unanswered questions, and the definition of insanity is taking the same approach, year after year, and expecting a different result.”
Jackson said Georgia’s current school attendance law is antiquated, dating back to the 1940s.
“We know if kids drop out of school at 16, the best they can do is maybe get a minimum wage job or eventually become dependent on the state,” he said. “We are in a technological environment now, and we need to prepare our young people is to take on challenges of tomorrow.”
“You can’t drink, smoke, vape, go into the military, get an adult driver’s license or watch an R-rated movie at 16,” added state Sen. Albers, R-Roswell. “But the one thing you can do, that will potentially wreck your entire life, is drop out of school. It’s crazy to think we would not require a kid at that age to be in school.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – A cybersecurity executive from Cobb County is seeking the Democratic nomination for Georgia secretary of state.
Michael Owens announced his candidacy Wednesday, vowing to make protecting voting rights a top priority. The Biden administration is suing Georgia over a controversial election law the Republican-led General Assembly passed last March, arguing it creates obstacles that target low-income minority voters.
“Our democracy is under attack,” Owens states on his campaign website. “We must act now to stop the chaos, corruption, and voter suppression that are undermining fair and free elections.”
The North Carolina native served eight years in the U.S. Marine Corps before earning a bachelor’s degree in technology and a master’s degree in business at Georgia Tech.
Owens has held leadership roles in some of the largest technology companies, including Atlanta-based Equifax and Cisco Systems.
Owens also has been active in politics, serving as chairman of the Cobb County Democratic Party from 2016 until 2019. He ran twice for Georgia’s 13th Congressional District seat, losing to incumbent U.S. Rep. David Scott, D-Atlanta, in the 2014 and 2020 Democratic primaries.
Two other Democrats also are running for secretary of state: Georgia Rep. Bee Nguyen of DeKalb County and Manswell Peterson, a former police officer and former college professor from Albany.
On the Republican side, incumbent Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is being challenged by two candidates who have criticized him for refusing to back former President Donald Trump’s allegations of voter fraud in Georgia in last year’s presidential election.
Trump has endorsed U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, R-Greensboro, in next May’s GOP primary. Also seeking the Republican nomination for secretary of state is former Alpharetta Mayor David Belle Isle.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – A legislative committee hearing Wednesday to begin exploring violent crime in Georgia turned into a debate over “broken windows” policing, which focuses on improving the appearance of neighborhoods to discourage crime.
The crime wave in Atlanta that began last summer can be traced in part to a deterioration of the city’s look and feel, said state Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, chairman of the Senate Public Safety Committee.
“There’s garbage flowing down the street,” he said. “There’s graffiti. There are people living and sleeping everywhere. There’s aggressive panhandling. We’ve got to come together to fix this.”
Butch Ayers, executive director of the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police, said blight fosters violent crime.
“It creates an atmosphere of lack of commitment, attention and public safety,” he said.
Ayers suggested a return to mandatory minimum prison sentences for using a firearm in the commission of a crime would help reduce the revolving door of repeat offenders frustrating police chiefs around the state.
Mandatory minimum sentences were popular during the 1990s, when state legislatures and Congress took away judicial discretion over sentencing by passing laws requiring minimum sentences for a host of crimes.
But Sen. Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain, said broken windows policing and mandatory minimum sentences have been shown to lead to mass incarceration that targets low-income minority communities.
“If we return to those older policies, we will return to an attack on Black, Brown and poor citizens of our state,” she said.
Several witnesses who testified Wednesday as the Senate committee launched an expected series of hearings on rising crime said the best way to address the problem is boosting police presence.
Col. Chris Wright, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Safety, said hiring enough law enforcement officers to accomplish that goal is a challenge. He said salaries aren’t high enough to attract recruits willing to do a difficult job.
“These front-line officers deal with the worst of humanity,” he said. “The salary has never been appealing for them to do the things they’re asked to do.”
Wright said recruiting has become an even tougher task since the “Defund the Police” movement began last summer as an offshoot of civil rights protests in cities across America.
Wright said the state patrol began a trooper training school last month with 71 recruits, well short of the goal of 100. Today, that cohort is down to just 49, he said.
But Wright told the committee Georgia’s new Crime Suppression Unit is making progress.
Since the multi-jurisdictional agency formed in April, the unit has made 12,208 vehicle stops and issued 8,503 citations, he said. Those stops led to the arrests of 212 fugitives – including 16 murder suspects – and the recovery of 67 stolen weapons and 161 stolen vehicles, he said.
Vic Reynolds, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, said the Crime Suppression Unit is an example of a growing partnership among law enforcement agencies that is starting to pay off.
“We probably have the best relationships we’ve had in a long, long time,” he said. “We can pick up the phone and work with [each other] day in and day out.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
