ATLANTA – Legislation calling for a statue honoring the late Gov. Zell Miller to be placed on the grounds of the Georgia Capitol cleared the General Assembly Wednesday.
The state House of Representatives passed the bill 172-1 and sent it on to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk for his signature. The measure originated in the Georgia Senate, which passed it unanimously early this month.
Miller, a Democrat who served both as Georgia’s 79th governor and as a U.S. senator, died in 2018 at age 86 after battling Parkinson’s disease.
During two terms as governor in the 1990s, he spearheaded the creation of the popular HOPE Scholarship program, funded through the Georgia Lottery.
“Zell Miller has been called the governor who gave Georgia HOPE,” House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge,” said from the House floor before Wednesday’s vote. “Zell Miller had a view of this state where your opportunities were only limited by your willingness to work.”
Before ascending to the Governor’s Mansion in 1990, Miller served four terms as Georgia’s lieutenant governor.
After eight years as governor, Miller was appointed to the U.S. Senate in 2000 by then Gov. Roy Barnes following the sudden death of Republican Sen. Paul Coverdell. He decided not to seek election to a full six-year term in 2004.
Senate Bill 140, introduced by Sen. Jeff Mullis R-Chickamauga, calls for a six-member committee to choose the design of the statue.
Two members will be appointed by the House speaker and two will be named by the lieutenant governor. The final two members – one from the House and one from the Senate – will be chosen by the governor.
The bill also stipulates that no public funding go toward the statue. The money is to be raised through private donations.
Coronavirus has sickened hundreds of thousands people and killed thousands more in Georgia. (Image: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Judges and court staff in Georgia will be eligible for COVID-19 vaccines starting Wednesday amid a large boost in dose shipments from the federal government that kicked in this week.
The addition of Johnson & Johnson-brand vaccines has helped roughly double the weekly allocation sent to Georgia from 228,000 doses in recent weeks to 458,000 doses, Gov. Brian Kemp said at a news conference Tuesday.
Widening eligibility to judges and court staff comes as state officials eye opening up COVID-19 vaccines to all Georgians, potentially as soon as early next month.
“We are getting closer to that day,” Kemp said. “So I still feel very good about that timeline.
“As we get more vaccines, we’re going to open up this sucker to everybody.”
Georgians can pre-register for a vaccine appointment at myvaccinegeorgia.com even if they do not yet qualify under the governor’s eligibility criteria. They will be notified once they qualify and scheduled for an appointment.
Along with judges and court staff, Georgia’s vaccine eligibility list currently includes all residents ages 55 and older, health-care workers, nursing home residents and staff, first responders and people with physical, mental and behavioral health conditions.
State data shows roughly 2.7 million vaccines have been given in Georgia so far, though Kemp said that figure does not include about 250,000 doses that officials have identified as administered but that have not yet been reported by local providers.
Nearly 1 million of those vaccines have been given to Georgians ages 65 and older. About 70% of the state’s older and most vulnerable populations have received at least one dose, Kemp said.
With demand still sky-high for vaccines, Kemp said his office is warning many providers to stop withholding vaccines to make sure patients receive both doses and to administer them within 7 days – or face smaller allocations going forward as shipments to Georgia continue growing.
“To be clear: We are going to move these doses where the demand is,” Kemp said. “And we are going to ship these doses to where they’re being used most efficiently. That is my message today to providers.”
Demand has particularly fallen in rural South Georgia, possibly due to doubts over the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness, the governor added. He urged everyone to schedule appointments for the vaccine so that enough Georgians will have immunity to effectively halt the virus’s spread.
“Vaccination is our ticket back to normalcy,” Kemp said. “The more people who are vaccinated, the more lives are saved and the quicker we get back to our normal way of life.”
The boost in vaccine shipments also comes as Georgia prepares to open five new mass vaccination sites Wednesday in Savannah, Columbus, Waycross and Bartow and Washington counties. Those add to four other sites already open in metro Atlanta, Macon, Albany and Habersham County.
As more Georgians are vaccinated, the number of people who are contracting COVID-19 and being hospitalized by the virus is continuing to decline after a sharp winter outbreak, said Georgia Public Health Commissioner Dr. Kathleen Toomey.
“This is a good sign,” Toomey said on Tuesday. “We would like to keep it down and keep it declining in the weeks ahead, and everybody being vaccinated will help with that effort.”
More than 837,000 people had tested positive for COVID-19 in Georgia as of Tuesday afternoon, with roughly 199,000 more reported positive antigen tests indicating likely positive results. The virus has killed 15,928 Georgians.
ATLANTA – Legislation that would take away the power of county boards of health to appoint local health directors and give it to the state public health commissioner cleared a Georgia House committee Tuesday.
Under current law, Commissioner Dr. Kathleen Toomey selects directors of each of the state’s 18 health districts, Sen. Dean Burke, R-Bainbridge, chief sponsor of Senate Bill 256, told members of the House Health and Human Services Committee.
But county officials hold veto power over the commissioner’s choices, Burke said. That becomes time consuming in the larger districts, which contain up to 20 counties, he said.
“It’s very unwieldy to have to meet with every county to get approval of her choices,” Burke said. “We’re giving the commissioner the power to hire who she wants to work with.”
But David Will, a lawyer representing the Lawrenceville-based health district that includes Gwinnett, Newton and Rockdale counties, said the bill would take away all local governance the health districts have enjoyed for 50 years.
“It has worked well. There’s no reason to change it, especially during a pandemic,” he said. “We don’t need a cookie-cutter approach to dictate how each director is selected.”
Rep. Sharon Cooper, R-Marietta, the committee’s chairman, disagreed with Will’s assessment. While she praised the work of the Gwinnett, Newton and Rockdale health district, she said other districts around the state have been uncooperative.
Cooper said some districts have rejected telemedicine as a treatment option, refused to provide prenatal care and balked at other state directives, including a mandate that patients getting flu shots wait 15 minutes before leaving a clinic.
“We have pockets of really functioning areas, but those are very few,” she said. “We need some oversight.”
Sherwin Levinson, executive director of Metro Reserve Corps East Metro, a volunteer organization that supplements the public health services the Gwinnett, Newton and Rockdale health district delivers, suggested the legislation exempt districts that are nationally accredited.
“Some of our health districts are not working,” he said. “Don’t hurt the ones that are working and have at the ones that don’t.”
The original bill Burke introduced in the Senate would have given the state much broader powers over local health districts, including their ability to make their own rules.
“The broader reorganization is still needed,” Burke said Tuesday. “This is a baby step in that direction.”
The Senate passed the bill last week 37-14, with Democrats and Republicans on both sides of the issue. It now moves to the House Rules Committee to schedule a floor vote in that chamber.
Legislation before the General Assembly would pave the way for college student athletes in Georgia to receive financial compensation when institutions profit from their playing abilities.
The bill, sponsored by House Higher Education Committee Chairman Chuck Martin, R-Alpharetta, would allow Georgia athletes to earn compensation for the use of their “name, image or likeness” by the public, private or technical colleges they attend.
It aims to prepare Georgia for the legal impacts of a future when – either by choice or a judges’ orders – the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) starts permitting student athletes to gain financial benefits for their talents.
“This is just to put a straw man in place should it be decided at the national level so our student athletes can avail themselves of it,” Martin said Tuesday at a state Senate Higher Education Committee hearing.
“I don’t know if this is the best thing happening for college student sports, but it is happening. So we need to be prepared.”
Chances for Martin’s bill to clear the state legislature look promising after the House passed it unanimously earlier this month. No votes were taken on the bill during Tuesday’s committee hearing.
Under the bill, college athletes in Georgia would be required to take five hours of a “financial literacy and life skills workshop” to ready them for the added burdens of receiving compensation for sports performance.
That requirement drew praise Tuesday from Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, who echoed Martin in saying a crash course in personal finances would help college athletes avoid predatory influences seeking to take advantage of their earnings.
“That seems to be incredibly worthwhile to put in place to equip these young athletes with the skill sets they’re going to need,” Orrock said.
Martin’s bill would also bar schools from offering cash or other incentives to high-school recruits and would require sports agents seeking to represent college athletes to obtain the same type of license needed to represent professional athletes.
The bill comes amid a flurry of lawsuits in recent years challenging the NCAA’s authority to block student athletes from receiving compensation while also profiting from their skills through advertising and video games.
Backers of allowing college-athlete compensation contend students are treated unfairly by institutions that gain from their playing abilities but often do not cover all the costs to attend school like textbooks and travel, even with full scholarships.
Opponents, including the NCAA, have argued paying or otherwise incentivizing college athletes would detract from their focus in school classes and other on-campus activities, as well as trampling on colleges’ authority to set their own rules when it comes to athlete compensation.
Most immediately, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to hear a case from California brought by a former college athlete, West Virginia running back Shawne Alston, who sued the NCAA and several college leagues in 2014 for not allowing compensation to pay for costs beyond what his scholarship covered.
The NCAA appealed to the Supreme Court after Alston won in lower and appellate courts. The high court is scheduled to take up the case on March 31.
ATLANTA – Georgia Chief Justice Harold Melton asked members of the General Assembly Tuesday to pass legislation aimed at shrinking a serious backlog of jury trials resulting from the coronavirus pandemic.
The bill, which the Georgia Senate passed overwhelmingly early this month and is now before the state House of Representatives, would allow trial courts to continue suspending statutory speedy trial deadlines during judicial emergencies such as the pandemic.
Last week, Melton ordered jury trials to resume in Georgia a year after he suspended them because of COVID-19. But so many cases have piled up that it will take two or three years to work through the backlog, he said during his annual State of the Judiciary message to a joint session of the House and Senate.
“Not only will we have significantly more cases, but the process of moving them through the system at least initially will go more slowly due to all the safety protocols,” he said. “As we resume jury trials, if we’re only able to move at a third of the pace, we will be relieving some of the pressure, but the backlog will continue to grow.”
Melton praised judges and court staffs across the state for adjusting quickly to the new conditions the pandemic forced upon them, as in-person proceedings went virtual.
“This past year, I have witnessed first-hand that your judges and courts are remarkably resilient, flexible, creative, and committed in their mission to uphold the law and mete out justice fairly and equitably,” he said. “Justice and the rule of law cannot wait on a pandemic.”
But while the courts have remained open, jury trials had to be put on hold to protect public safety, Melton said.
“The decision to open jury trials is different from opening private businesses,” he said. “Unlike when individuals choose whether to visit a store, or a gym, or a restaurant, when a citizen receives a jury summons, that’s not an invitation, it’s an order. We compel people to come to court.
“It has therefore been critical that when we resumed jury trials, we did it right – with the necessary safeguards in place.”
Melton thanked members of a task force he appointed last May that developed those safeguards to protect court employees and the public.
The chief justice also noted that Tuesday’s appearance before the General Assembly was his last. He announced last month he would be stepping down in July after 16 years on the Georgia Supreme Court.
The justices unanimously elected Presiding Justice David Nahmias last week to succeed Melton as chief justice and selected Justice Michael Boggs to assume the role of presiding justice.
“There are no two more able,” Melton said. “Our state is extremely fortunate to have them in those roles.”
