ATLANTA – First-time unemployment claims in Georgia increased last week after falling for two weeks in a row.
Jobless Georgians filed 28,387 initial claims last week, up 2,940 from the previous week, the state Department of Labor reported Thursday.
Meanwhile, the agency continued working to thwart a wave of fraud that’s been a nagging problem not just in Georgia but across the nation.
Nearly 10,000 Georgians who have returned to work during the last five months have continued to request unemployment benefits, state Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler said.
“It’s good to see Georgians go back to work, but it is critical that employees report these wages to us to avoid overpayments and potential legal action,” he said. “Reporting false information on your weekly certifications is against the law, and we are required to investigate any instances of potential fraud identified during wage cross-matches.”
Since coronavirus broke out in earnest in Georgia last March, the labor department has paid out more than $19 billion in state and federal unemployment benefits to nearly 4.5 million Georgians, more than during the last nine years combined prior to the pandemic.
Last week, the job sector accounting for the most first-time jobless claims was accommodation and food services with 5,705 claims. The manufacturing sector was next with 3,170 claims, followed by administrative and support services with 3,116.
More than 190,000 jobs are listed online at https://bit.ly/36EA2vk for Georgians to access. The labor department offers online resources for finding a job, building a resume and assisting with other reemployment needs.
Local schools in Georgia are gearing up to give teachers and staff doses of COVID-19 vaccine starting next week using a mix of on-campus curbside administration, large-scale distribution events and help from health clinics.
Teachers and school staff will be eligible for the vaccine and have first dibs next week at an 83,000-dose shipment of the newly approved Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine, as well as remaining supplies of the two-dose Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, according to state officials.
Many school districts plan to inoculate teachers and staff who want the vaccine late next week and over the weekend, aiming to give them some recovery time in the event of possible mild side effects such as temporary flu-like symptoms and pain where the shot was given.
State officials are letting local school administrators decide their own logistics for administering vaccines rather than imposing state rules, marking an approach that several local superintendents praised at a meeting Thursday to outline plans for providing shots and boosting confidence among hesitant teachers.
“We really appreciate the trust in us to develop plans to work for our system,” said Dougherty County School System Superintendent Kenneth Dyer.
Atlanta Public Schools, where about 66% of staff have said they want the vaccine, has asked for more than 800,000 doses and plans to hold a “vaccination event” later this month to administer them, said Superintendent Lisa Herring.
Other districts like Calhoun City Schools and Henry County Schools are set to conduct on-campus vaccine events via curbside shots and in school buildings with nurses trained to administer the vaccines.
Cherokee County schools plan to host an “arena-style” vaccine event next Thursday and Friday with help from the local health department to the roughly 50% of the district’s teachers who have shown willingness to take the vaccine, said Superintendent Brian Hightower.
“We’re ready to have this event and make it a successful event, and at the same time continue instruction in our schools” Hightower said. “We want not only our schools to be open but we want them to remain open.”
The school rollout comes after Gov. Brian Kemp last week expanded who is eligible for the vaccine to teachers, school staff, adults with behavioral and developmental disabilities and the parents of children with complex medical conditions. Those groups may start receiving the vaccine on Monday.
State School Superintendent Richard Woods said vaccinating teachers and staff is critical to returning all Georgia K-12 students to in-person classes. Currently, around 30% of students are still receiving online-only instruction, he said.
“We’re looking at how we can make a significant dent in the last third of the school year,” Woods said. “We still have work to do but it’s a big opportunity for us as a state to look forward and be prepared.”
ATLANTA – A legislative committee Thursday rejected a proposed statewide referendum to legalize pari-mutuel betting on horse racing in Georgia amid questions on both its wording and lack of details.
Members of the House Economic Development and Tourism Committee questioned the last half of the wording of the proposed ballot question at the end of the constitutional amendment.
After asking Georgia voters whether betting on horses should be legalized, the referendum went on to ask whether “to increase the minimum funding requirement for the educational shortfall reserves.”
The language referred to a provision in the constitutional amendment developed by Rep. Stacey Evans, D-Atlanta, aimed at securing some of the excess reserves that have been accumulating in the Georgia Lottery for the last decade.
In 2011, the state both increased the percentage of lottery funds dedicated to HOPE scholarships that must be set aside as reserves to cover any potential shortfalls and reduced the percentage of tuition covered by HOPE, Evans explained to the committee at a hearing earlier this week.
“We made it less likely we would need the reserves, and we increased the reserves,” she said.
As a result, more than $1.3 billion in reserves has piled up, Evans said. The state could safely plow back $730 million of that into HOPE scholarships, she said.
“This state did not approve a lottery just to have a lottery,” Evans said. “This money should not be sitting in an account.”
But on Thursday, Rep. Penny Houston, R-Nashville, said adding language on educational shortfall reserves to a referendum on horse racing would be misleading.
“It sounds like a trick question to me,” she said.
Other committee members asked why such issues as where racetracks would be located and what steps would be taken to protect racehorses from abuse weren’t included in the constitutional amendment.
Rep. Ron Stephens, R-Savannah, the committee’s chairman and the resolution’s chief sponsor, said those details would be addressed in a longer “enabling” bill that would be introduced next year if the constitutional amendment passes.
Under this year’s legislation, 10% of a state tax on the proceeds from horse racing would go toward health care, while 50% would go toward a new “Opportunity Fund” supporting college scholarships for Georgians with family incomes of less than $58,000 a year. The other 40% would go into the state’s general fund budget.
Stephens said the economic benefits of legalizing horse racing in Georgia would spread far beyond the racetracks themselves to let farmers in South Georgia who suffered crop losses from Hurricane Michael in 2018 get into the businesses of horse breeding and hay farming.
“It’s an opportunity to create a brand new industry in parts of our state,” he said.
But Rep. Randy Nix, R-LaGrange, who opposes legalized gambling, was skeptical.
“This pie-in-the-sky … will not take care of South Georgia,” he said.
The defeat of the horse racing measures leaves some other avenues for legalized gambling still alive in the General Assembly.
But a bill aimed at legalizing sports betting without changing the constitution has yet to reach the House floor.
A subcommittee of the House Regulated Industries Committee approved a constitutional amendment Wednesday encompassing casinos, horse racing and sports betting. But it has yet to be taken up by the full committee.
Time is growing short for action on legalized gambling. Crossover Day in the General Assembly – the deadline for bills to clear either legislative chamber to remain alive for further consideration – will fall on Monday.
Thousands gathered outside the State Capitol to protest police brutality and racial injustice as lawmakers met for the 2020 legislative session on June 19, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
A repeal of Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law that still allows people to detain suspected criminals in self-defense scenarios advanced in the state House of Representatives on Thursday.
Legislation repealing the slavery-era citizen’s arrest law comes after the death of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man gunned down near Brunswick last year by two white men who suspected him of burglary and tried to undertake a citizen’s arrest.
Sponsored by Rep. Bert Reeves, R-Marietta, the bill has broad support from advocacy groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the NAACP, as well as state Democratic leaders.
“We do not want private citizens, untrained, playing police officer,” Reeves said at a House Judiciary (Civil) Committee hearing on Thursday.
The committee passed his bill unanimously and sent it to the full House.
Reeves’ bill would scrap a state law in effect since 1863 that lets private citizens arrest someone who commits a crime in their presence or during an escape attempt, while still permitting off-duty police officers and business owners to detain those believed to have committed a crime on their property.
The changes would not affect Georgia’s self-defense and stand-your-ground laws, which require different legal standards for people to use reasonable force to protect themselves than the broad leeway to detain under the current citizen’s arrest law, Reeves said.
Criminal-justice advocates turned out Thursday to voice support for the bill. The president of the NAACP’s Georgia chapter, Rev. James Woodall, called it “very necessary legislation” that will right longstanding wrongs in Georgia law.
“Ultimately, we think this is a good bill,” Woodall said. “We think it’s good policy and we think it will save lives all across Georgia.”
Marissa Dodson, public policy director for the nonprofit Southern Center for Human Rights, said the bill would end vigilante justice often committed with racist motives that has been allowed to exist in Georgia since during the Civil War.
“We don’t want people to step into the shoes of officers in law enforcement,” Dodson said. “We want people instead to call upon them when it’s necessary.”
Repealing citizen’s arrest is set to be the biggest legislative win this year for Georgia Democrats who have also pressed for clamping down on officer use-of-force tactics, training and accountability after last summer’s nationwide protests against police brutality and racial injustice.
Gov. Brian Kemp talks about five new mass vaccine sites to open in Georgia on March 4, 2021. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Five more mass COVID-19 vaccine sites are set to open in Georgia later this month as teachers and school workers land on the eligibility list March 8, Gov. Brian Kemp said on Wednesday.
The additional vaccine sites add to four other locations that opened last month in metro Atlanta, Macon, Albany and Habersham County. The new sites will open in Savannah, Columbus, Waycross and Bartow and Washington counties.
The five new sites are scheduled to open on March 17 and administer a minimum of 20,000 doses each week with teachers, adults with behavioral and intellectual disabilities and parents of children with complex medical conditions first in line to receive shots.
“I feel like we’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Kemp said at a news conference at the state Capitol.
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.
The governor traced his optimism to the more-than 2 million vaccines given so far in Georgia and a coming boost of 83,000 weekly doses from the newly approved Johnson & Johnson vaccine. That will bring Georgia’s weekly vaccine shipments to 223,000 doses starting next week.
State officials have faced criticism for Georgia’s slow vaccine distribution since the initial two-dose vaccines started rolling out in December. Kemp has pinned the slow pace to tight vaccine supplies from the federal government.
Batting down criticism on Wednesday, Kemp said more than 860,000 Georgians ages 65 and older have received at least one dose of the vaccine so far, marking about 60% of that vulnerable population.
“I believe that we have done more than most any other state to protect those that are most vulnerable to COVID-19 with the limited supply that has been given to us by the federal government,” Kemp said.
He added state officials are now set to helping local school districts work through how to divvy up vaccines to teachers and staff starting next week. State School Superintendent Richard Woods is set to meet with about a dozen district superintendents about vaccine distribution on Thursday.
The new vaccine sites and shipments come as COVID-19 positive case rates and hospitalizations continue to drop after a spike over the winter holiday season.
Roughly 823,000 people had tested positive for COVID-19 in Georgia as of Wednesday afternoon, with nearly 192,000 more reported positive antigen tests indicating likely positive results. The virus has killed 15,349 Georgians.
The new mass-vaccination sites will be open at the following locations:
Gulfstream Aerospace: 500 Gulfstream Road, Savannah, GA 31408
Columbus Civic Center: 400 4th Street, Columbus, GA 31901
LakePoint Sports Complex: 261 Stars Way, Emerson, GA 30121
Sandersville Word of Life Church: 1214 South Harris St., Sandersville, GA 31082
Waycross Mall: 2215 Memorial Drive, Waycross, GA 31501
The four mass sites already open include:
Delta Flight Museum: 1220 Woolman Place SW, Hapeville, GA 30354
Habersham County Fairgrounds: 4235 Toccoa Highway, Clarkesville, GA 30523
Macon Farmers Market: 2055 Eisenhower Parkway, Macon, GA 31206
Albany branch of the Georgia Forestry Commission: 2910 Newton Road, Albany, GA 31701
