ATLANTA – Bipartisan legislation aimed at improving the delivery of mental health and substance abuse services in Georgia got its first hearing in the General Assembly Wednesday.
The 75-page Mental Health Parity Act would require health insurance companies to treat mental illness in the same way they treat physical illness. The parity provision also would apply to Georgia’s Medicaid and PeachCare for Kids programs and to the State Health Benefit Plan for Georgia teachers and state employees.
“If you’re covering physical, you’ve got to cover mental,” state Rep. Todd Jones, R-South Forsyth, one of the bill’s cosponsors, told members of the House Health and Human Services Committee.
The legislation, a major priority of House Speaker David Ralston, also would require care management organizations (CMOs) participating in Georgia Medicaid to dedicate at least 85% of their revenues to patient care.
And the bill contains a workforce development component in the form of a service-cancelable loan program aimed at recruiting mental health and substance abuse workers. The initiative is expected to cost $8 million to $10 million.
“Our biggest issue is workforce,” said Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, D-Decatur, another one of the bill’s cosponsors and a member of a commission formed in 2019 that included mental health, substance abuse and criminal justice experts. “Workforce issues are critical all across Georgia.”
The state has a long way to go to improve its mental health and substance abuse care system. In 2019, Georgia ranked 48th in access to mental health and substance abuse services.
”This is an opportunity for Georgia to pick up … and hopefully leap into the top five,” Jones said.
A key reality holding Georgia back is that many people with mental illness or substance abuse issues are behind bars rather than in treatment facilities.
“We’ve criminalized mental illness,” said LaGrange Police Chief Lou Dekmar, also a member of the Behavioral Health Reform and Innovation Commission. “The largest mental health facility in each county is the county jail.”
The bill drew strong support Wednesday from many mental health- and substance abuse-care advocates, particularly the parity provision that gives the legislation its name.
“Lack of parity leads to insurance companies denying coverage, long waiting lines, [patients] not receiving early treatment and families paying out of pocket,” said Helen Robinson, associate director of public policy at The Carter Center’s Georgia Health Parity Collaborative.
But others objected to a provision in the bill that would make it easier for police officers to forcibly take into custody a person in mental health crisis who has not committed a crime.
Another sticking point was over a registry the bill would create as a database to give mental health professionals a better idea of where to target services. Some speakers raised concerns the registry could invade patients’ privacy and subject them to the stigma associated with mental illness.
But committee Chairman Sharon Cooper, R-Marietta, said the heart of the bill would address that issue
“If we do nothing else … passing parity will help decrease the stigma,” she said. “We as a legislature will be saying, ‘Having mental illness is no different from having a medical illness.’ “
Cooper said lawmakers will work on incorporating some of the changes in the bill advocates have suggested and return with a new version of the legislation as early as next week.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Legislation prohibiting giant social media platforms from censoring content based on the author’s viewpoint cleared a Georgia Senate committee Tuesday.
Reining in social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter has become a national issue since the companies suspended former President Donald Trump’s accounts a year ago. Republican-controlled legislatures in Florida and Texas have adopted laws prohibiting such censorship, and Georgia could become the third state to take similar action.
Senate Bill 393 would apply only to social media platforms with more than 20 million followers, Sen. Greg Dolezal, the legislation’s chief sponsor, told members of the Senate Regulated Industries and Utilities Committee.
“Those are the ones that have near-monopoly status,” said Dolezal, R-Cumming. “They’re the public- common square.”
Adam Candeub, a law professor at Michigan State University, testified that giant social media platforms are driving debate on many pressing issues, including COVID-19 and climate change, but are telling only one side of the story while shutting out opposing views.
“We see fewer ideas, and they’re clearly having a slant,” he said. “Voices of moderation are being silenced.”
Dolezal said the slanting of information by social media platforms is cutting both ways.
“People on the left and right are concerned about who is doing the censoring,” he said.
Dolezal said his bill would still allow social media platforms to censor sexual or violent content if they choose.
The bill now heads to the Senate Rules Committee to schedule a floor vote.
This story isavailable through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Former Gov. Sonny Perdue is poised to become the next chancellor of the University System of Georgia.
The system’s Board of Regents voted Tuesday to name the Republican from Houston County the sole finalist to lead Georgia’s 26 public colleges and universities.
Perdue was Georgia’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction, serving from 2003 until 2011. Then-President Donald Trump tapped Perdue, an agribusiness owner, to serve as Secretary of Agriculture in 2017, and he became one of the few Cabinet secretaries to remain in his post throughout Trump’s four-year term.
The selection of Perdue came after a nationwide search. The selection committee interviewed many highly qualified candidates, board Chairman Harold Reynolds said Tuesday.
“This is a highly sought-after job, and that reflects well on our system,” he said.
The hiring process stretched out for months after former Chancellor Steve Wrigley retired last year and was succeeded by Teresa MacCartney as acting chancellor. Perdue had the support of some regents, but others were concerned about his lack of experience in education administration.
Gov. Brian Kemp recently replaced four regents with new appointees who favored Perdue, clearing the way for Tuesday’s vote, which was unanimous.
Student and faculty groups also have raised concerns about Perdue’s suitability for the job.
Matthew Boedy, president of the Georgia Association of University Professors, is asking the accrediting body for Southern colleges and universities to issue a second warning letter to the regents. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSOC) issued a letter last year when Perdue’s name surfaced as a candidate cautioning the regents against allowing political interference in the hiring process.
“It is clear that Governor Kemp’s shuffling of the board by appointing two new regents in January played a massive role in the speed at which Mr. Perdue’s chances of getting the job were resurrected,” Boedy wrote in an email to SACSOC. “While legally allowed to appoint regents, the governor’s move could be read as pushing off the board those who blocked Perdue’s path.”
While Perdue lacks administrative experience in education, Reynolds said he will bring government management expertise and high-level leadership to his new position.
“I consider being named the finalist as the Chancellor of the University System of Georgia to be a wonderful capstone to a career of public service,” Perdue said in a statement released after Tuesday’s vote.
“Education is the most important issue at the federal, state and local level and it’s why, as a legislator, I sought to be chair of the Senate Higher Education Committee to work on important initiatives with Gov. Zell Miller and former USG Chancellor Steve Portch.”
Kemp issued a statement after the vote calling Perdue “highly qualified” for the chancellor’s post through both his experience in state government and as agriculture secretary.
“As a Cabinet level official who was confirmed with overwhelming, bipartisan support, he managed a budget roughly 15 times that of USG and navigated challenging times of disruption that required innovative thinking,” the governor said. “Georgians will benefit from his decisive and creative leadership over a system which now serves more than 340,000 students.”
Kemp might have been expected not to push Perdue’s appointment because his first cousin, David Perdue, is challenging the governor’s reelection bid in May’s Republican primary.
But Kemp and Sonny Perdue have longstanding political ties that go back to Kemp’s election to the state Senate in 2002 and Perdue’s support for Kemp in the 2018 GOP gubernatorial primary.
The regents will take final action on Perdue’s appointment at a future board meeting, no sooner than 14 days from Tuesday’s naming of the sole finalist.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – A controversial bill making it harder for property owners living in agricultural areas to file nuisance lawsuits against nearby farms or livestock operations got its first airing in a legislative committee Tuesday.
Supporters of the Freedom to Farm Act have inserted changes into the original bill targeting hog farms and chicken houses, livestock operations that tend to draw the most complaints from neighbors of foul smells, dust and water pollution.
Under a substitute measure presented to the House Agriculture & Consumer Affairs Committee, any existing farm converted to such a “confined animal-feeding operation” (CAFO) would be subject to a nuisance lawsuit within one year of that conversion regardless of how long the original farm was there.
“I heard the problems with CAFOs,” said committee Chairman Robert Dickey, R-Musella. “This takes the CAFO out of that protection.”
But the bill’s opponents said giving neighbors a year to sue a nuisance CAFO is no substitute for current state law, which gives property owners in agricultural areas four years to file nuisance suits.
“[The bill] says, ‘We value newly arriving industrial-scale animal operations’ while ignoring Georgians’ property rights,” said April Lipscomb, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center.
Georgia agribusiness groups have been pushing for several years to change the current law governing nuisance lawsuits, which dates back to the 1980s. They say urban encroachment on historically farming communities has created a need to strengthen the law.
“People who are not farming are moving into agricultural areas,” said Mike Giles, president of the Georgia Poultry Federation. “It’s very difficult to find a place in Georgia where there’s not non-farming.”
The bill has been endorsed by Giles’ organization as well as the Georgia Farm Bureau and the Georgia Agribusiness Council.
Supporters say the legislation would protect small farmers who may have been farming their property for years from nuisance suits filed by non-farmers who have just moved into a new subdivision.
But opponents say the bill is crafted to favor corporate farming interests.
“This bill isn’t about family farmers,” said Ruth Wilson, who lives next door to a piece of land that is receiving biosludge waste from chicken processing plants. “It’s about protecting big corporate farms. … I’m very concerned about farms not safeguarding their wastes.”
The committee didn’t vote on the bill Tuesday. Dickey said the panel will take up the legislation again later this week or next week.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia parents – not public schools – would decide whether to send children to school wearing masks under legislation introduced on behalf of Gov. Brian Kemp Monday.
“Parents know how best to care for their children, and that includes when it comes to masking,” Kemp said during a news conference at the state Capitol.
“As we enter the third year of facing COVID-19, it is past time for a return to normal and for decisions regarding protection against the virus to be made by individual Georgians and their families – not the government.”
About 45 school districts in Georgia have one or more schools with mask mandates on students, while mandates have been imposed by 10 or more schools in at least nine school districts.
Under Senate Bill 514, sponsored by Sen. Clint Dixon, one of the governor’s floor leaders in the Senate, no local board of education, superintendent, or public or state charter school personnel could impose any rule requiring students to wear a face mask or covering without an opt-out choice for parents.
Also, students could not be punished for a parent’s decision not to have them wear a mask.
“The ‘Unmask Georgia Students Act’ reaffirms what has always been true — parents are the best decision makers when it comes to the health and education of their children,” said Dixon, R-Buford. “This legislation ensures that those rights are not infringed on by misguided policies.”
This story available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
