ATLANTA – After years of nibbling around the edges of regulations governing how Georgia hospitals operate, the General Assembly may decide to scrap the Certificate of Need (CON) law altogether.
A state House committee approved legislation late last week that would repeal CON by 2025. It could hit the House floor on Tuesday, the Crossover Day deadline for bills to pass at least one legislative chamber to remain alive for the year.
The 1979 CON law requires applicants wishing to build a new medical facility or provide new health-care services in Georgia to show it is needed in their communities. It was enacted to comply with a federal mandate aimed at reducing health-care costs by avoiding duplication.
Instead, the law has increased the costs of care by stifling competition, House Majority Whip Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin, the bill’s chief sponsor, told members of the House Special Committee on Access to Quality Health Care.
“We’ve allowed our large hospitals to become monopolies in their communities and continue to raise prices,” he said. “The large hospitals get larger, and our small hospitals continue to struggle to survive.”
The General Assembly has reformed the CON law over the years. In 2008, lawmakers exempted physician-owned ambulatory surgery centers with a single specialty from having to obtain a CON.
In 2013, the legislature limited the filing of objections to CON applications to existing hospitals within 35 miles of a new facility seeking a certificate of need.
House Bill 1547 would repeal CON as of Jan. 1, 2025, and replace it with a licensing program with the same indigent care requirements that now apply to CON applicants.
During the two years leading up to the repeal taking effect, the legislation would give multiple-specialty surgery centers the same exemption now provided single-specialty centers.
It also would limit cash reserves nonprofit hospitals would be allowed to maintain and create a new state program to aid uninsured mental health patients.
Opposition to the bill is led by organizations representing Georgia hospitals.
Monty Veazey, president and CEO of the Tifton-based Georgia Alliance of Community Hospitals, said repealing the CON law would devastate an industry already struggling to emerge from COVID-19 and saddled with a severe shortage of health-care workers, particularly nurses.
“This bill comes at the worst time for us,” he said. “Across the state, hospitals are losing millions of dollars. … When you repeal CON and allow ASCs (ambulatory surgery centers) to proliferate, it just draws paying patients from hospitals.”
Some committee members argued the CON law needs reforming but shouldn’t be repealed.
“I don’t think the answer to the CON issue is to totally eliminate it,” said Rep. Butch Parrish, R-Swainsboro.
But Rep. Sharon Cooper, R-Marietta, said the years of opposition the hospital industry and its hired lobbyists have mounted to reforming CON have convinced some lawmakers it’s time to scrap the process.
“Any time you try to get even minor changes, the answer is always, ‘No,’ ” she said. “That’s the frustration all of us are feeling. … I’m sick of it.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Former Atlanta Mayor and business leader Sam Massell died Sunday at the age of 94.
Massell, who led the city from 1970 through 1974, was Atlanta’s first and only Jewish mayor and the city’s last white mayor.
Later, he founded the Buckhead Coalition, a business group, and headed it for more than 30 years.
Massell was known as a champion of collaboration and inclusion, said Andre Dickens, Atlanta’s current mayor, who put Massell on his transition team after Dickens was elected late last year.
“He paved the way for better representation of women and minority participation in city government,” Dickens said. “Sam always said that we can get more done through a conference call than through confrontation.”
Massell also played a key role in bringing heavy rail transit to Atlanta.
“MARTA would not exist but for the dedication and persistence of Massell, who convinced the Georgia legislature – and later voters – to approve the local-option sales tax the continues to fund MARTA to this day,” MARTA officials wrote in a statement. “MARTA was fortunate to have such an ardent supporter, and we remain forever in his debt.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The Georgia Secretary of State’s office has received a clean audit on its spending of grant funds received through the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA).
However, an audit the state Department of Audits & Accounts released Friday showed that almost half of the grant transactions examined had at least one noncompliance issue related to state purchasing requirements.
The state received $34.8 million in HAVA grants between fiscal year 2018 and fiscal 2021. The largest portion of the expenditures – 33% – went toward communications and media services.
While the expenditures were for goods and services generally allowed by the program, the department did not participate in the state purchasing-card program about 100 other state agencies use.
Instead, the department reimbursed employees for non-travel business expenses paid with personal credit cards, according to the audit, which was requested by the state House Appropriations Committee.
“Unlike the state p-card program, outside credit cards are not subject to the same system of controls used across state government to detect and deter fraud, misuse, and abuse,” according to the audit.
The audit also revealed the office’s chief operating and chief financial officer was hired as a consultant while still employed with the secretary of state, potentially a violation of state law.
The office did not provide the documentation federal grants require for 12% of the transactions examined. In most cases, the documentation the agency did provide was insufficient for determining whether the purchase was “consistent with allowed grant uses.” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s response to the audit focused on the finding that no fraud occurred.
“My main goal has always been to uphold the integrity of Georgia’s elections,” he said. “The audit requested by the Georgia legislature demonstrated once and for all that my office used federal funds for appropriate purposes.”
The audit found that nearly 90% of the grant funds had been spent as of the end of last June. Nearly $7 million of the federal money remained.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia Republicans and Democrats put positive spins on their 2022 election prospects Friday as the weeklong candidate qualifying period concluded at the state Capitol.
Both parties fielded candidates for every federal and statewide elective office.
A record-breaking 310 Democrats signed up to run up and down the congressional and legislative ballot, as the party looks to build upon its successes in 2020, when Democrats captured both of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats.
“When I became chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia in 2019, we made it a priority to ensure Democrats were competitive in more seats all across Georgia – and this year’s qualifying numbers are a testament to those efforts,” U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, D-Atlanta, said Friday.
But Republicans, too, were encouraged by the results of Qualifying Week.
“We qualified nearly twice as many canidates as the Democrats,” Georgia Republican Chairman David Shafer said Friday. “We have Republicans running for every statewide office and in every congressional district. Our Republican ticket this fall will be strong, wide and deep.”
Republicans will have to overcome divisions in the party over the response to President Donald Trump’s loss to President Joe Biden in Georgia in 2020.
At the top of the ballot, a slate of Republican candidates endorsed by Trump is running in the May 24 GOP primary against fellow Republicans, some of whom refused to join Trump’s bid to reverse the outcome of the election.
University of Georgia football icon Herschel Walker and former U.S. Sen. David Perdue top the Trump ticket. Walker is seeking the GOP nomination to oppose Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in November.
Perdue has Trump’s endorsement in his challenge to incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, whom Trump supported in 2018 but who would not go along with the then-president’s attempts to change the 2020 election results in Georgia.
Another race the former president is weighing in on is for secretary of state. Incumbent Republican Brad Raffensperger, who famously declined to try to “find” enough votes in Georgia to elect Trump, is being challenged in the primary by U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, R-Greensboro, with Trump’s blessing.
The Republican race for lieutentant governor also features a Trump-endorsed candidate. With incumbent Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan – who also crossed Trump over the election – not seeking a second term, the former president has endorsed state Sen. Burt Jones against Georgia Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller.
Some statewide races are more crowded than others. Nine Democrats qualified this week to run for lieutenant governor. Five more Democrats are vying for commissioner of labor, a post being vacated by Republican Mark Butler.
On the GOP side, the top-ballot races for Senate and governor each feature five candidates.
Some candidates are unopposed for their party’s nomination, including Democratic candidate for governor Stacey Abrams and Republican state Sen. Tyler Harper, who is looking to succeed Republican Gary Black as agriculture commissioner.
Black is leaving that post to run for U.S. Senate.
Here is the list of candidates who qualified for statewide offices this week:
U.S. Senate
Democrat
Tamara Johnson-Shealey
Sen. Raphael Warnock*
Republican
Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black
Josh Clark
Jon McColumn
Latham Saddler
Herschel Walker
Governor
Democrat
Stacey Abrams
Republican
Catherine Davis
Brian Kemp*
Former U.S. Sen. David Perdue
Kandiss Taylor
Tom Williams
Lieutenant Governor
Democrat
Georgia Rep. Erick Allen
Charlie Bailey
Tyrone Brooks Jr.
Tony Brown
Former Atlanta City Councilman Kwanza Hall
Jason Hayes
Georgia Rep. Derrick Jackson
R. Malik
Georgia Rep. Renitta Shannon
Republican
Georgia Sen. Burt Jones
Mack McGregor
Georgia Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller
Jeanne Seaver
Secretary of State
Democrat
Dee Dawkins-Haigler
John Eaves
Georgia Rep. Bee Nguyen
Michael Owens
Republican
David Belle Isle
U.S. Rep. Jody Hice
T.J. Hudson
Brad Raffensperger*
Attorney General
Democrat
Georgia Sen. Jen Jordan
Christian Wise Smith
Republican
Chris Carr*
John Gordon
Commissioner of Agriculture
Democrat
Georgia Rep. Winfred Dukes
Nakita Hemingway
Fred Swann
Republican
Georgia Sen. Tyler Harper
Insurance Commissioner
Democrat
Raphael Baker
Janice Laws Robinson
Georgia Rep. Matthew Wilson
Republican
Ben Cowart
John King*
Patrick Witt
State School Superintendent
Democrat
Currey Hitchens
Jaha Howard
James Morrow Jr.
Alisha Thomas Searcy
Republican
John Barge
Richard Woods*
Commissioner of Labor
Democrat
Georgia Rep. William Boddie
Thomas Dean
Nicole Horn
Georgia Sen. Lester Jackson
Nadia Surrency
Republican
Kartik Bhatt
Mike Coan
Georgia Sen. Bruce Thompson
Public Service Commission – District 3 (Metro Atlanta)
Democrat
Sheila Edwards
Chandra Farley
Missy Moore
Republican
Fitz Johnson*
Public Service Commission District 2 (East)
Democrat
Patty Durand
Russell Edwards
Republican
Tim Echols*
*denotes incumbent
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The General Assembly came one step closer Friday to temporarily suspending Georgia’s sales tax on gasoline and other motor fuels to reduce pump prices that have soared in recent weeks.
The state House of Representatives voted unanimously to suspend collection of the tax through May 31.
Gasoline prices have skyrocketed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine more than two weeks ago and the subsequent ban on U.S. imports of Russian oil President Joe Biden imposed earlier this week.
The average price of a gallon of gas in Georgia stood at $4.29 on Friday, highest in the state’s history, said Rep. Jodi Lott, R-Evans, one of Gov. Brian Kemp’s floor leaders in the House.
The state has suspended the gasoline tax in the past when fuel supplies were disrupted. While the governor is legally permitted to suspend the tax by executive order when the General Assembly is not in session, this suspension must go through the legislature.
The bill will head next to the state Senate, which likely will pass it during the next legislative day on Tuesday. The suspension would take effect as soon as Kemp signs the bill.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
