ATLANTA – Legislation allowing Georgia Power to finance the Plant Vogtle nuclear expansion and other large projects through bonds cleared a state Senate committee Monday over the objections of the chairman of the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC).
Senate Bill 421 would authorize Georgia Power to pursue securitized bond financing to recover some of the costs of the Vogtle project as well as what the Atlanta-based utility is spending to retire its fleet of coal-burning power plants and clean up the ash ponds surrounding those plants.
Twenty-six states have passed similar legislation, including nine that use bonds to finance non-emergencies such as coal-plant retirements, Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, R-Rome, told members of the Senate Regulated Industries & Utilities Committee Monday.
Using securitized bonds saved electric customers in Michigan $135 million and those in West Virginia $130 million, Hufstetler said.
The Georgia bill Includes a provision prohibiting the PSC from approving bond financing if it wouldn’t provide “quantifiable and verifiable” savings to customers, he said.
Going with securitized bonds would be voluntary on Georgia Power’s part, Hufstetler said.
“If you don’t need it, don’t use it,” he said. “The goal is to save the ratepayers money … by getting lower financing costs.”
The commission hasn’t taken a formal position on the bill.
But PSC Chairman Tricia Pridemore told committee members practical considerations would make it impossible for the commission to use securitized bond financing. For one thing, the PSC staff lacks expertise in securitization, she said.
Pridemore said securitization has been used to force some states to adopt a “renewable portfolio standard” requiring that a certain percentage of electricity come from renewable sources.
Although the Georgia PSC has never imposed such a mandate, the Peach State is expected to rank fourth in the nation in solar energy by 2024, up from ninth today, she said
“Our market-based approach has helped the costs come down,” she said.
Energy lawyer Bobby Baker. a former member of the PSC, said the bill also would rob the commission of flexibility to make adjustments as conditions change.
“It’s a one-and-done,” Baker said. “Once the commission approves bond financing, that’s it.”
Baker also called the bill unnecessary because Georgia Power is due to recover the costs of both the Plant Vogtle expansion and coal ash cleanup from customers.
Hufstetler’s bill also drew opposition from a Georgia Power executive at a committee hearing two weeks ago.
The legislation now moves to the Senate Rules Committee to schedule a floor vote.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Shortcomings in the Georgia Department of Labor’s unemployment claims management and customer service systems contributed to significant delays in processing claims during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a state audit.
At the height of the pandemic, only 4% of calls to the agency were being answered due to limited phone system capacity, the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts found in an audit released last week.
As a result, 37,400 initial payments of unemployment claims were made more than 120 days after initial eligibility.
“While the unprecedented volume of claims made some delays inevitable, the Georgia Department of Labor’s claims management and customer service systems were also factors,” the audit concluded.
Unemployment in Georgia skyrocketed from 3.5% to 12.5% in April 2020, when COVID-19 first took hold. Unemployment claims spiked at the same time to 716,000.
Delays in processing claims spurred a deluge of complaints from jobless Georgians to their representatives in the General Assembly, who turned up the heat on the labor department.
Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler responded that the agency wasn’t being given the resources to accommodate the unprecedented volume of claims.
The audit concluded the department’s claims processing requires substantial staff involvement, with limited automation.
The lack of familiarity with the process among the many first-time filers of unemployment claims also contributed to the delays. New federal programs, system controls to prevent fraud, and untimely certification of unemployment by some employers worsened the situation, according to the audit.
However, the department was partly to blame because so many claimants could not reach the agency for assistance, the audit found.
The department responded to the deluge of claims by diverting more of its staff into claims processing, encouraging overtime and hiring contractors and retirees.
The [department] quickly implemented several innovative strategies during the pandemic … including waiving in-person visits, automating ID verification, mandating employer filed-claims, deploying virtual agents and chat bots, and reassigning staff,” agency spokeswoman Kersha Cartwright wrote in a prepared statement.
The agency also expanded its dedicated customer service unit to 16 last April but did not hire contractors for customer service.
The audit recommends the labor department continue “planned improvements” and create a formal plan for dealing with unemployment claims during future recessions.
It suggested improvements should include increasing the use of automation in claims processing and finding ways to make the application process clearer.
No other state or the federal government had a plan in place when the pandemic struck for dealing with such a large influx of unemployment claims, Cartwright wrote.
“The auditors could not point out what additional processes should have been automated,” she added. “In fact, the [audit] did not have recommendations for improvements for five of the 12 findings presented in its report.
The [U.S. Department of Labor Office of Insepctor General] recently had professional IT auditors review [the department’s] systems and rated it well in preparedness.”
This story isavailable through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Former Atlanta City Councilman Kwanza Hall, who also served in Congress for about a month, is running for lieutenant governor.
Hall entered the Democratic race for the state’s No.-2 post on Monday, the opening day of the weeklong candidate qualifying period.
Hall was elected to the city council in 2005 and served three terms before launching an unsuccessful bid for mayor of Atlanta in 2017.
Hall was elected to Congress late in 2020 to complete the unexpired term of the late U.S. Rep. and civil rights leader John Lewis, D-Atlanta. However, he served in the position only one month before giving way to current Rep. Nikema Williams, D-Atlanta, who won a full two-year term that began in January of last year.
His brief term ended four days before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump.
“We have to move on from the 2020 election and focus on what Georgians need – better jobs throughout the state, academic freedom for our teachers and university staff, transportation and infrastructure improvements, and to give every Georgian, no matter where they live in the state, the ability to earn a living wage and access to a hospital,” Hall said Monday in a prepared statement.
The lieutenant governor’s seat is open this year because Republican Geoff Duncan decided not to seek reelection.
GOP candidates in the race include Georgia Senate Pro Tempore Butch Miller of Gainesville, state Sen. Burt Jones of Jackson and Savannah activist Jeanne Seaver.
Joining Hall in the Democratic field are state Reps. Erick Allen of Smyrna, Derrick Jackson of Tyrone and Renitta Shannon of Decatur.
This story isavailable through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia House Republicans put their stamp of approval Friday to much of GOP Gov. Brian Kemp’s education agenda.
Voting along party lines, the Republican majority passed bills guaranteeing parents’ involvement in their children’s education, protecting free-speech rights on Georgia’s public university campuses and prohibiting the teaching of “divisive concepts” in the state’s public schools.
The Parents’ Bill of Rights would give parents the right to review curriculum and other instructional material during the first two weeks of every nine-week grading period.
Principals or superintendents who receive a request for information from a parent would have three working days to provide it. Parents not satisfied with a local school’s decision on a request could appeal to the school district and, beyond that, to the state.
“This bill is not meant to be punitive in any way,” Rep. Josh Bonner, R-Fayetteville, one of Kemp’s floors leaders in the House, told his legislative colleagues Friday. “This will make it easier for [school] districts and parents to understand their roles.”
But Rep. Stacey Evans, D-Atlanta, argued the bill would put the relationship between parents and teachers at risk by subjecting teachers to cumbersome open-records requests.
“All this does is set up a fight and logistical nightmares for teachers,” she said.
After passing that bill 98-68, the House moved on to legislation clarifying that First Amendment free-speech rights exist at all locations on college campuses, doing away with the concept of “free-speech zones” that limit free expression to specific locations.
Supporters cited instances where representatives of conservative organizations have been denied the right to address campus rallies by liberal college administrators.
“Free expression of thought is not faring so well on college campuses these days,” said Rep. Ginny Ehrhart, R-Marietta.
Opponents took particular exception to a provision in the bill that allows not just students and faculty to exercise their free-speech rights but their “invited guests.”
Rep. David Dreyer, D-Atlanta, said such a loose policy could open college campuses to anti-Semitism, other forms of hate speech, and even violence.
“It will increase harassment and hate,” he said.
After House members passed that bill 93-62, the chamber took up the “divisive concepts” bill. Among other things, the measure would ban Georgia schools from teaching that any race is inherently superior or inferior to any other, or that the United States is a systemically racist country.
“This is happening rarely in Georgia, but it is happening,” said Rep. Will Wade, R-Dawsonville, the bill’s chief sponsor. “I believe we must do something proactive to prevent it.”
Before passing the bill 92-63, supporters said teaching such racist concepts could make students uncomfortable and lead to feelings of guilt.
But the bill’s opponents said students should feel uncomfortable about portions of U.S. history, including slavery and the taking of Native American lands.
“When you’re uncomfortable, you start to grow,” said Rep. Erica Thomas, D-Austell. “It is uncomfortable. But it is American history.”
Democrats complained all three bills are part of a politically motivated effort by the governor and Republican legislative leaders to pass legislation that will appeal to GOP voters in a pivotal election year.
The bills now head to the Senate, which has already passed its own version of the Parents’ Bill of Rights. However, the Senate’s divisive concepts bill is still before the Senate Education Committee.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Virtually every year, Georgia lawmakers take up legislation providing monetary compensation to people who have been exonerated of a crime after being wrongfully convicted and spending years in state prison.
Three such resolutions are currently before the House Appropriations Committee.
But putting decisions on compensating wrongfully convicted Georgians in the hands of the legislature soon may be a thing of the past. A bipartisan bill before the House Judiciary Committee would scrap that system in favor of a five-member panel that would review cases and make recommendations.
“We really need to update the process from what we have today, which is largely ad hoc,” state Rep. Scott Holcomb, D-Atlanta, the bill’s chief sponsor, told members of a Judiciary subcommittee late last month. “This bill represents an important step forward for these cases.”
Hayden Davis, a policy specialist with the Georgia Innocence Project, said the current system is cumbersome and ill-suited to the needs of exonerated Georgians.
It involves submitting a case for compensation to a Claims Review Board, which was created to take up claims from Georgians who believe an act of a state agency has caused them harm, Davis said.
Examples include a person who has been struck by a state vehicle or slipped on the sidewalk of a state building, he said.
“These cases are different,” Davis said. “They’ve been shoehorned into a process that’s not designed for them.”
Only after a case is pursued through the Claims Advisory Board can an exonerated person seek a legislative sponsor to go to bat for them, Davis said.
“You go through all these stages just to get to Step One where a lawmaker is able to introduce a resolution,” he said.
Then, once a resolution gets before the General Assembly, it’s taken up during a rushed 40-day session by lawmakers who often lack expertise in the criminal justice system, Davis said.
The proposed review panel would consist of a criminal court judge appointed by the chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, a prosecutor and criminal defense lawyer appointed by the governor, and two attorneys, forensic specialists or law school professors appointed by the speaker of the House and the president of the Senate.
“It would be done by a neutral panel with real expertise,” Davis said. “There’s less chance of any of these being politicized.”
Davis said the average compensation awarded under the current system is $39,000 for every year a wrongfully convicted person subsequently exonerated has been incarcerated.
Holcomb’s bill calls for a range of compensation from $50,000 a year to $100,000. The amount of compensation also would be indexed to keep pace with inflation.
Holcomb said that would avoid having to go back to the General Assembly for new legislation every time the cost of living goes up.
“Building it in gives some flexibility for it to be increased over time without having a political fight,” he said.
The bill has the support of both the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia and the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
“This has been a longstanding issue,” said Jill Travis, executive director of the defense lawyers’ group. “It would be really great for Georgia to have something in place citizens could count on in these circumstances.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
