ATLANTA – U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., and a Republican colleague introduced bipartisan legislation into the Senate Thursday to name the veterans hospital in Decatur after the late Sen. Johnny Isakson.
The bill, cosponsored by Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., would designate the facility as the “Senator Johnny Isakson Department of Veterans Affairs Atlanta Regional Office.”
Isakson, who died late last year at age 76, served as chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs from 2015 until 2019, working to improve benefits and services for veterans and their families.
“Our veterans deserve the best, and Senator Isakson always fought for them,” Ossoff said Thursday. “Renaming the Atlanta VA in his honor will inspire us to stand up for Georgia’s veterans every day like Senator Isakson did.”
“Johnny Isakson worked tirelessly to get things done, especially when it came to his fellow veterans,” Blunt added. “He led efforts to increase accountability at the VA to make sure veterans receive the care and benefits they have earned.”
Isakson, who founded a real estate business in Cobb County, was elected to the Senate in 2004 after serving five years in the U.S. House of Representatives serving a district in Atlanta’s northern suburbs.
The Republican also was a member of the Georgia House and state Senate, becoming the only Georgian to serve in both chambers of Congress and the General Assembly.
Other cosponsors of the bill naming the VA hospital after Isakson include Georgia’s other senator, Democrat Raphael Warnock; Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Isakson’s Senate career capped 45 years in public service. He retired from the Senate at the end of 2019, several years after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Fulton County Deputy District Attorney Cara Convery has been hired to lead Georgia’s first statewide Gang Prosecution Unit, Attorney General Chris Carr announced Wednesday.
The General Assembly passed legislation this year backed by Gov. Brian Kemp that gives the attorney general’s office jurisdiction to work concurrently with local law enforcement officials to prosecute criminal gang activity.
The fiscal 2023 budget, which takes effect July 1, includes $1.6 million to establish the new unit.
As a deputy district attorney in Fulton, Convery oversees a team of lawyers and investigators and works alongside state and local law enforcement to prosecute violent offenders.
“Cara Convery has established herself as a force in the field of criminal gang prosecution and is a proven leader in Georgia’s legal community,” Carr said Wednesday.
“Her years of experience handling complex criminal gang cases, her credibility in the courtroom and her rigorous pursuit of justice make her the ideal candidate to lead our new Gang Prosecution Unit.”
“I am excited and humbled to be joining Attorney General Carr as we build upon the work and innovation of the Department of Law’s Prosecution Division through the vehicle of Georgia’s newest and most expansive gang unit,” Convery added.
“By partnering with our local, state and federal partners, we will develop cases that attack our state’s most serious threat to public safety in dangerous criminal street gangs.”
In her new role, Convery will lead a team of 11 attorneys and paralegals in prosecuting serious gang crimes across the state. The unit will partner with state agencies, local and federal prosecutors, and law enforcement to build cases from investigation through trial.
Before joining the Atlanta Judicial Circuit, Convery served as an assistant solicitor general for Cobb County.
She has handled hundreds of felony cases from arrest to trial and has more than 10 years of experience representing the state in high-profile murder cases and major criminal prosecutions.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Telecom providers are complaining that financial incentives the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) offered them a year and a half ago to expand broadband service into rural Georgia aren’t working.
But representatives of the state’s electric membership cooperatives (EMCs) say the fact that 20 EMCs serving mostly rural areas have entered the broadband business proves there’s no need for changes.
The PSC voted in December 2020 to allow the EMCs to charge telecom providers just $1 per year to attach broadband technology to utility poles in areas without broadband service. The deal was to be offered for the next six years.
The EMCs had proposed the so-called “One-Buck Deal” to the commission, which approved it unanimously over the objections of telecom providers represented by the Georgia Cable Association (GCA), whose five member companies serve about 2 million Georgians.
The order the PSC adopted included a provision requiring the commission to review the One-Buck Deal every two years to determine whether the steep discount on pole attachments was working to expand broadband into unserved rural communities.
The answer the cable association gave in comments filed with the PSC late last week was a resounding “no.”
“As of this filing date, GCA members are unaware of a single pole permit that has been issued under the One-Buck Deal,” wrote Hunter Hopkins, the cable association’s executive director.
Shawn Davis, a lobbyist for the association, blamed the providers’ lack of interest in the One-Buck Deal on another provision in the PSC’s order that increased the rate for pole attachments in parts of Georgia already served by broadband by 36%.
“Any savings we get from the handful of one-dollar poles is offset by the 36% increase,” Davis said.
Hopkins wrote that the EMCs that have deployed broadband service represent fewer than half of Georgia’s 41 EMCs, leaving large swaths of the state still unserved that providers would be willing to serve given the right incentives.
But Dennis Chastain, president and CEO of Georgia EMC, said the cost of pole attachments is not a significant barrier to expanding broadband deployment. The real obstacle is the huge expense of running broadband into sparsely populated areas, he said.
“When you get out into rural areas, there are not enough customers per mile,” he said.
Chastain said the 20 EMCs that have entered the broadband business since the General Assembly passed legislation allowing the utilities to do so are significant and show the current system is working. Those 20 utilities are investing $770 million to extend broadband service into 89 counties, according to Georgia EMC.
“I get it that it doesn’t fit the business model of AT&T and Comcast,” Chastain said. “[But] somebody’s got to step up to the plate and supply these people. … If broadband isn’t eventually brought to these [rural] areas, they’re going to dry up and die.”
While the EMCs are asking the PSC not to make any changes to the December 2020 order this year, the telecoms want the commission to set what they consider to be more reasonable pole attachment rates that will give them an incentive to extend broadband into more unserved areas.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia tax collections rose slightly last month compared to May of last year after two consecutive months of soaring revenues caused by a delay in last year’s filing deadline until mid-May.
The state Department of Revenue collected almost $2.7 billion last month, up 1.6% from May of 2021. That modest increase followed a 78.9% hike in tax receipts in April and a 45.5% jump in March, both resulting from moving the filing deadline from mid-April.
Tax revenues for the first 11 months of the current fiscal year rose by 23.9% over the first 11 months of fiscal 2021, as Georgia’s economy continued its recovery from the pandemic.
Individual income tax collections in May were up 5.8% over the same month last year, as refunds issued by the revenue agency fell 66.5%.
Net sales taxes rose by 10.5% last month reflecting increased economic activity.
Corporate income taxes, typically more volatile than individual income or sales taxes, increased by 53.8% in May. Corporate tax payments were up by 138.9%, while refunds declined by 42.8%.
State gasoline tax revenues fell nearly 100%, a result of the General Assembly’s passage of legislation in March temporarily suspending collection of the tax to help dent rising prices at the pump.
Gov Brian Kemp extended the suspension late last month with an executive order set to run through July 14.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Monkeypox rash lesions (photo credit: UK Health Security Agency)
An Atlanta man has contracted monkeypox, Nancy Nydam, spokesperson for the Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH), confirmed this week. The man has a history of international travel.
DPH first alerted Georgians to the case last week. At that time, the patient was known to have monkeypox-like symptoms but further testing was needed to confirm the disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has now confirmed a monkeypox diagnosis.
“The individual remains in isolation at home, and DPH continues monitoring his symptoms and contact tracing – all of which began last week with the orthopoxvirus diagnosis,” Nydam said on Monday.
Monkeypox is one form of the orthopoxvirus. Others include variola, which causes smallpox.
There were no other suspected cases or orthopoxvirus or monkeypox in Georgia as of Monday, Nydam added. Nydam emphasized that this is the same case announced last week and not a new case.
Monkeypox is a viral disease that causes the skin to break out in pustules. It typically starts with a fever, lymph node swelling, muscle pains, and malaise, then progresses to a skin rash. The pustular rash can last two to four weeks, according to the World Health Organization.
The disease is usually mild but can be life-threatening in some cases.
The current outbreak is unusual because, as of last week, at least 780 confirmed cases have been identified in 27 countries where it is not typically found. The disease is considered endemic in certain central and western African areas.
Twelve American states and Washington D.C. had reported a total of 31 confirmed monkeypox/orthopoxvirus cases as of Monday, according to the CDC. That includes Georgia’s case and four from Florida.
So far, the World Health Organization has reported 207 confirmed cases in the United Kingdom, 156 in Spain, 138 in Portugal, and 58 in Canada.
Monkeypox can be transmitted among people through direct contact with the sores or bodily fluids, intimate contact, and respiratory secretions during “prolonged, face-to-face contact,” according to the CDC.
There are currently no monkeypox-specific treatments but medicines developed to treat smallpox can be helpful. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved two vaccines for monkeypox, according to the CDC.
“Anyone with a rash that looks like monkeypox should talk to their healthcare provider, even if they don’t think they had contact with someone who has monkeypox,” the CDC advises.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
