Legislators and representatives of the Georgia Mental Health Policy Partnership released a new set of policy recommendations on Monday at the state capitol. (photo credit: Rebecca Grapevine)
ATLANTA— Georgia has a “golden opportunity” to transform its behavioral health system building on reforms adopted during this year’s legislative session, an alliance of mental-health organizations reported Monday.
The Georgia Mental Health Policy Partnership, a coalition of more than 50 groups, released a new set of policy recommendations during a news conference at the state Capitol.
The recommendations outline nine “foundational elements” of Georgia’s behavioral health system, including early intervention, community care, equity and a continued emphasis on parity.
Each element is designed to support the other. For example, increased access to behavioral health providers can help make sure children are getting early intervention, said state Sen. Sally Harrell, D-Atlanta.
Harrell described the pain of struggling to find care for a child in crisis and being told to wait several months for an appointment.
“Waiting for two to three months for a child in crisis is not mental health parity,” she said. “Those problems don’t go away. … Those problems stay there and come back later in worse form.”
Georgia Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, D-Decatur, concurred with the need for early treatment for behavioral health issues. She pointed to around 600 children currently housed in intensive psychiatric treatment beds in the state.
“How many of those intensive beds could have been prevented by a better continuum of service, one that’s more timely, one’s that more immediate, one that’s more community-based?” Oliver asked.
Oliver was a co-sponsor, along with Rep. Todd Jones, R -South Forsyth, of a mental health reform package lawmakers passed this year.
Insurance companies’ networks often fall short in ways that deter people from getting care, said Peter Nunn, a board member of the Georgia Chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
“Phantom networks force Georgians to either delay needed health care or forgo it entirely,” he said.
Nunn pointed to inaccurate insurance provider listings of behavioral health care providers that can mislead consumers and make it hard to find providers who take insurance.
“We are simply seeking for insurers to provide the care they promised to Georgians and for which the insurers receive tens of billions of dollars in premium payments each year,” he said.
Along with systemic factors, stigma often stops Georgians from getting behavioral health care, said Jeff Breedlove, chief of communications and policy for the Georgia Council on Substance Abuse.
“We’ve got to get away from [thinking] if a child is getting treatment for a mental health condition, it’s somehow bad,” Breedlove said.
Equity is another key element undergirding the new vision for mental health.
“One in ten Georgians is foreign born, and by committing to increase access to culturally and linguistically appropriate care, we open the door for thousands of Georgians to get the quality care they deserve,” said Crystal Muñoz, immigration policy analyst at the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
“Behavioral health care equity ensures that all Georgians have a fair and just opportunity to lead healthy lives regardless of background, socioeconomic status, and place of residency.”
Policymakers and advocates emphasized it is now up to state agencies and consumers to make sure that the last legislative session’s major mental health reforms are enforced.
Weston Burleson, communications director for the Georgia Department of Insurance, said Georgians can report suspected parity violations at the agency’s consumer complaint portal.
The insurance department also plans to hire a mental health parity officer, a position created under this year’s mental health law.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – A Fulton County judge disqualified Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis Monday from continuing to investigate state Sen. Burt Jones’ alleged role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
Jones, R-Jackson, this year’s Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, was among 16 Republicans who formed an alternate slate of electors in December 2020 that sought to reverse the outcome of the November presidential contest that saw Democrat Joe Biden carry Georgia over Republican incumbent Donald Trump.
The GOP electors are among the targets of a special grand jury investigation Willis has launched to probe various efforts to overturn the Georgia results. Other targets include former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer; U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; and Georgia Congressman Jody Hice, R-Greensboro.
Jones’ lawyer submitted a motion to disqualify Willis from continuing to investigate Jones because she had hosted a fundraiser last month on behalf of Democrat Charlie Bailey, who is running for lieutenant governor against Jones. The event occurred a week before Bailey defeated former Atlanta City Councilman Kwanza Hall to win the Democratic nomination.
A hearing on the motion was held last week in Fulton County Superior Court. In a seven-page order issued Monday, Judge Robert C.I. McBurney agreed with Jones.
“The district attorney pledged her name, likeness, and office to Bailey as her candidate of choice at a time when, if Bailey were successful (which he was), he would face Senator Jones,” McBurney wrote. “She has bestowed her office’s imprimatur upon Senator Jones’ opponent. … This scenario creates a plain – and actual and untenable – conflict.”
“Today’s ruling is a huge win for our campaign – but more importantly, for due process and the rule of law in Georgia,” Jones said in a statement following the decision.
The judge’s order prohibits Willis from issuing a subpoena requiring Jones to testify before the special grand jury, or from requiring him to submit any records to the district attorney’s office. She also is prohibited from characterizing Jones as a target of the investigation and can’t ask the grand jury to make any recommendations concerning Jones in its final report.
Those duties now must be turned over to a different prosecutor’s office, as determined by state Attorney General Chris Carr.
Bailey, in a statement issued Monday shortly before the judge’s ruling, accused Jones of seeking to distract the public from his “leading” role in trying to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.
“Burt has shown a continued disrespect for the rule of law, but as a former prosecutor, I believe Burt is subject to the legal system, just like everyone else,” Bailey said.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The state agencies in charge of Georgia’s film tax credit have strengthened oversight of the program by fully or partially addressing all shortcomings identified in a 2020 audit, a follow-up review has concluded.
The General Assembly passed legislation two years ago requiring all film productions located in Georgia to undergo mandatory audits by the state Department of Revenue or third-party auditors selected by the agency.
It also tightened rules governing how film companies transfer or sell unused tax credits to other businesses, a common practice for production groups that conduct part of their movie-making work outside Georgia.
Georgia’s film industry took off after the state began offering generous tax credits to lure productions. The program’s economic impact has soared from $242 million in 2007, the year before the General Assembly passed legislation significantly increasing the tax credit, to a record-setting $4 billion in direct spending in fiscal 2021.
But the program’s supporters were put on the defensive after two critical audits released at the beginning of 2020 found it had been poorly managed and called into question the accuracy of fiscal impact estimates.
To address insufficient audit procedures, the revenue department has begun publishing a detailed manual for film tax credit audits, which includes agreed-upon procedures to be used for any mandatory audits, according to a follow-up review released late last week.
Under the agreed-upon procedures, auditors must verify all expenditures above $100,000 and select a statistical sample of those under $100,000 for testing.
The agency also has taken steps to identify and disallow expenditures that are ineligible under the law or that have limited economic benefit to the state and updated the manual and training materials for tax examiners who process the credit.
The Georgia Department of Economic Development has taken steps to exclude from the tax credit projects not intended for multimarket commercial distribution, the review found.
The 2020 audit concluded the agency had broadly interpreted the law’s provisions, approving projects that could be considered of local interest and live events that likely would have taken place without the credit.
Both the revenue and economic development departments agreed for the most part with the follow-up review’s findings. However, the economic development agency disagreed with a recommendation to require that a minimum percentage of productions occur within Georgia.
The agency indicated such a mandate “would exceed the authority delegated to it by the Georgia General Assembly considering the film tax credit … does not require a minimum amount of in-state shooting.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – A trio of Georgia education laws that took effect a few weeks ago have set the stage for a possibly contentious opening to Georgia’s school year next month.
The laws address how teachers talk about potentially divisive topics in the classroom and parental control over education.
The source of heated controversy during the legislative session, the laws are now in the hands of schools, school districts, and the state Department of Education to implement.
One law – often called the “divisive concepts” law – prohibits teaching about U.S. history in a way that might make any student feel guilty or that they are superior or inferior to anyone else because of their race.
Georgia’s Board of Education adopted a model complaint policy for complaints under the law in June.
Now it is up to local school boards to adopt their own policies by Aug. 1. Whether they adopt the state’s model or craft their own policy is up to them.
Conflicts over implementation of the law will play out differently in different parts of the state, said education observers, including Lisa Morgan, president of the Georgia Association of Educators.
Morgan said that she expected complaints stemming from language-arts and literature classes along with social studies classes.
A kindergarten teacher for most of her career, Morgan said elementary grades would not be immune to complaints.
She said she expects administrators to sometimes find themselves in “a very tough position” under the new law.
She also expressed concern that a more cautious approach brought about by the law will introduce a “chilling effect” on how teachers and students discuss current events and other social issues.
“The laws are a clear attempt to divide parents and educators and make that relationship adversarial rather than the partnership it must be to guarantee the success of all students,” Morgan said.
But proponents see the laws as steps forward.
“Huge gains were made for parents and students during the 2022 legislative session, and there is significant momentum to remove radical politics and indoctrination from our classrooms,” said Cole Muzio, president of Frontline Policy Action Council. “While work remains, conservative leadership has greatly improved the school environment our students head into in the coming weeks.”
Eddie Bennett, executive director of the Georgia Council for the Social Studies, said he does not believe members of his organization are changing their start-of-school plans in response to the laws.
But Bennett is concerned about how teachers will fare with the laws as the year moves forward.
He said he is doubling down on his standard advice to his social-studies-teacher members: “Whatever you teach, make sure it is in the standards.”
The Georgia Youth Justice Coalition will focus its efforts on making sure students, teachers, and parents know their rights under the law, said Alex Ames, organizing director for the organization of high school and college students.
The group wants to make sure educators are not retaliated against, she said.
The new law also reaches beyond the school day to high school athletics. It revamped the governance structure of the Georgia High School Association (GHSA) and provided it with the opportunity to ban transgender high school sports.
In May, the GHSA voted to do just that.
Now, Georgia students must participate in high school sports based on their gender at birth. This will prevent transgender students who are born male but identify as female from participating in girls’ sports.
The GHSA has had no issues with the new policy so far, said Robin Hines, the organization’s executive director.
But transgender youth advocates say it has further stigmatized the community.
“Transgender students have become targets of bigotry and persecution,” student organizer Abigail Mathew said last month at a Georgia Youth Justice Coalition press conference held in response to the GHSA’s vote.
Two other education laws addressed parents’ rights to review instructional and library materials, introducing new procedures for complaints.
The Parent’s Bill of Rights (House Bill 1178) gives parents the right to review curriculum and other instructional material for their children’s classes during the first two weeks of every nine-week grading period.
Parents who disagree with a local school’s decision on a complaint can appeal to the school district and, beyond that, to the state Board of Education.
Senate Bill 226 requires a school principal (or designee) to deal with complaints about potentially harmful materials or books at a school within seven days.
School districts had their own policies – usually involving committees – for dealing with such concerns before the law, said Nan Brown, advocacy coordinator for the Georgia Library Media Association.
The new law is unreasonable because it gives review power to just one person – the principal – and gives just seven days to investigate, Brown said.
School librarians or administrators might choose not to order certain materials because of concerns about complaints from a vocal minority, she said.
“The big concern is self-censorship,” she said. “Some students won’t have what they need to cater to the fears of others. There are kids who want and need these books.”
Under the law, the state Department of Education board will have to adopt a model complaint policy under by Sept. 1. Local school boards must adopt their own policies by Jan. 1, 2023.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Inflation is having an impact on the Georgia Department of Transportation’s construction schedule.
The DOT has rejected bids on 12 projects that had been due for letting next month, Meg Pirkle, the agency’s chief engineer, told members of the State Transportation Board Thursday.
Bids are coming in an average of 33% above what the DOT was anticipating, Pirkle said.
“We have to balance the funds we have with what we can do,” she said. “With prices going up that much, we’re not going to be able to deliver everything that’s in the program.”
Georgia Commissioner of Transportation Russell McMurry said any projects the DOT lets next month probably would not be ready for paving to be applied this year. Therefore, the agency can wait until this fall or early next year to let projects without suffering a major impact on the schedule, he said.
“We were hedging that the [price of a] barrel of oil may come down, and asphalt and cement prices may come down,” he said.
McMurry said the DOT could stretch out the cost of major projects by bidding them out in several smaller segments.
He said the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill Congress passed last fall is helping the agency cope with the higher prices of building materials.
“It’s keeping our head at water level,” he said.
In other news, McMurry said the temporary suspension of the state sales tax on gasoline and other motor fuels the General Assembly approved in March cost the DOT $294 million in lost tax revenue during April, May, and June.
With prices at the pump surging well beyond $4 a gallon, Gov. Brian Kemp has issued executive orders twice renewing the suspension. The second order is due to expire in mid-August.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
