ATLANTA – Georgia and 31 other states have reached a $438.5 million settlement with JUUL Labs in a lawsuit over the e-cigarette manufacturer’s marketing and sales practices.
An agreement announced Tuesday ends a two-year bipartisan investigation into a company that until recently was the dominant player in the vaping market.
The investigation revealed JUUL aggressively marketed to underage users with launch parties, ads using young models, social media posts and free samples.
The company also manipulated the chemical composition of its product to make the vapor less harsh on the throats of young and inexperienced users.
JUUL also did not clearly disclose in its packaging that its e-cigarettes contained nicotine and misrepresented its product as a smoking cessation device.
“Underage vaping has reached epidemic proportions,” Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said. “Our office is committed to protecting Georgia’s youth from products that could be harmful to their health. That includes holding accountable those that unlawfully try to sell dangerous and addictive e-cigarettes to minors in our state.”
The settlement – including Georgia’s share of more than 19 million – will be paid out over a period of six to 10 years, with the amounts paid increasing the longer the company takes to complete the payments. If JUUL elects to extend the payment period the full 10 years, the settlement amount will increase to $476.6 million.
In addition to the payment, the agreement calls for the company to comply with a series of strict limits on its future marketing and sales practices, including refraining from youth marketing, making misleading representations about the nicotine content of its e-cigarettes, and funding education programs.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Farmers in Southwest Georgia haven’t been permitted to drill new irrigation wells for a decade due to low stream flows.
But a new grant program funded with federal COVID relief aid promises a workaround for that moratorium that will provide a new source of water for irrigation in the region and thereby help stabilize Georgia’s No.-1 industry.
Gov. Brian Kemp announced a $49.8 million grant award late last month to Albany State University’s Georgia Water Planning and Policy Center. The money – to be matched by $3.7 million in local investment – will fund a plan to drill 242 irrigation wells deep into the region’s groundwater so farmers won’t have to rely on surface water during dry periods.
“We’re not taking water directly from the stream,” Mark Masters, the center’s director, told an audience of farm industry and political leaders last Tuesday at an ag issues summit in Perry. “We’re going to lower aquifers.”
Periodic droughts in Southwest Georgia have resulted in record-setting low stream flows since the 1980s due to the combined effect of land-use choices and climate change, said Gordon Rogers, executive director of Albany-based Flint Riverkeeper.
Two tributaries of the Flint River, Muckalee and Kinchafoonee creeks, have seen flows decrease 50% to 60%, Rogers said. Ichawaynochaway Creek almost dried up during the 2011-12 drought, and Spring Creek went dry completely, he said.
“In the Lower Flint, these low flows are directly connected to agricultural use,” Rogers said. “You can eliminate industry and municipalities in the Lower Flint, and you still see this effect. The big dog is agriculture.”
The state responded to the low flows by slapping a moratorium on drilling new irrigation wells in a 27-county region drawing either from surface water or the Floridan aquifer, which lies closer to the surface than the deep groundwater wells the new program envisions.
“We recognize our current water management approach is a very blunt instrument for dealing with low stream flows,” said Rick Dunn, director of the Georgia Environmental Protection Division. “The new plan will be a more dynamic permitting policy as opposed to the one-size-fits-all approach we’re using now.”
Rogers said the idea of “source switching” has been around for more than a decade. As a result, the scientific research into the viability of the plan already has been done and was simply awaiting the availability of funding, he said.
“It’s a smart move. It will stabilize [water] supplies and make the creeks healthy,” he said. “This is a giant win for Southwest Georgia and a huge step forward in water policy.”
In addition to drilling deep groundwater wells, the new program will feature the development of a Habitat Conservation Plan under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Rogers said adopting such a plan would help protect Georgia from future multi-state “water wars” litigation. Demonstrating the Peach State’s recent successes in water conservation to the U.S. Supreme Court was instrumental in prompting the court to rule in Georgia’s favor last year in a lawsuit Florida filed over the allocation of water between the two states.
“We had data to be able to go to the Supreme Court and say, ‘We’ve done a good job conserving water,’ ” said state Sen. Larry Walker III, R-Perry, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee.
The deep groundwater wells will be significantly more expensive to drill and operate than either tapping into surface water or the Floridan aquifer.
But Walker said the additional investment promises to be worthwhile.
“If we’re going to have economic development in Southwest Georgia, the logical place is in expanding farm production,” he said. “If we can open up more areas for production, that’s a way to revive the economy in Southwest Georgia.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia Tech has been awarded a $65 million federal grant to support a statewide initiative combining artificial intelligence and manufacturing innovations with transformational workforce and outreach programs.
The grant is aimed at creating jobs in distressed and rural communities as well as among historically underrepresented and underserved groups.
The Georgia Artificial Intelligence Manufacturing Technology Corridor was among 21 winning projects the White House announced Friday under the Biden administration’s Build Back Better Regional Challenge. It follows a $500,000 feasibility grant the project received last year.
“Georgia Tech is honored to lead this vision of collaborative innovation and economic development across all regions of our state,” Tech President Angel Cabrera said. “This award underscores [Georgia Tech’s] commitment to leverage our resources and expertise to address great challenges, serve our state and nation, and amplify our impact on the world.”
Georgia Tech’s involvement in the project will come on multiple fronts. The school’s AI Manufacturing Pilot Facility will allow government- and industry-run pilot trials, cybersecurity games, and workforce training in AI manufacturing technologies.
Two of Tech’s commercialization programs – VentureLab and I-Corps South – will create a center for the commercialization of AI manufacturing technologies through local and regional startups.
The Enterprise Innovation Institute, Georgia Tech’s economic development arm, will engage in focused outreach and technical assistance to small- and mid-sized manufacturers and minority-owned businesses.
“The work that we will accomplish with our broad spectrum of partners in this new endeavor will leverage the latest technology in artificial intelligence to grow and strengthen our workforce, ensuring that the growing manufacturing sector in Georgia has the skilled workforce it requires for today’s as well as tomorrow’s needs,” said Thomas Kurfess, executive director of the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute.
The Supply Chain & Logistics Institute at Tech will study the impact of automation technologies and build automation solutions tailored for rural manufacturers.
Georgia Tech is working with a coalition of statewide partners on the project that includes the University of Georgia, the state Department of Community Affairs, the Southwest Georgia Regional Commission and the Robins Air Force Base 21st Century Partnership.
The grant from the U.S Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration will use funds from the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The Georgia Department of Labor has settled a lawsuit over the payment of unemployment claims during the pandemic.
An agreement the state agency reached with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) this week calls for improvements to the processing of jobless claims, subject to adequate state funding.
The SPLC filed a class-action suit against the labor department after a deluge of unemployment claims stemming from the pandemic flooded the agency, causing lengthy delays in processing and paying claims.
“This agreement is symbolic of the cooperation of both parties working together to create solutions for Georgians,” Georgia Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said.
“The enhancements in the agreement highlight the hard work and innovations that the department already had underway and some of the most recent completed plans for improved communication.”
“The winners of this settlement are the people of Georgia,” added Kirsten Anderson, deputy legal director for the economic justice project at the SPLC.
“The COVID pandemic presented enormous and unprecedented challenges for the Georgia Department of Labor. The improvements in this settlement will upgrade the experience for claimants while keeping them better informed on what is happening with their claim.”
The parties first appeared to have settled the case in July, but the labor department withdrew its consent to the agreement. The state attorney general’s office claimed the SPLC had violated the terms of the settlement by posting a press release about the new agreement unilaterally.
The settlement agreement required a joint press release, the agency asserted in withdrawing its consent.
Georgians who lost their jobs during the pandemic hit their representatives in the General Assembly with a barrage of complaints over delayed claims processing and payments.
Miffed lawmakers responded by passing a bill during last year’s legislative session creating the position of a chief labor officer within the labor department who would report directly to the governor.
But Gov. Brian Kemp vetoed the measure, arguing the powers it would have given the new position would have put it in conflict with the constitutional authority of Georgia’s elected commissioner of labor.
Butler defended the agency’s employees throughout the debate over the legislation. He said new federal programs created to deal with the pandemic forced the labor department to build six different systems from scratch within weeks to pay unemployment claims.
The commissioner praised the department’s staff this week for delivering more than $23 billion in jobless benefits to more than 2 million Georgians.
Both the labor department and the SPLC are calling on the legislature to reinstate an administrative fee the agency collects from employers to help pay for the planned improvements in claims processing. The fee is due to expire at the end of this year, which would result in a loss of $10 million to $20 million to the department.
To prevent future conflicts over press releases, both parties agreed to provide a courtesy copy to the other at least 24 hours before publishing any release pertaining to the lawsuit.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp issued an executive order Thursday extending the temporary suspension of the state sales tax on gasoline and other motor fuels that has been in effect since March.
The latest extension runs through Oct. 12.
In extending the suspension, Kemp cited the highest inflation in 40 years, gasoline prices that have fallen from June’s record but remain high, and ongoing supply chain challenges.
“We are using the means available to us to provide much-needed relief to Georgians,” the governor said.
A second executive order Kemp signed Thursday renewed his emergency declaration related to supply chain disruptions.
The General Assembly approved the first temporary suspension of the motor fuels sales tax in March. Kemp has extended the suspension several times through executive orders since this year’s legislative session ended in April.
Since that first suspension of the tax, the average price of gasoline in Georgia has remained among the lowest in the nation and is currently 46 cents per gallon below the national average, according to AAA.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
