ATLANTA – The state plans to implement a new Medicaid expansion plan – Georgia Pathways — that includes work requirements next July after several years of legal wrangling over the controversial proposal.
“I can confirm that we are moving forward with implementing the Pathways plan,” said Andrew Isenhour, a spokesman for Republican Gov. Brian Kemp.
“No one who currently qualifies for Medicaid will be affected by the new program,” Isenhour said. “It is important to note that we are only adding people to the Medicaid rolls with this program. Georgia Pathways will expand Medicaid to otherwise ineligible Georgians who satisfy the work, job training, education, or volunteer requirements.”
Around 345,000 additional Georgians will become eligible for Medicaid under the new plan, as long as they meet other requirements, Isenhour added. Georgians whose incomes are below the federal poverty level (currently $13,590 for one person) will be eligible for the insurance.
To get the insurance, Georgians will need to work or perform other qualifying activities such as vocational training, education, job readiness programs or community service. Some enrollees will pay monthly premiums ranging from $7 to $16, depending on income and tobacco use.
Kemp has made the Pathways plan a cornerstone of his health-care policy. While 39 states have now opted for Medicaid expansion plans that allow low-income people to obtain health care, Kemp and other Georgia Republican leaders remain opposed to full Medicaid expansion, citing concerns about costs to the state and consumers.
Instead, the Republican-led General Assembly approved the more limited Medicaid expansion proposal back in 2019.
In October 2020, while Republican Donald Trump was still president, the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) approved Georgia’s Pathways plan. After Democratic President Joe Biden took office in January of last year, CMS rescinded approval for the work-requirement plans in Georgia along with 13 other states.
Although the other states, including Arkansas and Indiana, dropped their work-requirement plans, lawyers for Georgia sued in federal court. They argued the federal government, and CMS in particular, had overstepped its authority in blocking the work-requirement proposal.
In August, a U.S. District judge agreed, effectively allowing the Pathway plan to move forward. Although the federal government could have appealed to a circuit court, it has not done so, opening the door for Georgia to forge ahead with the new plan.
Some advocates are concerned the new plan will make it harder to get health care and argue Georgia should fully expand Medicaid instead.
“The Governor’s Pathways program makes it unnecessarily difficult for low-income people to gain health coverage. The program requires workers and students to repeatedly prove they are working or studying, rather than making it simpler for them to go to the doctor and fill prescriptions,” said Laura Colbert, executive director of Georgians for a Healthy Future, an advocacy group.
“Because of the program’s complications, only a fraction of low-income uninsured adults will get health insurance. Medicaid expansion would be a simpler and more cost-effective solution for Georgia and uninsured Georgians,” Colbert said.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – A state senator and state representative-elect have joined forces to form the General Assembly’s first Hispanic caucus.
Sen. Jason Anavitarte, R-Dallas, who was elected Senate majority caucus chairman last week, and Rep.-elect Rey Martinez, R-Loganville, announced the creation of the Georgia Hispanic Caucus Thursday.
The caucus is open to legislators from both parties and both legislative chambers, with a goal of delivering strong representation to Georgia’s more than 1 million Hispanic residents.
Hispanics make up more than 10% of the state’s population. They are the third largest and second-fastest growing ethnic group in Georgia.
“Over the last decade, Georgia has seen immense growth within the Hispanic community,” Anavitarte said. “In the General Assembly … Georgians elected a record number of Hispanic officials to serve them in the state House and Senate this November.
“With the creation of our state’s first-ever Hispanic Caucus, my Republican colleagues and I aim not only to deliver strong representation to one of our state’s most important communities – but to send a clear message that Hispanic values will be at the front and center of conversations under the Gold Dome for years to come.”
“Hispanics are not single-issue voters who care solely about immigration,” Martinez added. “We are parents, business-owners, and hardworking Georgians who ultimately want the same freedoms and opportunities that have enabled generations of Americans to achieve prosperity and success. These are the values – and the individuals – that the Hispanic Caucus will work tirelessly to defend.”
Anavitarte was elected to the General Assembly two years ago. He represents the 31st Senate District, which includes all of Polk County and most of Paulding County.
Martinez was elected this month to an open seat in the 111th House District with more than 65% of the vote. The district includes portions of Gwinnett and Walton counties.
The presence of Hispanic lawmakers in the General Assembly goes back two decades. Rep. Pedro “Pete” Marin, D-Duluth, was elected in 2002. Other Hispanic legislators to serve under the Gold Dome include former Sen. Sam Zamarripa, D-Atlanta, and former Rep. David Casas, R-Lilburn.
The Georgia Hispanic Caucus will formally convene when the 2023 session of the General Assembly begins in January.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – While development authorities are an essential economic development tool in Georgia, they need more controls to prevent abuses, witnesses told a state Senate study committee Thursday.
Local government and school district officials have complained that development authorities are too prone to lavish property tax abatements on developers that take away the revenue they need to provide services. The study committee has been meeting during the summer and fall to come up with recommended legislation for the full Senate to consider this winter.
Some of the problems are structural, DeKalb County Commissioner Jeff Rader testified Thursday. He said members of development authority boards tend to remain on them after their terms have expired because no one has been appointed to replace them.
In DeKalb County, tax abatements tend to vary according to the size of a project rather than maintaining uniformity, Rader said.
“There’s really no qualitative analysis that goes into these things,” he said.
Worse still, there’s no substantive way to determine whether a developer seeking tax abatements would build a project without them, Rader said.
“Money that goes to unnecessary tax abatements hurts school districts and other governments,” he said.
Julian Bene, a former member of the board at Invest Atlanta, the city’s economic development arm, cited several instances in recent years where a developer has asked for tax abatements and been turned down, yet went ahead and built their project anyway. He mentioned the expansion of Ponce City Market in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward as an example.
Bene said some development authorities approve tax abatements simply to gain the fees they earn from the transaction as a revenue source.
“We have a public trust problem with development authorities,” he said. “If the boards of these authorities aren’t making decisions in the public interest, you’ve got a problem.”
Both witnesses said tax abatements tend to be most beneficial when offered for job-generating industrial projects where there’s competition from other communities. Apartments and retail projects don’t tend to need tax breaks because the developers are motivated to build them because of market demand.
Sen. Max Burns, R-Sylvania, the study committee’s chairman, said one topic the panel should consider in its recommendations is addressing the charging of fees by development authorities to generate revenue.
Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, D-Decatur, who is on the committee despite being a member of the House, suggested eliminating per-diem payments to members of development authority boards.
The committee is planning one more meeting Nov. 30 to begin shaping its report to the full Senate. The panel expects to release the report next month.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Georgia school superintendents Mary Elizabeth Davis (Henry County), Michael Duncan (Pike County) and Keith Simmons (Griffin-Spalding County Schools) discuss how their districts used federal COVID relief funds.
ATLANTA – A new report looks at how Georgia’s schools are using the influx of nearly $6 billion in federal COVID relief funds that have flowed to districts across the state since 2020.
While 10% of the funds were earmarked for the state Department of Education, the other 90% went directly to school districts. The federal funding did not come with the usual regulatory restrictions, providing districts with flexibility to use the money to address local needs.
A new report released by the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education (GPEE) Thursday finds districts across the state are now using the funds to address longer-term needs after initially focusing on immediate needs like boosting technological capacity and ensuring students’ access to food when the pandemic first hit.
“We … see sort of a trend where the local districts are really moving from crisis management mode,” said GPEE President Dana Rickman said. “Now, they’re really moving more into implementing plans to help students recover from lost learning.”
Despite the shared experience of the pandemic, districts’ responses were marked by “the diversity of adversity,” added Keith Simmons, superintendent of Griffin-Spalding County Schools.
Each Georgia district faced unique needs and has come up with its own approach to using the funds.
Most districts have used the money to try to boost students’ academic performance. Around 87% of districts have used the funds to hire additional staff to help address student learning loss via one-on-one or small group tutoring. Many districts also used the money to boost summer learning programs.
Rural Pike County School District faced longstanding challenges with a shortfall of instructional resources prior to the pandemic, Superintendent Michael Duncan said. The relief funds allowed his district to focus on improving elementary literacy. It hired staff members who could help with one-on-one or small group tutoring.
More than three-quarters of the districts indicated they also used the funds to increase mental health support staff. The pandemic took a toll on student well-being as students lost access to regular routines and the social supports schools can provide.
For example, in Henry County, the district decided to use the money to establish a mental health and wellness coordinator at every school, said Superintendent Mary Elizabeth Davis. The coordinator, though not a clinician, is responsible for coordinating a wide variety of social and medical supports for students who need help.
The pandemic reinforced and amplified what most educators already knew, Davis said.
“It was an absolute dire necessity that the schoolhouse was playing that role as a comprehensive social service provider,” she said.
Just over half of Georgia districts have used the funds to increase student access to “wraparound services” such as food and housing assistance, according to the report.
Many districts face staffing shortages, especially for teachers in math, science, and special education, the report found. And nearly half of Georgia districts are using the federal funds to pay for additional substitute teachers, who are in high demand due to the need to quarantine if a teacher contracts COVID.
Pike County faces both substitute teacher and bus driver shortages, Duncan said.
The federal funding boost also presents some challenges. One is the looming September 2024 deadline by which all of the funds must be spent. That means that even if districts have developed effective programs to help their students, the funding for them will end in two years.
“We’ve seen that students meet goals, but now going into this next budget, now that the extra money is running out, am I going to be able to afford to continue to have this small group interventionalist in place?” Duncan asked. “Currently, I would say that’s probably not going to be able to happen.”
In recent months, rising costs driven by inflation have forced about half of the school districts to scale back their plans for the funds, Rickman said.
Statewide, 31% of districts reported using the federal funds to pay for fuel for their school buses. When the spending deadline hits in 2024, districts will have to come up with another source of funds for those costs.
The state Department of Education wants Congress to extend the deadline for spending education funds beyond 2024, said Matt Jones, chief of staff at the DOE. “We have a divided Congress, but that’s something we’re going to continue to press our congressional delegation to see through.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The Georgia Lottery Corp. Thursday reported its most profitable first quarter ever.
The lottery program transferred $389.9 million in profits to education covering July, August, and September, the first three months of fiscal 2023. That surpasses last year’s first quarter transfer by $25.1 million.
“As we celebrate another record quarter for the Georgia Lottery, we’re especially mindful of the direct impact these funds will have on our students and their families,” Gov. Brian Kemp said. “Our state’s HOPE Scholarship and Pre-K programs serve an essential role in educating the next generation, and this record-breaking quarter will ultimately benefit those students the most.”
Since its inception in 1993, the lottery has returned more than $25.7 billion to the state for education. More than 2 million students have received HOPE scholarships, and more than 1.7 million 4-year-olds have attended the statewide, voluntary prekindergarten program.
The lottery program has undergone significant changes over the years. The HOPE Scholarships initiative initially set family income limits to qualify but soon switched to a merit-based program as lottery ticket sales greatly exceeded early expectations.
By 2011, demand for scholarships was outstripping HOPE revenues, prompting then-Gov. Nathan Deal and the General Assembly to reduce benefits to the point that only students with grade-point-averages of 3.5 or better in high school could receive full college tuition coverage.
The percentage of tuition costs HOPE is covering for other students receiving scholarships has gradually risen in recent years as the program recovered its financial footing.
However, legislative Democrats have been pushing for Georgia to offer some need-based scholarships as well, using funds that could be generated if the state decides to legalize sports betting and/or casino gambling.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
