ATLANTA – Legislation U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., introduced last year aimed at curbing opioid abuse in rural America was signed into law Tuesday by President Joe Biden.
The Senate passed the Rural Opioid Abuse Prevention Act late last year, but the U.S. House of Representatives didn’t follow suit until this month.
The bipartisan bill, cosponsored by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, will steer federal dollars toward rural communities experiencing a high number of opioid overdoses.
“Like so many Georgians, I’ve lost friends to the opioid epidemic,” Ossoff said Tuesday. “My bipartisan law will fund efforts to prevent and treat addiction and save lives. I brought Republicans and Democrats together to address the opioid crisis,”
“Today’s signing of the Rural Opioid Abuse Prevention Act is a critical step forward in our ongoing effort to curb the opioid crisis,” Grassley added. “This new law will help communities in Iowa and across the country handle any surge in opioid overdoses and prevent more Americans from falling victim to addiction.”
The legislation will identify current gaps in opioid abuse prevention, treatment, and recovery services for rural Americans caught up in opioid addiction through a new pilot program. Funding will go to rural areas to help implement community response initiatives focused on reducing opioid overdose deaths.
The bill was sponsored in the House by U.S. Reps. Conor Lamb, D-Pa., and Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – An agreement reached by email constitutes a valid contract the state must uphold, even if that means delaying the execution of a person on death row, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday.
The email was an agreement between defense lawyers and the state Attorney General’s office that capital cases would not move forward during the COVID pandemic unless certain conditions were met.
One result was a delay in the execution of Virgil Presnell Jr., the longest-serving person on Georgia’s death row. Presnell was sentenced to death in 1976 after convictions on murder, rape, and kidnapping charges.
In April of last year, a deputy attorney general and Presnell’s lawyers agreed – via email – that no executions could take place until six months after three conditions related to the COVID pandemic were met. Vaccines had to be readily available to the public, the state Department of Corrections must have resumed its normal visitation rules, and the COVID-19 statewide judicial emergency order must have been lifted.
The Attorney General’s office moved ahead and set Presnell’s execution for May of this year but provided only two days’ advance notice to his lawyers. They sued the state for breach of contract, arguing Georgia had violated its agreement, that the conditions had not all been met, and that six months had not elapsed.
Lawyers for the state argued the state cannot be sued because of the doctrine of sovereign immunity, which bars lawsuits against the state government without its consent. A Fulton County court judge sided with Presnell and his lawyers and blocked the state from moving ahead with the execution.
The state then appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court, arguing the attorneys’ email agreement was not a written contract that could override the sovereign immunity doctrine.
The state Supreme Court unanimously sided with Presnell and his lawyers on Tuesday, finding the email agreement was a valid contract that the state violated by scheduling the execution.
“[T]he state has not cited a single case, nor are we aware of one, in which our appellate courts have adopted a per se rule that emails cannot create a written contract sufficient to waive sovereign immunity,” Justice Carla Wong McMillian wrote. “To the contrary, the great weight of authority has indicated that, as a general matter, emails may constitute written contracts.”
“Though it may prove inconvenient, uncomfortable, or undesirable to the state … everyone should be able to count on the state to honor its word,” Justice Charles Bethel added in a concurring opinion. “The state should keep its promises because the people of Georgia, who are the very source of the state’s sovereignty, are owed a government that honors its commitments.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
The state Public Service Commission held firm Tuesday on a 5,000-customer cap on Georgia Power’s rooftop solar program.
ATLANTA – The state Public Service Commission (PSC) approved a $1.8 billion rate increase requested by Georgia Power Tuesday that embraced most of an agreement between the agency’s staff and the company presented last week.
Commissioners slightly lowered the upper limit on profits Georgia Power will be allowed to keep and sweetened incentives to be offered to encourage the development of solar energy and the deployment of electric vehicle charging stations. But the PSC stopped short of more far-reaching changes proposed by Commissioner Lauren “Bubba” McDonald, who provided the lone opposition in Tuesday’s 4-1 vote.
The $1.8 billion rate hike – down from Georgia Power’s original request of $2.9 billion – will raise the average residential customer’s bill by $3.60 per month starting Jan. 1. That’s down significantly from the $14.90 monthly increase customers would have seen next year under the original front-loaded three-year request the company proposed in June.
Instead, customer rates will go up by 4.5% in 2024 and again in 2025 under the agreement between Georgia Power and the PSC’s Public Interest Advocacy Staff.
The commission set the return on equity (ROE) for the utility at the staff-recommended level of 10.5%, down from the 11% the company sought.
But commission Chair Tricia Pridemore amended the upper limit of the “earnings band” – the range within which the utility can earn profits for its shareholders without sharing them with customers – to 11.9%, slightly below the 12% Georgia Power requested and currently receives. The PSC staff had recommended reducing the upper limit to 11.5%.
“In the current environment of increasing interest rates and record inflation, it is important to hold the company close to current band levels in order to maintain the company’s financial integrity and the efficiency incentives to ultimately benefit customers,” Pridemore said.
The commission defeated an alternative amendment McDonald proposed to follow the staff’s suggestion and set the upper limit of the earnings band at 11.5%.
“All those revenues inside the band go to the company, not the ratepayer,” McDonald said.
The commission did approve one customer-friendly amendment Pridemore introduced increasing the percentage of revenues the company brings in above the earnings band that are refunded directly to ratepayers from the 10% contained in the agreement to 40%.
Commissioner Fitz Johnson proposed an amendment to provide 65% of the $81 million Georgia Power had sought for EV charging stations. The agreement had cut that allocation to just 10% of the original request.
The PSC also passed another Johnson amendment to charge residential customers participating in Georgia Power’s community solar program $24 for every “block” of power generated and charge commercial customers $25 per block. That’s less than Georgia Power wanted but more than the PSC staff recommended.
“Pricing at this level will allow participating customers the opportunity to support the development of clean energy as well as the opportunity to realize fuel savings,” Johnson said.
Finally, the PSC approved an amendment proposed by Commissioner Jason Shaw to increase payments to participants in Georgia Power’s rooftop solar program for the electricity they generate beyond what they use.
“This change will improve the economics of rooftop solar for [participating] customers and encourage the adoption of more solar in Georgia,” Shaw said.
However, the commission did not lift the current 5,000-customer cap on the utility’s pilot rooftop solar program, which solar industry advocates have complained threatens the financial health of their business.
Environmental groups also criticized the PSC for not expanding the rooftop solar program, particularly when Georgia Power customers will face a series of other rate increases over the next couple of years.
“Georgia Power customers should brace themselves because electric bills are on the rise,” said Jill Kysor, senior attorney in the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Georgia office. “Customers need more options to control escalating costs, like access to rooftop solar. By failing to expand [that] program, the commission missed an opportunity to let folks lower bills and to create new local Georgia jobs.”
Chris Womack, Georgia Power’s chairman, president, and CEO, said in September the company expects to file a request in February for unrecovered fuel costs to account for the volatility of the energy market resulting from factors including rising natural gas prices and the impacts of the war in Ukraine.
The utility also will be looking to the PSC to recover the costs of bringing into service the two new nuclear reactors being built at Plant Vogtle.
Womack said Tuesday the commission’s decision struck a good balance between Georgia Power’s needs and those of its customers.
“Since the start of the rate request process, we asked the PSC to set rates at a level that supports the essential, critical investments needed to meet our state’s evolving energy needs,” he said. “Today’s decision does that while also balancing affordability needs for customers.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia should institute a 30% to 35% tax credit for music-production expenses to help grow the state’s music industry, a bipartisan legislative study committee recommended this week.
The tax incentive would encourage out-of-state productions to invest in Georgia musicians, the committee said. The state should also set the amount of spending needed to qualify for the tax incentive to $25,000 for recorded musical productions and allow companies to aggregate multiple projects to meet that threshold.
The committee also recommended lowering the spending threshold to earn the tax credit to $200,000 for musical or theatrical tours that start in Georgia. This would encourage productions, including Broadway touring companies and major musical acts, to launch their tours in Georgia.
The state should set up a Georgia Music Office within the Office of the Governor to publicize Georgia’s musical talent and attract music companies to the state. That office, modeled on a similar, successful office in Texas, should have three full-time staffers, the committee recommended.
The new music office should create a “Music City” certification that Georgia cities could earn if they meet certain requirements. That would help bolster musical networks and draw attention to the music industry in the designated cities. The program would be modeled on a similar program in Texas that has so far certified over 35 cities in that state.
Georgia should also set up a music commission to advise the new music office. That commission should include music-industry leaders, businesspeople, and music educators.
The state should set up grants for between $5,000 and $25,000 to help support local musicians and recording studios, the committee recommended.
Georgia should also designate music-production development jobs as high-demand careers for the purposes of the Technical College System of Georgia’s new High-Demand Career Initiative program. That would provide funding for employers to create paid apprenticeship programs in music production and help create a future workforce for the industry.
The state’s success in attracting film and television productions after a 2008 tax-incentive reform provides a blueprint for capitalizing on the state’s rich musical heritage that includes internationally known acts such as The Allman Brothers Band, Trisha Yearwood, Outkast, and R.E.M.
Though Georgia has offered music-industry tax incentives since 2017, they have not been competitive enough to beat out the packages offered by other states. The incentives are also set to expire at the end of this year.
The new recommendations grew out of a bipartisan, bicameral study committee established this year. The committee heard from Georgia luminaries such as Chuck Leavell, the Georgia-based keyboardist for The Rolling Stones who previously played for The Allman Brothers Band.
Leavell – and many others who testified before the committee — noted that Georgia is losing music business to other states that offer more generous tax incentives.
“We know the competition, what’s happening in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Tennessee,” Leavell told the committee this fall. “We need to get at least even with these guys.”
The General Assembly, which begins meeting in January, would need to approve corresponding legislation for the ideas to become a reality.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The federal government should ensure Medicare Advantage insurers Humana and Aetna cover cataract surgeries for older Georgians without delays or denials, Georgia’s Democratic Congressional representatives said this week.
Aetna started requiring prior authorizations (PAs) for cataract surgeries in its Medicare Advantage plans across the country last year. After protests from doctors and others, Aetna rolled back the policy – except in Georgia and Florida. Humana, another large Medicare Advantage insurer, enacted a similar policy in August requiring prior authorizations for cataract surgeries in Georgia, Capitol Beat reported earlier this year.
“These PA policies put Georgia [Medicare Advantage] patients at greater risk of falls and accidents as their vision continued to deteriorate while they wait for surgery,” the six Democratic representatives said in a letter to Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, chief administrator for the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS), the federal health-care regulator.
“Georgia [Medicare Advantage] beneficiaries have faithfully paid their premiums every month and their access to sight-restoring surgery should not be delayed. They deserve to have the same access to sight-restoring surgery that Aetna and Humana…beneficiaries have in other states,” the representatives added.
This week’s letter from the Democratic representatives follows a similar letter sent to Brooks-LaSure in November by a group of Republican U.S. representatives from Georgia.
“Aetna’s and Humana’s prior authorization policies simply create obstacles to this common surgery for both patients and their physicians,” the five Republican legislators wrote.
Aetna and Humana representatives told Capitol Beat in September the prior authorization policies in Georgia are due to the companies’ pre-existing relationship with Florida-based iCare Health Solutions, a contractor that handles eye-care claims.
Georgia eye doctors say the policy is unnecessary.
“It’s a burden and a delay,” Dr. J. Chandler Berg, an Albany-area doctor and president of the Georgia Society of Ophthalmology, told Capitol Beat in September.
Prior authorization requirements are also a national concern. A report by the Office of Inspector General in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last April found around 13% of Medicare Advantage prior authorization denials were for services that would have been covered under traditional Medicare.
CMS recently issued a proposal to change its rules around prior authorization. If implemented, the new rule would require health insurers to streamline their prior authorization policies by 2026, along with other requirements. CMS will accept public comments on the rule until March 13, 2023.
The proposed CMS rule is similar to a bill that addresses PA requirements passed by the U.S. House earlier this year. That bill, called the Improving Seniors’ Timely Access to Care Act, is currently stalled in the Senate.
Older Americans can enroll in Medicare Advantage plans through private health insurance companies instead of obtaining health care through traditional Medicare. More than half of Georgians enrolled in Medicare, the federal insurance program for adults 65 and older, are members of private Medicare Advantage plans rather than the traditional Medicare program for their health insurance, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The Democratic U.S. Representatives who signed this week’s letter are David Scott, D-Atlanta, Henry “Hank” Johnson Jr., D-Stone Mountain, Lucy McBath, D-Marietta, Sanford Bishop Jr., D-Albany, Nikema Williams, D-Atlanta, and Carolyn Bourdeaux, D-Suwanee.
The Republican U.S. Representatives who sent a similar letter in November are Buddy Carter, R-Savannah, Barry Loudermilk, R-Cassville, Drew Ferguson, R-West Point, Rick Allen, R-Augusta, and Austin Scott, R-Tifton.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
