Micha Rich works for the state of Georgia. He is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that seeks to force the State Benefit Health Plan to cover gender-confirming medical care, including surgery. (Photo credit: Teeter Tomlin)
ATLANTA – A group of Georgians is suing the state over its failure to provide health benefits for transgender people through the State Health Benefit Plan, which provides health coverage for state employees, including public school employees.
Two of the plaintiffs in the case work for the state, while one is the son of a state employee covered by the State Health Benefit Plan. The lawsuit maintains the failure to provide the medical services, including gender-confirming surgery, amounts to discrimination based on sex. The Campaign for Southern Equality, an LGBTQ advocacy group with members in Georgia, is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit.
“I grew up in Georgia, I went to college in Georgia, and now I work for the state of Georgia. I want to see Georgia lead on treating people fairly,” said Micha Rich, one of the plaintiffs. He is a staff accountant for the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts.
“I love what I do and that I get to work in service of the public good. But my employer should not be able to deny me health care because of who I am. For years, I had to put off living my life fully while I waited to have the medical treatments my doctors and I knew I needed,” Rich added.
Medicare and many other private insurance companies already cover the treatments. Recent lawsuits have successfully pushed other health plans in Georgia to provide gender-confirming treatment, including surgery. A lawsuit forced the University System of Georgia to cover the medical care in 2018.
Earlier this year, a federal district judge ruled employers cannot deny or exclude coverage for gender-confirming care for transgender people after a Houston County policy denied coverage for a county employee who wanted the surgery. In July, the state Medicaid program changed its policy to cover transgender health-care, including gender-confirmation surgery, as part of a settlement in a separate lawsuit.
The majority of state health benefit plans cover the services, said Adam Polaski, a spokesperson for the Campaign for Southern Equality, an LGBTQ advocacy group that is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. A federal judge earlier this year ruled North Carolina’s state benefit plan must change its policy to cover gender-confirming care after a similar lawsuit in that state.
Gender dysphoria is a recognized medical condition that results in mental distress because of a mismatch between the sex a person was born with and their gender identity, the person’s own sense of their gender. The condition was first included in a standard psychiatric reference, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM), in 2013.
The American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association, along with many other national medical groups, recommend gender-confirmation therapy, hormonal treatments, and surgery as possible treatments for gender dysphoria.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Voters in four Georgia regions have adopted a penny sales tax to fund transportation needs.
ATLANTA – Georgians in 12 regions across the state voted a decade ago to pay a penny sales tax for 10 years to fund a backlog of critical transportation projects.
While most of the regions – including metro Atlanta – rejected the tax, voters in the regions surrounding Augusta, Columbus, and Dublin passed the measure. Six years later, voters in a fourth region in South Georgia anchored by Valdosta adopted the tax.
Nearly 900 projects later, the Transportation Investment Act (TIA) marked its 10th anniversary this year as a resounding success, state Commissioner of Transportation Russell McMurry told an audience of Georgia lawmakers, state agency heads, and lobbyists Dec. 5.
“We’re going to deliver every project that was promised and finish in the black,” McMurry said during the Biennial Institute, an orientation session for newly elected legislators at the University of Georgia.
Before each regional vote, roundtables of local elected officials – with public input – chose projects they wanted to fund with the tax.
“[Voters] could look at the projects and know what the money was to be spent on,” said Greg Morris, a member of the State Transportation Board representing Georgia’s 12th Congressional District, which includes parts of two of the regions participating in the TIA program. “That made it an easy sell.”
Of the 871 projects in the three original participating regions funded through the tax, 764 went to the Heart of Georgia Altamaha (HOGA) region anchored by Dublin. The Central Savannah River Area (CSRA) region surrounding Augusta received 84, and just 23 went to the River Valley region surrounding Columbus.
The difference in those numbers was a function of cost, said Kenneth Franks, TIA program administrator for the Georgia Department of Transportation. The HOGA region had a need for a lot of smaller projects, mostly resurfacing and maintenance, Franks said.
“You’ve got cities and counties in that region that hadn’t had a dedicated source of transportation funding for years,” he said. “The other two focused on major projects … the bigger corridors and interchanges.”
But there were exceptions to that trend. By far the largest TIA project funded thus far is in the HOGA region, a $112.3 million widening of U.S. 1 in Toombs and Appling counties from two lanes to four. The project also includes replacing a bridge over the Altamaha River.
The next largest TIA project is $47.9 million in the River Valley region to widen U.S. 280 from Lake Blackshear to Cordele. The project includes construction of a new two-lane bridge over Lake Blackshear parallel to an existing bridge to create four lanes.
In the Central Savannah River Area, the largest TIA project is $41.1 million to widen Old Petersburg Road in Columbia County from Baston Road to Old Evans Road and on to Washington Road.
The project list in the three participating TIA regions has proven popular enough that voters not only passed the tax in 2012 but agreed subsequently to extend it another 10 years. In each case, the renewal of the tax passed by larger margins than the original votes.
Voters in the CSRA region renewed the tax in a 2020 referendum that received 71% of the vote, up substantially from the 53.7% support the tax received in 2012.
HOGA and River Valley region voters approved an extension of the tax last May with 63.5% and 55.3% of the vote, respectively.
“In the regions we got the opportunity to work with, we have been able to develop a relationship,” Franks said. “We’ve shown them we can deliver the projects they expected.”
The track record the TIA program was building in the three participating regions drew attention from cities and counties in the Southern Georgia region anchored by Valdosta. It became the fourth region to join the program when voters there passed the transportation sales tax in 2018.
“TIA’s been a lifeline for smaller communities that don’t have the tax base,” said Tim Golden, a member of the State Transportation Board representing the 8th Congressional District, which includes much of the Southern Georgia region.
Franks said the success the TIA program has shown in the Southern Georgia region in its first four years has generated resolutions in a handful of counties calling for renewing the tax when it comes due to expire.
But Franks said he doesn’t expect additional regions to put regional transportation tax measures on their ballots anytime soon.
Counties in two other regions – the Three Rivers region around LaGrange and the Southwest Georgia region – expressed interest, he said. However, voters in so many counties in those regions have approved single-county transportation taxes that there’s little point of pursuing the regional option, he said.
Morris said a long list of projects in his HOGA region are now complete that wouldn’t have been without the TIA program because local governments simply couldn’t afford them.
“Pulling these projects out of some of these counties was impossible,” he said. “TIA made it possible. … It’s been transformative.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
A screen grab from a recent University of Georgia TikTok post.
ATLANTA – Georgia is joining the growing list of Republican-led states banning TikTok from state-owned phones and laptops, according to a new memo issued by Gov. Brian Kemp on Thursday.
All executive agencies and branches should immediately ban the use of TikTok as well as two other social messaging platforms, WeChat and Telegram, on any government-owned devices, the memo says.
“In recent days, information has come to light exposing the depth of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) involvement with TikTok and the resulting threat that TikTok poses to government cybersecurity,” Kemp’s memo states.
The social media platform can track and store personal information that could be turned over to the Chinese government, presenting a threat to Georgia’s security, the memo adds.
Chinese company ByteDance owns TikTok. The Kemp memo states ByteDance employs members of the CCP. It also says that TikTok’s content selection algorithm could be influenced by the Chinese government.
In the past few years, many organizations, including some government agencies, have turned to the popular social media app to share information with Georgians, especially young people who make up the majority of the platform’s audience.
The University of Georgia (@universityofga) and Georgia Tech’s admissions office (@GTAdmission) both have official TikTok channels that remained up on the platform as of Thursday afternoon.
“They would fall under this directive and any use of these platforms would be prohibited on any state-issued devices they have,” confirmed Andrew Isenhour, a Kemp spokesperson.
The new Georgia rule also prohibits the use of messaging platform WeChat, which is owned by Tencent Holdings, another Chinese company, and Telegram, which was founded in Russia but is now headquartered in Dubai.
Kemp’s move comes just over a week after state Sen. Jason Anavitarte, R-Dallas, said he will introduce legislation to ban TikTok in Georgia, though the bill had not yet been prefiled with the Senate as of Thursday afternoon.
A growing number of Republican-led states have implemented measures similar to the new Georgia rule. These include Alabama, Texas, South Carolina, South Dakota, Maryland, Utah, Oklahoma, and Nebraska.
The U.S. Senate passed a bill this week to bar federal employees from using TikTok on government-owned devices. The bill was sponsored by Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. The U.S. House would have to approve the bill before Congress adjourns next week in order for it to reach President Joe Biden’s desk.
Many federal agencies, including the departments of State, Defense, and Homeland Security have also banned the use of TikTok on government-owned devices.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Environmental and solar industry advocates asked Georgia energy regulators Thursday to reduce the upper limit on profits Georgia Power will be allowed to earn and force the utility to pursue solar energy more aggressively.
Georgia Power’s so-called “earnings band” and how to implement two of the utility’s solar power programs were the only issues left unresolved by an agreement on a proposed rate increase the utility reached Wednesday with the state Public Service Commission’s (PSC) Public Interest Advocacy Staff.
The settlement, which the commission will vote on next week, would reduce the rate hike Georgia Power requested in June by 40%, from $2.9 billion to about $1.8 billion. It also would lower the portion of the three-year increase due to take effect in January from $14.90 per month for the average residential customer to $3.60.
The agreement also calls for reducing Georgia Power’s return on equity (ROE) from the 11% the company requested to 10.5%, still a percentage point above the national average ROE for utilities of 9.5%.
However, the PSC staff rejected Georgia Power’s proposal to set the upper limit of the earnings band – the range within which the utility can earn profits for its shareholders without sharing them with customers – at 12%. Instead, the staff recommended the commission set that upper limit at 11.5%.
Lowering that upper limit on the ROE would be a timely step to help customers absorb a series of rate increases Georgia Power will be seeking soon to cover not only base rates but higher fuels costs and the costs of bringing the Plant Vogtle nuclear expansion into service, said Dan Walsh, a lawyer for the commission staff.
“This is an opportunity for the commission to offer some relief to customers who still stand to face substantial rate increases over the next year,” he said.
“We are facing a perfect storm of rate increases,” Clay Jones, a lawyer for the Georgia Association of Manufacturers, added in support of the staff’s position on the lower earnings band. “We are concerned about it from a business perspective but also from the perspective of all ratepayers … people who work for our companies.”
But Georgia Power lawyer Brandon Marzo said the utility has been earning 12% ROE at the top of the band since 2013, giving the utility flexibility to weather difficult times.
“Retaining the top end of the band at 12% has allowed the company to manage … the pandemic, inflation, supply chain and labor market pressures, and changing investor expectations,” he said.
Representatives of environmental groups and the solar energy industry that filed as intervenors in the rate case complained Thursday that Georgia Power is falling behind in pursuing solar energy. Specifically, they called on the PSC to force the utility to expand its rooftop solar pilot program, which is capped at 5,000 customers, and offer participants in its Community Solar Program higher compensation to stimulate participation.
“It’s up to you to decide if Georgians can use their own property to generate their own electricity using their own resources and get fair compensation for energy passed back to the grid,” said Don Moreland, policy chairman for the Georgia Solar Energy Association.
But Marzo argued that paying rooftop solar installers what they’re seeking would cause cross-subsidization, with customers not participating in the pilot program subsidizing participants.
Georgia Power did draw support from intervenors for some of what it was seeking in the rate hike. Alicia Brown, representing the Georgia Coalition of Local Governments, asked the PSC to restore the full $81 million the utility requested for its Make Ready Program, a series of investments in electric vehicle infrastructure. The agreement approved Wednesday would reduce that funding by 75%.
The settlement also trimmed Georgia Power’s Grid Investment Program by 40% and reduced the operating and maintenance expenses it will be allowed to recover by $180 million.
At one point in Thursday’s lengthy discussion, Commissioner Lauren “Bubba” McDonald asked Marzo how Georgia Power could settle for a 40% reduction in its rate hike request.
“We did not give up the farm,” Marzo answered. “We can still operate and do things for our customers that we think are important. But there are investments we will not be making because of this [agreement].”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Former Ambassador Andrew Young speaking to students at Atlanta University Center earlier this year (photo credit: Rebecca Grapevine).
ATLANTA – Georgia should establish special economic prosperity planning districts for its 10 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), a bipartisan state Senate committee recommended Thursday.
The proposed HBCU Innovation and Economic Prosperity Planning Districts would help the colleges address critical needs and increase engagement from the surrounding communities, said committee chairwoman Sen. Sonya Halpern, D-Atlanta. Areas of focus might include housing, digital infrastructure, small business and workforce development, and environmental and facility upgrades for the institutions and their communities.
“We have heard time and time again that [HBCUs] are real economic drivers for the state,” Halpern said. “But we’ve also heard there’s a lot of opportunities yet in front of our HBCUs to be better supported in their infrastructure. … This would be an innovative approach to begin to corral the asset that we have as our HBCUs … and use [them] as a real catalyst for the communities in which they sit.”
The General Assembly would need to approve legislation creating the planning districts as a first step.
The study committee also recommended that the Georgia HBCUs produce a biennial report focused on how various state agencies can support the institutions. The reports would be authored by a third-party organization and focus on how HBCUs can benefit from state resources, including funding, contracting opportunities, and technical assistance. The proposal is modeled on a similar effort in Tennessee that has been successful, Halpern said.
The committee also recommended creating an HBCU Caucus within the General Assembly. The bipartisan, bicameral caucus would be modeled on the HBCU Caucus in Congress.
The committee also recommended creating HBCU subcommittees within both the state Senate and House Higher Education committees. This would provide a dedicated forum to discuss HBCU problems and potential legislative solutions, Halpern said.
The study committee held several meetings this fall and listened to testimony from experts, HBCU officials, and alumni.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
