ATLANTA – Federal prisons will have to replace outdated, broken security camera systems under legislation sponsored by U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., that gained final passage this week.
The bipartisan bill stems from an eight-month investigation into sexual abuse of female inmates conducted by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations chaired by Ossoff. After passing the Senate last fall, the legislation cleared the U.S. House Wednesday and is on its way to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.
“Broken prison camera systems are enabling corruption, misconduct, and abuse,” Ossoff said.“That’s why I brought Republicans and Democrats together to pass my Prison Camera Reform Act.”
Final passage of the bill came one day after Ossoff released the results of the subcommittee’s investigation, which found the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has failed to prevent, detect, and stop recurring sexual abuse by its own employees.
Survivors of sexual abuse in federal prisons testified at a hearing Tuesday that prison employees assaulted them in areas where they knew there was no camera coverage.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz also testified that outdated and broken prison cameras have hindered prosecution of serious cases involving assault and civil rights violations.
“Action by the [Bureau of Prisons] on its camera deficiencies is absolutely critical to the BOP’s ability to ensure the safety and security of its institutions for inmates as well as its employees,” Horowitz said.
The bill requires the agency to upgrade prison camera systems to provide secure storage, logging, preservation, and accessibility of recordings for future investigators pursuing allegations of misconduct, abuse, or other criminal activity in prisons, including the flow of dangerous contraband.
The legislation was backed by the Council of Prison Locals, which represents more than 30,000 federal prison employees, as well as key civil rights groups.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia Power officials signed off late Wednesday on an agreement that would lower the utility’s rate hike request now before the state Public Service Commission (PSC) by nearly 40%.
The company, the PSC’s Public Interest Advocacy Staff, and intervenors in the rate case agreed on a rate hike that would raise $1.8 billion from Georgia Power customers during the next three years. The proposal will be presented to the PSC’s Energy Committee on Thursday.
Unlike the original proposal the utility submitted to the commission in June, the new agreement would not front-load the rate increase. Instead, it would lower the impact on the average residential customer during the first year to $3.60 per month, down from the original request of $14.90.
That 2.6% increase in customer bills, effective Jan. 1, would jump to 4.5% in both the second and third years.
Georgia Power executives testified during recent hearings before the PSC that front-loading the rate hike would save money in the long run. But consumer and environmental advocates objected to such a steep increase at the onset of the three-year period.
“We believe this stipulated agreement takes a balanced approach that not only asks the Georgia Public Service Commission to set rates at a level that support the essential, critical investments needed to meet our state’s evolving energy needs but also recognizes affordability needs for customers,” the utility wrote in a prepared statement.
Opponents of the original rate hike request also raised concerns during the hearings that the proposed increase in base rates represents only a portion of the increases Georgia Power is expected to request during the next couple of years.
The utility also plans to submit a proposal to the PSC in February to recover the costs of higher fuel prices. After that, the commission will be asked to approve two rate hikes to cover the costs of bringing into service the two long-awaited new nuclear reactors being built at Plant Vogtle.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia should add 2,400 slots for serving people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in their homes and communities in next year’s budget, a state Senate study committee recommended Wednesday.
“We’re looking at hopefully being able to eliminate the waiting list over a three-year period,” said state Sen. Sally Harrell, D-Atlanta, co-chairwoman of the committee.
The waiting list currently has more than 7,000 people on it.
The program pays for support services for people with an intellectual or developmental disability so they can remain in their homes and communities and not languish in large institutions.
Increasing the funding for the program so that the waiting list can be cleared has long been a priority of the disability advocacy community, and the study committee’s recommendations may be the crucial first step toward decreasing the length of the waiting list.
The study committee, which held several public meetings this fall, grew out of a resolution passed earlier this year that aimed at addressing the waiting list and other problems faced by Georgians with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The panel adopted 14 recommendations on Wednesday.
Key among them is that Georgia set up a special commission devoted to improving services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities along the lines of the state’s Behavioral Health Reform and Innovation Commission. That commission, formed in 2019, spearheaded the drafting and passage of a sweeping mental health reform bill earlier this year.
The intellectual and developmental disabilities commission would include not just legislators but key staff members from state agencies, experts, family members and people who have developmental or intellectual disabilities.
Georgia should also consider refining how the waiver waiting list works, the study committee’s report suggested. The waiting list should take into account people’s current and future needs, their current supports, age, region and other factors. The list also should be made more transparent so the public can better understand how it works.
The committee also issued several recommendations for addressing the state’s shortage of direct-support professionals, the frontline workers who help disabled people with daily tasks and other support.
The shortage in the field is due in part to the low pay for the job. The committee recommended increasing wages in fiscal 2024, noting that pay should be sufficient for workers to cover transportation and housing.
The committee did not provide a specific amount for the wage in the report. However, the state Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities (DBHDD) recently issued a draft report suggesting the rate for direct support professionals be raised to just above $15 an hour.
Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, the committee’s other co-chairman, said he thought $15 would likely not be enough to address the worker shortage, especially given recent inflation.
“We know that our end goal is not yet achieved [with the $15 recommendation],” he said. “[But] this is advancing the ball.”
The report also recommended the state consider finding a way to add retirement, health-care and other benefits for direct support workers to incentivize entering and remaining in the field. The state should also consider adding a professional credentialing process for direct-support jobs.
The committee also suggested the state find a way to pay family members who act as caregivers for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Another suggestion included in the report is that Georgia consider shifting medical care for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to a managed-care model currently used in many other areas of health care. The state would pay a private insurance company to provide medical care for people in the program.
If the state wants to move forward with the idea, the report recommends first setting up a pilot program enrolling about 1% of the people who need the services, around 130 to 150 Georgians, to test out whether the managed-care model would deliver quality care for this population.
“We are so grateful to everyone who came forward and told their stories,” Harrell said. “Each story helped to highlight a different piece of the puzzle. Once we put that puzzle together, it was clear that this community is in crisis with tremendous unmet needs.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is asking the General Assembly to end general election runoffs in Georgia.
Raffensperger’s proposal, released Wednesday, comes just more than a week after Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock defeated Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a runoff after neither candidate received a majority of the votes in the November general election.
“Georgia is one of the only states in the country with a general election runoff,” Raffensperger said. “We’re also one of the only states that always seems to have a runoff. … No one wants to be dealing with politics in the middle of their family holiday.”
Georgia lawmakers have made changes to the vote threshold general election candidates must meet to avoid runoffs since 1968, when voters approved a constitutional amendment requiring the governor’s race to go to a runoff if none of the candidates received a majority of votes in the general election.
After Democratic incumbent Sen. Wyche Fowler lost to Republican challenger Paul Coverdell in a 1992 runoff, the General Assembly’s Democratic majority reduced the 50%-plus-one vote requirement to avoid a runoff to 45%. That worked out for the Democrats four years later when the late Max Cleland won the seat of retiring Sen. Sam Nunn with more than 45% of the vote but less than 50%.
Republicans responded to that 1996 loss when the GOP won control of the legislature in 2004. During their first legislative session in power, Republicans changed the requirement back to the 50%-plus-one threshold.
Some second-place finishers in the general election have gone on to turn the tables and win the runoff, including Coverdell. But this year, Warnock finished first in both the general election and the runoff, lending credence to the argument that general election runoffs are an unnecessary waste of taxpayer dollars.
Raffensperger said the four-week turnaround between the general election and runoff this year – about half of the gap between the general election and runoff two years ago – made it particularly difficult for county elections offices to execute the runoff. The shorter time frame this year also resulted in fewer early voting days, prompting complaints from Democrats.
Raffensperger said the General Assembly could choose from a wide list of options as an alternative to general election runoffs. Those include eliminating or reducing the 50%-plus-one vote threshold, or going with ranked-choice voting, which would allow voters to rank their choices according to preference.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The U.S. Postal Service will issue a stamp honoring the late civil rights leader John Lewis next year.
The stamp will feature a photograph of Lewis taken in 2013 by Marco Grob on assignment for Time magazine, the agency announced Tuesday. The “selvage,” margin paper on a sheet of Lewis stamps, will feature a photo from 1963 of a young Lewis outside a workshop on nonviolent protest in Clarksdale, Miss.
Lewis was the last surviving speaker at the 1963 March on Washington when he died of pancreatic cancer in 2020 at the age of 80.
Lewis was beaten severely by Alabama state police in 1965 while on a march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., an incident that came to be known as Bloody Sunday and was instrumental in congressional passage of the federal Voting Rights Act later that year.
He was elected to Congress in 1986 representing a district centered in Atlanta and served for more than 30 years.
A postal service news release praised Lewis, who despite 45 arrests “remained resolute in his commitment to what he liked to call ‘good trouble.’ ”
Earlier this year, Congress passed legislation naming the main post office in Atlanta after Lewis.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
