ATLANTA – A new poll shows most Georgians would like to bring casino gambling to the Peach State.
The survey of 800 likely Georgia voters, conducted mostly via cellphones Nov. 1 through Nov. 3 by national polling firm Public Opinion Strategies, found 66% in favor of legalizing casinos. The poll found even stronger support – 85% – for allowing Georgia voters to decide whether casinos should be allowed to set up shop here.
“Casino gaming would be an enormous economic boost and job creator for our state,” said Dan McLagan, spokesman for All in Georgia, the casino industry group that commissioned the poll. “Georgia should go big and up our game as an economic powerhouse, tourist destination and job creator.”
The survey showed bipartisan support for legalized gambling, with 73% of Democrats and 60% of Republicans favoring the proposal.
Legalizing casinos was supported by 66% of poll respondents, while sports betting found favor with 60%. Both likely would require Georgia voters to pass a constitutional amendment before either could take effect.
Legislation calling for legalizing gambling in Georgia has been a perennial topic for the General Assembly in recent years. However, none of the proposals have made it through the legislature amid opposition from organizations of religious conservatives, which carry a lot of clout under the Gold Dome.
The poll’s margin of error was plus-or-minus 3.46%.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – A South Korea-based maker of electric vehicle batteries is once again expanding its footprint in Georgia.
SK Battery America (SKBA) will open a regional IT hub facility in Roswell, creating 200 high-tech jobs and investing about $19 million, Gov. Brian Kemp announced Thursday.
SK already is investing nearly $2.6 billion in two lithium-ion battery manufacturing plants in Jackson County to supply electric vehicles including the Ford F-150 Lightning and Volkswagen ID.4.
“We’re proud of SK Battery America’s continued growth here in the No. 1 state for business,” Kemp said Thursday. “This innovative company continues to bring the jobs of the future that will benefit hardworking Georgians in manufacturing, and now it will also tap into the tech talent our top-ranking universities provide.”
The new regional IT facility will serve SK battery plants across the U.S. The company will be hiring IT experts for battery manufacturing execution system development and operations as well as data analysts. Interested individuals can learn more about SKBA at www.skbatteryamerica.com.
“In 2019, SK On established SK Battery America as its U.S. production base, and the new IT regional center is a natural result of the company’s commitment to Georgia,” said Pat Wilson, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development.
“In economic development, we often talk about the ripple effects of a company’s initial investment. Suppliers, support centers, and expansions create new opportunities that go beyond the company’s original scope, location, and even industry.”
The IT center is expected to begin operations next January.
The economic development agency’s Global Commerce team worked with Fulton County, the city of Roswell, and Georgia Power to land the project.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Former state official and foster parent Mike Dudgeon tells lawmakers about problems he faced navigating the state’s foster-care insurance plan.
ATLANTA – A legislative hearing about the “hoteling” of foster children in Georgia zeroed in the problems children in state custody face in getting health care.
So far this fiscal year, more than 400 children have spent the night in hotels or state offices because appropriate placements could not be found for them, Audrey Brannen, a complex care coordinator at the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) told lawmakers Wednesday.
The reasons behind the hoteling problem are complex, but one major contributor is lack of access to appropriate health care, Brannen said during the joint hearing convened by the state Senate’s newly created Children and Families Committee and the Senate Health and Human Services Committee.
“We are here to protect children from their caregivers who may be maltreating them,” she said. “We cannot do that when so many of our resources, both staff and financial, are trying to plug the holes in our health-care system. It’s like using your index finger to stop the leak on the Titanic.”
Care coordination services for foster children are often lacking, Statesboro pediatrician Dr. Michelle Zeanah told lawmakers. She said she has a hard time getting information about a child’s needs and treatment history from Amerigroup, the state’s contracted insurance plan for children in foster care.
Another problem is that many children who end up in hotels have autism, but there aren’t enough clinicians to diagnose and treat autism in Georgia and reimbursement rates for autism evaluation are too low. This leads to long waits for diagnoses and care, Zeanah said.
“If we reimbursed providers that are serving children who are in foster care at a higher rate, then providers would be highly motivated to serve those children,” she said.
Zeanah also questioned whether contracting with a private insurance company really helps Georgia children and youth in foster care. Amerigroup is owned by Elevance, formerly known as Anthem, a large, for-profit company.
“The goal of managed care is cost savings,” Zeanah said. “Why can’t foster children be started with the goal of creating access instead of the goal of reducing cost?”
Mike Dudgeon, a foster-care parent and a former policy director in the lieutenant governor’s office, echoed that call. He suggested returning health care of foster children to the older “fee-for-service” model, where the state pays directly for medical services, or putting foster children on the State Health Benefit Plan, which insures teachers and other state employees.
“If it’s good enough for our employees, it should be good enough for our foster kids,” said Dudgeon, also a former state representative from Forsyth County.
Dudgeon noted that he and his wife sometimes paid for health-care services for children they were fostering out of their own pockets because they could not find a provider that accepted the Amerigroup plan.
He said he had trouble getting data about the insurer’s financials and performance when he worked in state government.
“We were stonewalled for months and months and months … and this is with the weight of the lieutenant governor’s office and the weight of the Senate Budget Office behind it,” Dudgeon said. “All I can tell you, there’s a lot of smoke there that this money is not being appropriately spent. … We need rabid transparency.”
The problems around accessing health care for foster children have spurred DFCS to establish a special legal team dedicated to appealing insurance denials.
“Every day, my office will review all medical treatment denials, and we will file appeals if we determine that such treatment is medically necessary for the child or the youth,” said Brian Pettersson, the lawyer who leads the new team.
“Not only is the current system detrimental to the health-care needs of the foster children, but the current system does not benefit the citizens of the state of Georgia. … It increases [the Georgia Department of Human Services’] overall expenses that are used to expand and fill the gaps in coverages that taxpayers already paid for.”
Representatives from Amerigroup, the insurance plan under fire, also testified.
“We’ve been doing this since 2014,” Amerigroup President Mel Lindsey said. “I’ve never made a decision about how to treat anyone, particularly a foster-care kid, that was related to cost. And I never will.”
Lindsey and other officials from Amerigroup said they want to improve the care they deliver, but there are some factors they cannot control, such as shortages of treatment facilities in Georgia.
“We know there are opportunities for improvement in the system of care and certainly what we do as well,” Lindsay said. “We are deeply committed to working … to improve the way we serve.”
“One thing that we have accomplished today is to raise awareness and to make sure that everybody understands this is a front-burner issue,” added Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, R- Marietta, who chairs the Children and Families Committee. “These kids didn’t ask for this and they should be going to the front of the line, however we can get them there.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The state commission in charge of Georgia’s medical marijuana program adopted a rules Wednesday for the manufacture and sale of low-THC cannabis oil to patients suffering from a variety of diseases.
“We’re all proud to have some rules in place,” Sid Johnson, chairman of the Georgia Access to Medical Cannabis Commission, said following the unanimous vote. “It is a milestone on the way to achieving our goal of providing a quality product to patients.”
The commission was created by a law the General Assembly passed in 2019 to move Georgia from simply legalizing possession of cannabis oil to allowing marijuana to be grown in the state under close supervision and converted into a product that could be sold to patients enrolled in a state registry.
Patients eligible to receive cannabis oil include those suffering from seizure disorders, Parkinson’s disease, terminal cancer, post-traumatic stress disorder and sickle-cell anemia.
The rules will govern various aspects of the program including the facilities that will produce the oil, the dispensaries where the oil will be sold, and the independent laboratories that will test the product.
The commission awarded two Class 1 licenses last September to Trulieve Georgia Inc., which is building a plant in Adel, and Botanical Sciences LLC, which will set up shop in Glennville. Under the 2019 law, Class 1 licensees may grow marijuana in up to 100,000 square feet of indoor space.
The original law allowed each licensee to open up to five dispensaries for selling the product. However, licensees now will be permitted to add an additional dispensary because the enrollment in the registry has increased to more than 25,000, commission Executive Director Andrew Turnage said last week.
The law also authorized an additional four Class 2 licenses for companies that will be allowed to grow the leaf crop on up to 50,000 square feet of indoor space. However, the awarding of those licensees is awaiting the outcome of lawsuits filed by companies that lost out in the bidding.
During a public hearing on the rules last week, several speakers asked the commission for some amendments to the rules.
Michael Mumper of Georgians for Responsible Marijuana Policy said the minimum distance from schools dispensaries would be allowed to operate should be increased from 1,000 feet to 3,000 feet, the same minimum separation the rules require for greenhouses.
He also asked that dispensaries be limited to “reasonable” inventories of cannabis oil at any one time, no more than a supply of three or four months.
Others asked for stricter packaging and labeling requirements on the drug.
However, the commission adopted the rules Wednesday with no changes.
Turnage said the two Class 1 licensees could be in operation by this spring, with dispensaries to follow in six to eight months.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Democrats in the General Assembly have introduced legislation to repeal Georgia’s ban on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
The Republican-controlled legislature passed House Bill 481 in 2019. The so-called “heartbeat” bill prohibited most abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected. But federal courts blocked the law from taking effect until last summer, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.
While the high court’s ruling appeared to clear the way for the Georgia law, pro-choice groups have challenged it in state courts. The case is currently before the Georgia Supreme Court.
Polls have shown that most Georgians support safe and legal abortions, said state Sen. Sally Harrell, D-Atlanta, chief sponsor of Senate Bill 15.
“It is not the state’s job to determine if a woman intentionally caused her miscarriage, or to investigate a doctor who may have performed an abortion to save a mother’s life, or to force people to subscribe to one particular religious view on when life begins,” Harrell said. “It is the government’s job to protect Georgians’ rights to privacy, dignity, and personal belief.”
“Health-care workers around the state have seen the harmful effects of HB 481,” added Sen. Jason Esteves, D-Atlanta. “They fear a lack of comprehensive training in reproductive health care and possible jail time if they provide potentially life-saving care.”
But the Reproductive Freedom Act stands no chance of passing the Senate, where Republicans hold 33 of the 56 seats. All five of the bill’s cosponsors are Democrats.
Republican Gov. Brian Kemp touted passage of the abortion ban during his first year in office on the campaign trail last year, and the Georgia GOP has long made opposition to abortion a pillar of its platform.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
