Georgia Commissioner of Transportation Bruce Thompson
ATLANTA – Georgia’s unemployment rate remained flat at 3% last month, Bruce Thompson, the state’s new commissioner of labor, reported Thursday.
However, the state set an all-time high for jobs, increasing almost 6,000 from November, while the jobless rate was five-tenths of a percent lower than the national unemployment rate.
Thompson, a Republican, was sworn into office last week, succeeding Mark Butler.
“As we begin our new administration, I am excited to see growth in nearly all [job] sectors such as education, health services, and manufacturing,” Thompson said Thursday. “I am committed to supporting employers across Georgia as they seek to hire.”
The sector with the most over-the-month job gains was manufacturing, which increased by 4,100 jobs in December. The accommodation and food services sector grew by 2,800 jobs, followed by professional, scientific, and technical services at 1,900. The health care and social assistance sector also rose by 1,900 jobs.
On the negative side, initial unemployment claims last month were up by 9% over November to 27,921. Over the year, first-time jobless claims were up by 65%.
In December, more than 108,000 jobs were listed online at EmployGeorgia.com. Market salaries for those jobs ranged from $23,000 to $99,500 per year, showing a median salary of $42,400.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp has chosen a mix of returnees and newcomers to serve as his floor leaders for the next two years, the governor’s office announced Thursday.
State Sen. Bo Hatchett, R-Cornelia, is back for another term as a Senate floor leader. He will be joined by freshman Sen. Mike Hodges, R-Brunswick.
The House floor leadership team will include Reps. Lauren McDonald, R-Cumming; Will Wade, R-Dawsonville; Matthew Gambill, R-Cartersville; and Soo Hong, R-Lawrenceville. Hong is beginning her first term in the General Assembly, while the others were reelected in November.
Floor leaders introduce bills into the legislature on behalf of the governor and shepherd them through the committee process and on the floor of the legislative chamber they serve.
“In my first term, we passed historic budgets and bills that benefit hardworking Georgians and families,” said Kemp, who won reelection last fall. “As we enter my second term, I’m looking forward to working with these leaders to build on those achievements.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The new head of the Georgia Department of Labor vowed Wednesday to overhaul an agency deluged with unemployment claims during the pandemic that resulted in a barrage of complaints over processing delays.
“The Department of Labor has had an image problem,” newly elected Commissioner of Labor Bruce Thompson told members of the state House and Senate Appropriations committees just six days after taking the oath of office. “We seek to be able to change that.”
Thompson is beginning his new job just two weeks after the Georgia Office of Inspector General reported nearly 300 state employees erroneously received unemployment benefits totaling $6.7 million during the last two pandemic years, averaging $23,700 per worker.
The new commissioner said he has just hired a former prosecutor to get to the bottom of allegations of fraud within the agency as well as a legislative liaison to help Georgia lawmakers handle complaints they have been getting from constituents whose unemployment claims have been delayed.
Thompson pledged to eliminate the department’s backlog of about 59,000 pending unemployment claims by August.
Thompson said he also has found many of the agency’s career centers across the state in a state of disrepair, including extensive water damage.
“We’ve seen all kinds of evidence of neglect,” he said. “That stops now.”
Thompson also complained of recent reductions that cut the agency’s budget by about 70%. As a result, five career centers have been closed and six more are due to be shut down, he said.
One source of funding the labor department has relied upon has gone away, Thompson said. An administrative fee the agency charges businesses, which collected $10.6 million during the last fiscal year, was allowed to expire last year. Thompson said he will ask the General Assembly to reinstate the fee.
Thompson’s reform plans drew bipartisan support from lawmakers who heard his presentation Wednesday.
“I agree with your sense of urgency … after what we have been through with this department and what our constituents have been through,” said state Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta.
Also on Wednesday, state Insurance Commissioner John King told lawmakers his top priority for this year will be rolling back auto insurance rates in the state, which he said are unacceptably high.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Declining enrollment across the University System of Georgia is going to result in student funding formula cuts at most of the state’s public colleges and universities, system Chancellor Sonny Perdue said Wednesday.
Total enrollment for the fall semester at the system’s 26 colleges and universities was down 1.2% from the fall of 2021. That marked the second year in a row of declining enrollment.
“This demographic cliff we’re facing is serious,” Perdue told members of the Georgia House and Senate Appropriations committees on the second day of hearings on Gov. Brian Kemp’s $32.5 billion budget request. “We’re going to do our level best to do more with less.”
Overall, however, the governor’s fiscal 2024 budget would increase funding for the university system by $124 million. Most of that money – $87.4 million – would pay for $2,000 raises for faculty and other university system employees.
The proposed mid-year budget request covering state spending through the end of June includes $105 million for a state-of-the-art medical records system at Augusta University.
Perdue said the current antiquated records system contributes to the “surprise billing” of Georgia patients that the General Assembly addressed in 2020 with consumer-protection legislation.
Securing a new medical records system is part of a planned partnership between Augusta University Health System and WellStar announced last month.
Perdue said WellStar has committed to setting up physician training programs at hospitals across Georgia. Those programs will help retain physicians in parts of the state suffering a health-care workforce shortage, he said.
“Physicians are likely to stay where they have residencies,” he said. “This will help serve patients better. It will help serve doctors better.”
Lawmakers also took up the governor’s spending recommendations for Georgia’s K-12 schools. The state Department of Education’s (DOE) mid-year budget includes an additional $115.7 million for school security grants, which would amount to $50,000 for every K-12 school in the state.
The proposal would also include $15 million to encourage paraprofessionals to enroll in teacher certification programs to help stem the education workforce shortage as well as $25 million for addressing the needs of students who fell behind during the pandemic.
The DOE’s fiscal 2024 budget seeks an additional $27 million to increase the school counselor-to-student ratio and $290 million to increase teacher salaries by $2,000, which would take effect at the start of the next school year.
A state Senate study committee met last fall to consider whether the state’s education-funding formula – which dates back to 1985 — should be reformed.
“It would be my recommendation that instead of a complete overhaul that we begin … mak[ing] some adjustments on a smaller scale, so that we don’t turn over the apple cart all at once,” State School Superintendent Richard Woods said.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Candice Broce, director of the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services, discussed the challenges her agency faces and how she plans to address them during state budget hearings on Tuesday.
ATLANTA – The mental health of Georgians, especially children, took center stage Tuesday during the first day of state budget hearings at the state Capitol.
Leaders of Georgia’s main health-care agencies told legislators how they plan to address the challenges Georgians face as well as how much those plans will cost.
Candice Broce, director of the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS), told lawmakers about the problem of “hoteling,” which refers to boarding foster-care children and youth in hotels or offices because appropriate placements cannot be found for them, usually due to complicated behavioral health issues.
“On any given night in Georgia, roughly 50 to 70 children in foster care with complex needs will sleep in a local office or hotel,” Broce said. She called the practice “heartbreaking,” adding that the practice cost the state more than $28 million in fiscal year 2022.
“Since joining this agency, we have been hell-bent on ending hoteling,” Broce said.
DFCS started a program to pay enhanced per-diem rates and provide emergency grants to incentivize caretakers to take on the foster-care children most at risk for hoteling.
The pilot project is working, Broce said. Last June, the state hit an all-time low of fewer than 20 children in hotels or offices. And, she said, stays in offices and hotels have also been shortened for many foster-care children.
Broce also said DFCS has developed draft legislation to address the hoteling problem for lawmakers to consider this session. The issue has emerged as a top concern for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, including Sen. Blake Tillery, R- Vidalia, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, D-Decatur, a leader in the state’s mental health reform efforts.
Kevin Tanner, a former state representative who took over as commissioner of the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities (DBHDD) last month, outlined several steps his agency is taking to help stem the flow of children into foster care in the first place. He noted that the Multi-Agency Treatment for Children (MATCH) Committee – created by last year’s mental-health-reform law – began meeting last month to work on child-welfare issues like hoteling.
Tanner also said his agency works with DFCS and local community-service boards to provide residential treatment to mothers who are experiencing substance abuse or behavioral health issues. The programs allow children to stay with their mothers during treatment and help prevent the fracturing of families, Tanner said.
“I look forward to … [making] sure every family at risk of foster care because of a parent’s substance abuse has access to the program in the future,” Tanner told lawmakers.
DBHDD also plans to build a behavioral health crisis center in Fulton County and convert an existing facility in Dublin to a higher-level behavioral crisis center if the legislature approves Gov. Brian Kemp’s request for $11.1 million for the two projects.
State agencies across the board are struggling to hire and retain the workers necessary to provide the social services Georgians need. Kemp’s proposed budget includes a $2,000 pay raise for all state employees.
Statewide, the turnover rate is around 25%, a historic high, said Rebecca Sullivan, commissioner of the state Department of Administrative Services. The high turnover rates come with increased financial costs as well as intangible hits, such as the loss of institutional knowledge, Sullivan said.
Tanner said his agency has been unable to fill positions at the five state psychiatric hospitals, forcing them to rely on Jackson Healthcare, a staffing agency, to fill more than 450 jobs.
Broce said many frontline caseworkers leave due not to pay but to the heavy emotional demands of the job, though she said turnover for such workers has started to decrease since the height of the pandemic.
In good news, Commissioner Caylee Noggle of the Georgia Department of Community Health explained how new funding strategies and increased federal funds will increase resources for hospitals across the state, both rural and urban. The goal, she said, is to eliminate the burden of uncompensated care that small, rural hospitals must shoulder for uninsured and low-income patients.
The state’s health-care agencies are collaborating to staff up and prepare for what is known as “the great unwinding,” which will take place in April, when the federal government will relax pandemic-era regulations that prevented states from disenrolling people from Medicaid. Georgia will need to re-examine the eligibility of more than 2 million people now enrolled in the Medicaid insurance program.
The health-care administrators said they have developed plans for what will be a complicated cross-agency operation. Kemp’s budget includes funding for the staffing and technology upgrades necessary for the big change.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
