by Dave Williams | Feb 6, 2023 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia political leaders including Gov. Brian Kemp Monday condemned a weekend outbreak of antisemitism in Atlanta’s northern suburbs.
Residents of neighborhoods in Sandy Springs and Dunwoody awakened Sunday morning to find antisemitic flyers in their driveways.
Kemp offered the aid of the state’s law enforcement resources to help the Sandy Springs and Dunwoody police departments investigate the incident if requested.
“This kind of hate has no place in our state, and the individuals responsible do not share Georgia’s values,” the governor posted on Twitter. “We will always condemn acts of antisemitism.”
Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns informed his legislative colleagues from the chamber’s rostrum on Monday that one of the victims was freshman state Rep. Esther Panitch, D-Sandy Springs.
“Anti-Semites who seek to harm/intimidate Jews in Georgia. I’m coming for you with the weight of the state behind me,” Panitch warned in a Twitter post.
Burns, R-Newington, said the “repulsive incident” flies in the face of America’s tradition of pluralism.
“We are blessed to live in a country which, through its very motto, recognizes our collective strength – E Pluribus Unum – out of many, one,” he said.
On the Senate side of the Capitol, Sen. Sally Harrell, D-Atlanta, whose district includes Dunwoody, said hate-filled incidents are on the rise in Georgia and haven’t been limited to the Atlanta area. She mentioned Newnan, Macon, Carrollton, Rockmart, Columbus, and Cartersville as communities hit with antisemitic flyers.
“No one – not one Georgian should ever wake up to hate,” added Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler, D-Stone Mountain.
Butler praised the General Assembly for passing hate crimes legislation in 2020 after Ahmaud Arbery, a Black jogger, was murdered by two white men near Brunswick. A third defendant also was convicted of murder in the case.
State Rep. John Carson, R-Marietta, has introduced a bill during the current legislative session establishing a definition of the term “antisemitism” for purposes of monitoring and investigating antisemitic incidents and developing policies to combat antisemitism.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
by Staff Writer | Feb 3, 2023 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A new poll out Friday shows Georgians support using some of the state’s record surplus to improve social services by expanding Medicaid and increasing funding for education.
The Georgia Budget and Policy Institute (GBPI), a left-leaning think tank in Atlanta, commissioned the poll of 1,099 Georgians through the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs.
The poll found 71.4% of Georgians support full Medicaid expansion. Notably, it showed 56.4% of Republicans and 70% of independents favor full Medicaid expansion, indicating broad bipartisan support for the proposal.
Expanding Medicaid would cover about 500,000 Georgians at a relatively low cost to the state, advocates contend.
However, Republican leaders have said they will not consider full Medicaid expansion during this legislative session. Instead, the state will implement GOP Gov. Brian Kemp’s limited expansion this summer that will provide Medicaid to low-income Georgians who meet certain work or education requirements.
Full Medicaid expansion is a cornerstone of Democrats’ policy agenda. Though the majority of poll respondents appeared to support Medicaid expansion, that has not translated into electoral successes for Democrats in Georgia.
“When we talk about elections, there are a lot of factors at play … that are going to influence voter choice,” said Danny Kanso, senior budget analyst at GBPI, about the differences between the poll results and how Georgians voted.
“Just because one candidate or another in the previous election had a certain policy as part of their platform, that should not foreclose the opportunity to enact good public policy that is broadly supported across the state.”
Another public health measure, increasing the state’s tobacco tax to the national average of $1.91 per cigarette pack, also garnered the support of 62.8% of poll respondents. That proposal also had support across partisan lines, with the majority of liberals, moderates and conservatives all saying they would like to see the tobacco tax increased.
State Rep. Ron Stephens, R-Savannah, introduced legislation this week to increase the state’s tobacco tax, although his bill would increase the tax by just 57 cents.
Georgia Rep. Michelle Au, D-Johns Creek, has also introduced legislation to create a joint study committee to examine the costs and effects of smoking on the health of Georgians.
Increasing funding for education also garnered broad support in the poll, with 78.1% of respondents saying they support using state lottery funds to offer universal pre-K to all Georgia children. Only about half of Georgia’s four-year-olds were enrolled in pre-K in 2021, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
About three-quarters of poll respondents also expressed strong support for providing additional funding to public schools that serve families at or near the poverty level. Forty-four other states already have implemented an “opportunity weight” to help schools serving students from low-income families, Kanso said.
Around three-quarters of poll respondents supported increasing state funding to help school districts cover school transportation costs. Increases in fuel and labor prices have driven up local districts’ costs.
While in the past the state helped school districts by covering more than half of transportation costs, by last year that proportion had decreased to about 20%, Kanso said.
“That is shifting a huge burden down to the local level,” he said.
Poll respondents also supported increased financial aid for students wanting to gain a college degree.
More than two-thirds, 69%, supported creating a higher education need-based scholarship that would be applied based on a student’s income level, the poll found.
Georgia is only one of two states that does not have a need-based scholarship. However, this year – for the first time in more than a decade — the state’s merit-based HOPE Scholarship program will cover 100% of tuition at state colleges and universities, if lawmakers approve Kemp’s budget proposal.
One big question hovering over Georgia’s $6.6 billion budget surplus is whether the state should spend the excess revenue on one-time payments such as income and property tax rebates – as Kemp has proposed – or put the money toward ongoing investments in state services.
The poll showed mixed results on this question. While 46.8% of respondents said the state should use the surplus for ongoing investments in health care and public education, 32.4% said they favor tax rebates. Another 11.1% said the state should not spend the funds at all.
But when asked a separate question that focused solely on support for a one-time tax rebate, about three-quarters of respondents said they supported the idea. Kemp has proposed a one-time tax rebate of $250 for individuals and $500 for married filers for this year, similar to a rebate issued last year.
“As we just look back at the 15-year trajectory of the state from the Great Recession to the present, we see a lot of budget cuts that were made and were never backfilled,” Kanso said. “That has created really massive deficits across the state.”
“We need to make up for some of these gaps that we’ve created and return to more of a normal pattern in the future where we can sustain those investments.”
The 15-question poll was conducted using an online polling service. The results were weighted to reflect Georgia’s voting-age population in terms of race, age, sex and education and had a margin of error of 3.4%.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
by Dave Williams | Feb 3, 2023 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – State lawmakers have eased restrictions in Georgia’s certificate of need (CON) law over the years, making it easier for providers to build new health-care facilities or offer new medical services without proving the community needs them.
Now, a push is on to repeal the CON law altogether, bolstered by a six-figure ad campaign launched ahead of this year’s General Assembly session by Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a conservative advocacy group founded by the Koch brothers.
“Right now, state bureaucrats are middlemen, determining whether your town can get a new hospital or if your doctor can order a new X-ray machine,” said Tony West, the AFP’s deputy state director for Georgia. “Burdensome certificate-of-need laws are to blame.
“These laws force providers to get a government permission slip to open a new office or offer a new service. AFP-GA is calling on the legislature to repeal these laws.”
The upcoming debate under the Gold Dome promises to pit free-market advocates including the AFP against representatives of Georgia’s politically influential hospital industry, who warn that losing CON would be a disaster for health-care access, particularly in rural areas.
“A lot of out-of-state private equity money wants to come in and repeal CON so they can build new facilities,” said Monty Veazey, president and CEO of the Tifton-based Georgia Alliance of Community Hospitals, which represents the state’s nonprofit hospitals. “[But] nobody’s going to build a hospital in a rural area where they can’t make any money.”
Georgia’s CON law was first passed in 1979 to comply with a federal mandate aimed at reducing health-care costs by avoiding duplication. About three dozen states currently have CON laws on their books.
Georgia lawmakers have gotten rid of some of the law’s restrictions since its original adoption. In 2008, the legislature exempted physician-owned ambulatory surgery centers with a single specialty from having to obtain a CON from the state Department of Community Health (DCH).
In 2013, the legislature limited the filing of objections to CON applications to existing hospitals within 35 miles of the proposed site of a new facility seeking a certificate of need.
The General Assembly came back again in 2019 and raised the capital and equipment spending thresholds requiring applicants to apply for a CON from $3 million to $10 million for capital expenditures, and from $1.3 million to $3 million for planned equipment purchases.
The 2019 legislation also exempted from the CON law planned acquisitions of existing health-care facilities that involve corporate restructuring.
While those changes to the law were made nearly four years ago, the DCH’s governing board didn’t adopt final rules implementing them until March of last year due to delays caused by the pandemic, said Anna Adams, executive vice president of external affairs for the Georgia Hospital Association. Because of those delays, it’s premature for lawmakers to consider further changes to CON, Adams said.
“Some of these items have not yet been implemented,” she said. “Let’s wait and see these work.”
It’s unclear whether legislation introduced into the General Assembly this year will call for a further loosening of restrictions in the CON law, an outright repeal, or both.
“There might be some smaller bites at the apple,” said Chris Denson, director of policy and research for the Georgia Public Policy foundation, a think tank that advocates free-market approaches to public-policy issues. “There are various ways to go about piecemeal reform.”
Kyle Wingfield, the foundation’s president and CEO, said one example of reforms to the law could be a further increase in the threshold for planned capital and equipment spending that triggers the CON requirement.
Denson said another would be allowing applicants for new ambulatory surgery centers to file only a letter of non-reviewability (LNR) with the state rather than a CON. Unlike applying for a CON, the LNR process does not allow third parties to contest a project, he said.
But Denson said he supports a full repeal of CON. He cited a recent study from the Mercatus Center, another free-market oriented think tank at Virginia’s George Mason University, that found states without CON laws have opened more new hospitals than CON states.
“Pennsylvania has a very similar rural profile to Georgia and hasn’t had a CON law in place since 1997,” he said. “Georgia has closed nine rural hospitals since 2005. Pennsylvania has closed five.
“With an outright repeal, you would see additional health-care facilities open up … which would not only increase access but reduce costs.”
But Veazey said repeal of CON would simply add to an already high concentration of ambulatory surgery centers in areas that don’t need them and leave rural hospitals saddled with a patient mix heavily tilted toward patients without health insurance.
Georgia hospitals were forced to shell out $7.1 billion in uncompensated health care last year, up from $5 billion in 2021, he said.
“We have to serve all patients regardless of ability to pay,” Veazey said. “It’s not a level playing field.”
“Free-market approaches work for the hotel industry or restaurants,” Adams added. “Nobody is going to die if we don’t have as many restaurants in a county as we would like. … Georgia already has access-to-health-care problems [repealing] CON is not going to fix.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
by Dave Williams | Feb 3, 2023 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Eight members of Georgia’s congressional delegation have launched a push to have the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The seven Democrats and one Republican urged the Interior Department in a letter this week to nominate the Okefenokee for the designation, an important step in winning UNESCO approval.
“The Okefenokee is a national treasure, known for its pristine habitats, complex ecosystem, and rich biodiversity,” the letter stated. “A World Heritage Site designation would provide more global recognition of its immense environmental and cultural value and encourage people from all over the world to experience its natural splendor.”
The Okefenokee was placed on a tentative list for World Heritage Site designation in 2008, but the designation was never awarded.
The renewed push comes as Alabama-based Twin Pines Minerals is seeking state permits to mine titanium oxide at a site near the Okefenokee Swamp, a proposal that has drawn opposition not only from environmental groups but Georgia lawmakers.
For the second year in a row, legislation has been introduced into the state House of Representatives to ban surface mining along Trail Ridge near the Okefenokee.
“A UNESCO World Heritage Site designation for the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge would encourage environmental protection and economic prosperity for the region,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter to Shannon Estenoz, the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for wildlife, fish, and parks.
“It would support efforts to protect and preserve the refuge’s natural and cultural resources and further important scientific exploration and analysis. The nomination would also attract tourism and benefit the local and recreational economy and communities.”
Georgia’s two U.S. senators, Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, signed the letter along with Republican U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter of Savannah and five Democratic House members: Sanford Bishop of Albany, Hank Johnson of Lithonia, Lucy McBath of Marietta, Nikema Williams of Atlanta, and David Scott of Atlanta.
UNESCO, headquartered in Paris, is an agency within the United Nations aimed at promoting world peace and security through education, art, sciences, and culture.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
by Dave Williams | Feb 2, 2023 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – An effort that could lead eventually to the elimination of runoff elections in Georgia has surfaced in the General Assembly.
State Rep. Joseph Gullett, R-Dallas, introduced a bill into the Georgia House this week that would allow Georgia cities to experiment with instant runoff voting in nonpartisan municipal elections.
“This legislation promotes local control,” said Gullett. “If passed, it gives cities the option to avoid the cost of expensive runoff elections while maintaining the principle of majority rule.
“Cities that don’t want it, don’t have to do it, and cities that try it and don’t like it, can go back to their original system. This bill provides flexibility and options, not mandates.”
Runoffs have drawn a number of critics in Georgia in recent years, including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, whose department oversees elections.
Besides the expense of holding an additional election, Raffensperger argued Georgians who vote in general elections in early November don’t want their Thanksgiving holidays interrupted by runoff campaigns and having to go back to the polls a second time.
Under an instant runoff voting system, voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate wins more than half of the first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated.
At that point, voters who selected the defeated candidate as their top choice have those votes added to the totals of their next choice. The process continues until a candidate has amassed more than half of the votes.
Scott Turner, executive director of Eternal Vigilance Action, a Georgia group that supports instant runoffs, said the municipal opt-in would provide Georgians an opportunity to see how instant runoffs would work when there are multiple candidates in a race.
“Voters will quickly discover an easy-to-use system that’s better, cheaper and faster than the expensive, exhausting runoff elections we use now,” Turner said. “Recent polling has shown that Georgians want to change our runoff system, and this is a chance for legislators to creatively answer the call for reform.”
Georgia has experience using municipal elections to experiment with new voting processes. In 2001, then-Secretary of State Cathy Cox oversaw the use of touch-screen voting machines in Georgia for the first time during local elections in several cities scattered across the state. Touch-screen voting was adopted statewide the following year.
The instant runoff measure, House Bill 200, has picked up bipartisan support. Its House cosponsors include Republican Reps. Clay Pirkle of Ashburn and Victor Anderson of Cornelia, and Democratic Reps. Stacey Evans of Atlanta and Mary Margaret Oliver of Decatur.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
