ATLANTA – Georgia’s unemployment rate was flat in January, but job numbers hit an all-time high, state Commissioner of Labor Bruce Thompson reported Thursday.
The jobless rate of 3.1% in January was the same as December, three-tenths of a percent lower than January’s national unemployment rate of 3.4%. But the number of jobs rose by almost 17,000 from December to a record 4.87 million.
“Georgia continues to lead the nation in job creation while outpacing the nation with low unemployment numbers,” Thompson said Thursday. “Employers are hiring at a record pace, affording hardworking Georgians with opportunities in nearly every sector.”
Job numbers reached all time highs in the private education and health services sector as well as leisure and hospitality and financial activities.
The sectors with the most over-the-month job gains included accommodation and food services; health care and social assistance; and arts, entertainment and recreation.
The number of employed Georgians was up 5,331 to nearly 5.1 million.
At the same time, initial unemployment claims also rose by 14,257 in January to 42,178, an increase of 51%. First-time jobless claims year over year were up as well, by 49%.
In January, more than 129,000 job listings were posted online for Georgians to access.The top five industries included health care, retail trade, and accommodation and food services.
Peach State products on display in Madison, Georgia. (Photo courtesy Rural Voices USA)
ATLANTA – A group of rural Georgians outlined their policy priorities Wednesday, calling on state policymakers to prioritize rural agriculture, broadband and education.
“We are Georgians who are concerned that rural issues are too often ignored and rural residents are too often left behind,” said former Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes. “We want to make sure these priorities are top of mind for Georgia lawmakers.”
Rural Voices USA is a national nonprofit focused on rural issues. Members of the organization’s Georgia steering committee developed a list of policy proposals they say Peach State policymakers should consider.
Top among them is bolstering rural economies by creating a rural economic development fund that would leverage measures like tax credits or seed funding to incentivize investment.
The aim would be to ensure that Georgia’s agricultural sector remains competitive by embracing cutting-edge developments, such as producing plant-based proteins, said Brian Kuehl, executive director of Rural Voices USA.
“The goal is to make rural Georgia a better place to live and an easier place to make a living,” said Kuehl, noting that rural communities already have assets such as hard-working people and great education systems. “There are all sorts of niche opportunities.”
The group also wants the state to ensure that 2021 federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Act funds are delivered as soon as possible to boost rural broadband so that every Georgian has access to high-speed internet.
“For farmers, processing plants and manufactures, [broadband is] needed to advance their businesses,” said Susannah Maddux, a Macon publisher who chairs the steering committee.
“The investment Congress has made …. is larger in real dollars than the rural electrification push of the 1930s,” Kuehl added.
A third priority area is to address Georgia’s rural health-care shortfall by incentivizing health professionals to work in rural Georgia and stemming the tide of rural hospital closures.
Recent legislative efforts to address the workforce shortage are welcome, said Terry Coleman, a member of the steering committee and former Democratic speaker of the state House of Representatives. But Georgia still does not have nearly enough medical residency slots to meet its needs, he said.
“We’ve got to get busy,” Coleman said.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, Wednesday announced that she along with other politicians and the NAACP have filed two federal complaints over Wellstar’s 2022 decision to close two Atlanta-area hospitals serving Black patients. (Photo credit: Rebecca Grapevine)
ATLANTA – The NAACP – along with state legislators and other politicians – has filed two federal complaints over Wellstar Health System’s decision last year to close Atlanta hospitals in majority-Black areas.
Wellstar’s decision to close two Atlanta-area hospitals, Atlanta Medical Center and Atlanta Medical Center-South, has damaged the health-care rights of Black patients, the complaints allege, and left patients south of Interstate 20 without a nearby emergency room and other medical services.
The first complaint asks the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to investigate Wellstar’s tax-exempt status. The second alleges the closures violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act and is being filed with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights.
“They imposed great harm and that harm continues today,” Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, said Wednesday. The two hospitals in majority-Black areas closed, while Wellstar hospitals in majority-white areas have remained open, Orrock said. Along with Orrock and the NAACP, Rep. Kim Schofield, D-Atlanta, has signed on to the complaints.
Soon after Wellstar closed the hospitals, the organization announced that it would seek to form a partnership with Augusta University Hospital System. The potential partnership with the state’s sole public medical school could also include building a new hospital in Columbia County, which is 71.3% white, according to the complaint.
“As it abandons a minority community, leaving it in far worse straits regarding health care and access to care, there is some irony in Wellstar’s CEO’s statement about its current plans [that] ‘We would improve the health of the community … and expand access to quality care for all Georgians,’” the complaints note.
But Wellstar denied the validity of the complaints in a statement issued last night.
“The suggestion that Wellstar Health System in any way discriminated against patients and communities is outrageous and false,” the statement said. “We are the largest provider of charity care in the state of Georgia.”
“We are focused and committed to continue serving diverse communities throughout the region and providing them the specialized programs and resources they need,” the statement continued.
The federal government has an interest in Wellstar’s decision to close the two facilities because the system earns a significant amount of revenue from the federally funded Medicaid and Medicare programs.
Wellstar should have developed a plan to meet community needs instead of closing the Atlanta hospitals, the complaint alleges. The IRS requires tax-exempt hospitals to assess community needs every three years and implement a strategy to address those needs.
“Wellstar’s action deprives Black and other minority patients of crucial services,” the second complaint contends. “Wellstar should be held to account and required to repair the damage it has caused.
“We ask the Office for Civil Rights to investigate Wellstar’s actions, which have the effect of causing disparate harm to people of color.”
The complaints note that the Wellstar system had net assets of $2.67 billion in fiscal 2021.
The closure of the two Atlanta facilities also led the medical practices associated with them to either move to less-diverse areas or close, forcing patients to travel long distances to get outpatient care, the complaints state.
“Many patients who want to continue to see their own doctors now must travel across the large, traffic-congested metro area to reach them,” the complaints note, giving the example of a patient with diabetes formerly treated at Wellstar’s downtown Atlanta facility who now must take two buses and travel 20 miles to reach Austell, a suburb of Atlanta, for treatment.
Tax-exempt hospitals are increasingly in the news for their alleged failures to meet community needs.
Recently, a Pennsylvania court denied property tax exemptions to four hospitals in the Tower Hospital system outside of Philadelphia after the local school district claimed the hospitals acted more like for-profit than non-profit entities. The decision was based in large part on what the court saw as excessive CEO pay.
Wellstar’s CEO, Candice Saunders, earned $2.5 million in 2020, according to the hospital system’s IRS filings posted on its website. The hospital system received a “B” grade in the Lown Institute’s social responsibility index, which measures hospital outcomes, value and equity.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – While Georgia’s judiciary is emerging from three years of pandemic, a serious backlog of cases still looms over the state’s judicial system, Georgia Chief Justice Michael Boggs told state lawmakers Wednesday.
“The numbers in certain parts of Georgia are truly astounding,” Boggs, who became chief justice last July, said during his first State of the Judiciary address to a joint session of the Georgia House and Senate. “The resolution will not be easy.”
Boggs said the backlog would have grown worse were it not for $110 million in federal pandemic relief funds Gov. Brian Kemp and the General Assembly committed to the court system. After the number of serious violent felony cases increased by 36.3% between 2019 and 2021, circuits receiving pandemic relief grants saw pending cases fall by nearly 12% between the end of 2021 and last August, Boggs said.
After plummeting 75% between 2019 and 2020, the number of felony jury trials had risen more than 182% by the end of 2021, Boggs reported.
Like many other industries and professions, the Georgia judiciary also is suffering from a workforce shortage, especially in rural parts of the state, the chief justice said. As a result, a growing number of suspects charged with crimes but not convicted are languishing in jail, he said.
“In our system, punishment is supposed to follow conviction, not precede it,” he said.
Boggs thanked Kemp and the General Assembly for responding to the workforce shortage by bringing the salaries of the state’s public defenders in line with what prosecutors are paid.
During a 29-minute speech, Boggs also pointed to innovative initiatives the judiciary is undertaking to improve access to justice in Georgia, including deploying technology that allows remote conferencing, setting up treatment centers for juvenile victims of human trafficking, expanding legal services to veterans, and adding interpreters to help Georgia’s increasing population of foreign language speakers.
Boggs praised the governor and legislature for creating the Behavioral Health Reform and Innovation Commission to address the need for improvements in mental health-care delivery in Georgia. He noted that 25% of the state’s incarcerated population have been diagnosed with mental health issues.
Moving forward, Boggs said the safety of judges will be a focus of the court system this year. Last month, the Georgia Supreme Court created a standing committee on judicial security.
“Our judicial system depends on judges deciding cases without fear,” he said. “This includes fear for their personal safety or the safety of their families.”
Georgia House Appropriations Committee Chairman Matt Hatchett
ATLANTA – The Georgia House Appropriations Committee approved a $32.5 billion fiscal 2024 budget Wednesday that prioritizes mental-health care and law enforcement.
The spending plan, which takes effect July 1, includes the $2,000 pay raises for teachers and state employees Gov. Brian Kemp requested in January. But it goes further by targeting additional $2,000 increases for law enforcement personnel at a cost of $13 million.
The budget also includes targeted raises for employees of the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, the state Forestry Commission, and the Department of Driver Services, agencies plagued with particularly high turnover rates.
With the state sitting on a surplus of more than $6 billion, the budget would increase spending by more than $2 billion over the then-record fiscal 2023 budget the General Assembly adopted last spring. But it won’t satisfy everyone’s wish list, Rep. Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin, the budget-writing committee’s chairman, told committee members before Wednesday’s vote.
“We looked at many needs,” Hatchett said. “Unfortunately, we can’t fund them all.”
For one thing, the committee stopped short of fully funding the Zell Miller Scholarship, which covers tuition at University System of Georgia colleges and universities for Georgia high school students with grade-point averages of 3.5 or better. Instead, the House budget funds 95% of the Zell Miller program and redirects the other 5% to help fund scholarships at private colleges and health benefits for public pre-kindergarten teachers.
The budget does fully fund the state’s Quality Basic Education (QBE) k-12 student funding formula with a record $13.1 billion in fiscal 2024. The QBE was not fully funded when Georgia was suffering leaner economic times, but full funding has been restored for the last several years.
Besides the extra pay raise for law enforcement employees, the House budget also would boost public safety by funding a new state patrol post in Buckhead for $1.25 million.
Rising crime in Buckhead was the key reason cited by supporters of legislation calling for separating Buckhead from Atlanta and creating a separate city. The bill fizzled after David Dove, executive council for Kemp’s office, wrote a memo raising a host of legal questions about the proposal.
The House committee also set aside $2.7 million for a Cold Case Specialty Unit within the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, $6.3 million for the free breakfast and lunch programs for low-income students, $8.2 million to boost the Technical College System of Georgia’s aviation, commercial driver’s license, and nursing programs, and a $20.1 million in funding increase for maintenance of local roads.
The Full House will take up the fiscal 2024 budget later this week or early next week.
