ATLANTA – Student enrollment is continuing to decline at the University System of Georgia.
Overall enrollment for the spring semester at the system’s 26 institutions fell to 311,484, down 0.9% from last spring, Angela Bell, the system’s vice chancellor of research and policy analysis, told members of the Board of Regents Tuesday.
The system’s enrollment grew steadily from 2014 through 2021, Bell said during the regents April meeting on the campus of the University of North Georgia in Dahlonega. But enrollment has declined during the last couple of years to the point where it stands only about 500 students above 2019, she said.
The enrollment drop in Georgia is part of a national trend researchers say reflects low unemployment, financial uncertainty, and the lingering effects of the pandemic.
But the declining numbers are not showing up uniformly in every category of student or every category of school within the university system.
For example, Bell said undergraduate enrollment has fallen by 5% during the last five years. However, the enrollment of graduate students has risen 24% during that same period.
Enrollment at the university system’s four research universities – the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, Georgia State University, and Augusta University – was up 1% this spring over the spring semester of 2022. However, enrollment at the comprehensive universities – Kennesaw State University, Georgia Southern University, Valdosta State University, and the University of West Georgia – declined by 3% year over year, Bell said.
Demographically, enrollment of Hispanic and Asian students is on the rise. Asian students now make up 13% of the university system’s enrollment, while Hispanic students account for 11%.
The enrollment of white students has declined during the last five years to 45% of the overall student population. Black student enrollment is also down slightly, with Black students accounting for 25% of overall enrollment.
Gov. Brian Kemp and First Lady Marty Kemp (Photo by Beau Evans)
MARIETTA – A nonprofit that works with victims of human trafficking announced a partnership Tuesday with the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association and nonprofit health plan CareSource.
The two organizations will work with Rescuing Hope to raise awareness of human trafficking and how to avoid becoming a victim, train law enforcement officers and other first responders on how to handle cases of human trafficking, and provide health-care and other services victims need to get on the road to recovery,
“It will take all of us doing our part to eradicate human trafficking in Georgia,” Susan Norris, Rescuing Hope’s founder, said during a presentation at GracePointe Baptist Church in Marietta.
Gov. Brian Kemp has made combating human trafficking a major focus of his administration. In 2019, his first year in office, he created the GRACE Commission – a panel of law enforcement officials, advocates for human trafficking victims, and subject matter experts – and named First Lady Marty Kemp to chair the initiative. Both Kemps attended Tuesday’s event.
“This is one of those issues that the more you learn, the more you realize the needs that are out there,” Kemp said. “It’s heartbreaking. It’s brutal. The people doing these things need to be locked up for a long time.”
The governor signed legislation last week that increases the penalties for business owners who fail to post required notices about resources for human trafficking victims at their establishments.
Two years ago, Kemp formed a multi-agency Crime Suppression Unit including the attorney general’s office and Georgia Bureau of Investigation to concentrate in part on arresting and prosecuting human traffickers.
The GBI has brought 45 cases against alleged human traffickers this fiscal year, Marty Kemp said Tuesday, while Attorney General Chris Carr has rescued 116 victims and secured six convictions.
“They’re just doing amazing work,” First Lady Kemp said.
The new partnership is being funded with a $50,000 grant from CareSource to Rescuing Hope and a second $50,000 grant from CareSource to the sheriffs’ association.
Norris said Rescuing Hope will use its grant to hire a second caseworker, or “advocate” to work with victims of human trafficking.
The grant to the sheriffs’ association will go toward training law enforcement officers in how to handle human trafficking cases and to help raise awareness of human trafficking among the young people from dysfunctional homes housed at five Georgia Sheriffs’ Youth Homes.
ATLANTA – Georgia Power and the state Public Service Commission’s (PSC) Public Interest Advocacy Staff have reached an agreement resulting in a slight reduction in the utility’s request to recover $2.1 billion in higher fuel costs from customers.
If the commission approves the agreement next month, Georgia Power would trim $7 million off the recovery request. Still, the average customer who uses 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month would see an increase of at least $17 on their monthly bills.
“Just as Georgians paid higher prices at the gas pump in 2022, Georgia Power also paid more for the natural gas and other fuels we use to generate electricity, and the company does not earn any profit from these fuel costs,” Georgia Power spokesman John Kraft said late last week.
Georgia Power executives first announced the company would be seeking to recover its fuel costs for the last two years during testimony before the PSC at hearings last fall on the utility’s 2022 rate hike request.
The commission approved a $1.8 billion rate increase for Georgia Power in December, which raised the average residential customer’s monthly bill by $3.60 effective last Jan. 1. The utility then filed for the fuel costs recovery in February.
As part of the agreement filed last Thursday, Georgia Power agreed to file by next Monday a revised estimate of its under-recovered fuel costs through March 31. The utility also has agreed to increase its senior citizen discount from $6 to $8, bringing it to $32 per month.
The PSC will hold hearings on the proposed agreement early next month and vote on the plan May 16.
Besides the fuel costs recovery and the increase in base rates that took effect in January, Georgia Power also will be looking to recover the costs of bringing into service the two new nuclear reactors being built at Plant Vogtle. The first of the two reactors is scheduled to begin commercial operation by June.
ATLANTA – Georgia’s tax collections dipped in March, the state Department of Revenue reported on Friday.
The state agency brought in $2.68 billion in taxes in March, down about 3 percent or $83 million from March 2022.
Despite the slight decrease, net tax collections are still up for fiscal 2023. So far this fiscal year, Georgia has collected $23.61 billion, just over $1 billion– or 4.8% –more than the same period last year.
The decrease in March tax revenues appears to be driven mostly by a drop in individual income tax collections.
Individual income tax collections this March fell by 25.2%, or $400.1 million, when compared to last March. Individual income tax refunds were up by $392.9 million while non-resident return payments were down by about $70.9 million.
Corporate income tax collections for March totaled $497.7 million, up $292.8 million or 142.9% over last March. That was driven in large part by a dramatic increase in corporate income tax return payments, which were up $230.7 million, or 530.4%, over last year.
Net sales tax collections were healthy last month, increasing by 3.8% over last March for a total of $660.4 million.
Revenues from the state tax on gasoline and other motor fuels increased only slightly over last March, by just 0.9% or $1.4 million, to a total of $157 million this month.
The state’s chief economist, Jeffery Dorfman, earlier this year told the Georgia General Assembly that state tax revenues are likely to drop sharply this year because last year’s huge increase in capital gains tax payments is unlikely to be repeated.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
The Chattahoochee River (photo: Rebecca Grapevine)
ATLANTA – A federal district court judge in North Dakota has temporarily blocked the operation of a new federal rule in 24 states about what water bodies the federal government can regulate.
The ruling comes in response to a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of 24 states about the definition of the term “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, under the federal Clean Water Act. Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr helped lead the lawsuit.
The definition of WOTUS is important because it determines to which waterways federal environmental protections apply.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency finalized the new definition last month. It includes many tributaries and streams as well as “adjacent wetlands,” or wetlands close to other waters regulated by the Clean Water Act.
In the case of Georgia, tributaries would include the Tallulah River, Sweetwater Creek, and Peachtree Creek. Adjacent wetlands would include portions of the Chickasawhatchee Swamp in Southwest Georgia and Peters Bay near Lakeland in South Georgia.
That definition has been challenged by the attorneys general of 24 states who contend these water bodies should fall solely under the purview of state regulation. They want the new WOTUS definition declared invalid.
This week, District Judge Daniel Hovland agreed with the states’ request for a preliminary injunction, temporarily preventing the federal government from applying the new definition while litigation is underway.
“The twenty-four States in this case have persuasively shown that the new 2023 Rule poses a threat to their sovereign rights and amounts to irreparable harm,” Hovland wrote.
“The States involved in this litigation will expend unrecoverable resources complying with a rule unlikely to withstand judicial scrutiny,” added Hovland, who was nominated for his federal judgeship by then-President George W. Bush.
For its part, the EPA contends that the new WOTUS definition is in line with what Congress intended when it passed the Clean Water Act in 1972.
“This rule establishes a durable definition of ‘waters of the United States’ that is grounded in the authority provided by Congress in the Clean Water Act, the best available science, and extensive implementation experience stewarding the nation’s waters,” the agency said in a statement about the new rule.
“The final rule will cover those waters that Congress fundamentally sought to protect in the Clean Water Act—traditional navigable waters, the territorial seas, interstate waters, as well as upstream water resources that significantly affect those waters,” the statement added.
Georgia Attorney General Carr hailed this week’s preliminary injunction as a victory.
“This outcome is a major win for Georgia’s farmers and private landowners, who were facing an administration intent on regulating nearly every conceivable body of water in the country,” Carr said.
A statement provided by his office said the new definition of WOTUS would require farmers to get federal permission to fill or dredge waterways or wetlands and that it would force developers and miners to obtain federal permission who want to “make use of their land.”
Environmental groups criticized the decision.
“Rather than uphold the longstanding protections and bipartisan practice embodied in the rule, the ruling … makes it more difficult to reliably protect the wetlands and headwater streams that keep Georgia’s rivers clean for fishing, swimming, and as sources of drinking water,” said Kelly Moser, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center.
The three other states leading the lawsuit with Georgia are Iowa, West Virginia and North Dakota. Southern states that have joined the lawsuit are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
