ATLANTA – Georgians’ right to fish in navigable portions of the state’s rivers and streams was safeguarded in the final seconds of this year’s legislative session.
The General Assembly passed a bill on the last night of the 2023 session late last month that secures the public’s right to fish “even where private title … originates from a valid grant.”
No one was questioning what was thought to be a long-established public right in Georgia until a property owner along Yellow Jacket Shoals, a small portion of the Flint River, asserted its exclusive right to control fishing from the bank on its side of the river to the center of the stream and banned public fishing there.
After Four Chimneys LLLP sued the state alleging failure to enforce the ban, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources signed an agreement March 27 consenting to the ban.
By the time wildlife enthusiasts and environmental protection groups found out about the agreement the following day, they had just one day to bring it to the attention of Gov. Brian Kemp and legislative leaders. The General Assembly was due to adjourn for the year on March 29.
The issue needed to be addressed then and there because it had implications far beyond a short stretch of the Flint, said Mike Worley, president of the Georgia Wildlife Federation.
“Anyone in the state could assert a claim like that,” he said. “We could have seen this popping up all over the state. … To see 1.2 million anglers in the state potentially disenfranchised didn’t seem equitable.”
But supporters of guaranteeing public fishing rights in Georgia faced a logistical challenge. The annual Crossover Day deadline for bills to pass at least one legislative chamber, which fell on March 6, was weeks in the rearview mirror.
Typically, backers of bills that have failed to make Crossover Day find related legislation that has made the deadline and attach their bills to that measure.
The wildlife federation, the Southern Environmental Law Center, Flint Riverkeeper and other interested groups followed that strategy during the early hours of Sine Die, the last day of the annual General Assembly session, Worley said. But when the related bill they chose for their purposes was failing to move, they had to try something different, he said.
Without related legislation to fall back on, they chose to take an unrelated bill and substitute the fishing rights legislation, leaving only the original bill number intact. That was accomplished by the House Rules Committee as Sine Die moved from afternoon into evening, with the permission of Sen. Josh McLaurin, D-Sandy Springs, the original bill’s sponsor.
The final product – Senate Bill 115 – narrowly cleared the House 93-75, just two votes more than were required to constitute a majority in the 180-seat chamber. It then passed the Senate 50-4 literally in the last seconds before the adjournment gavel came down and started on its way to Kemp’s desk for his signature.
Worley said the convoluted process supporters had to go through to get the fishing rights legislation passed on such short notice cost it votes in the House, where some lawmakers objected to hijacking an unrelated bill.
“I understand and respect that position,” he said. “It’s not the way you want to see these things done. But it was an issue that had to be addressed.”
While the fishing rights bill should take care of the issue for now, the House also unanimously passed a resolution during the last day of the session forming a study committee to examine the extent of the public’s right to fish in Georgia’s freshwater rivers and streams, including inconsistencies or conflicts in state law between that public right and private property rights.
“I expect during the interim [between the 2023 and 2024 legislative sessions], we’ll be taking a deeper dive and seeing if this legislation needs to be fine-tuned,” Worley said. “[The bill] was a really good step. But more work needs to be done.”
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp Thursday signed five education bills into law, including measures aimed at bolstering school safety and improving literacy.
“These bills will help improve literacy in our state and ensure our schools have the resources they need to provide a safe and healthy learning environment for both students and teachers,” Kemp said.
“As governor, and as a father of three daughters, I want to make sure every Georgia student can take part in the unprecedented opportunity here in the Peach State.”
Kemp signed into law the Safe Schools Act, a key part of his legislative agenda this year. The new law requires all public schools to conduct an “intruder alert drill” by Oct. 1 of each school year. It also creates a voluntary school safety and anti-gang endorsement that teachers and other school employees can earn by completing a training program.
Kemp also signed two bills aimed at improving early literacy in Georgia.
The Georgia Early Literacy Act, sponsored by Rep. Bethany Ballard, R-Warner Robins, a former teacher, aims to improve the quality of early reading instruction.
The new law will require schools to screen students from kindergarten to third grade on their reading proficiency three times a year. Students who are identified as falling behind in reading will receive an individual reading improvement plan within 30 days of being identified followed by intensive reading intervention until they catch up.
School systems will also be required to amp up training of teachers in “the science of reading” – a method of teaching reading that draws on evidence from psychology and neuroscience and includes phonics instruction.
A companion bill sponsored by state Sen. Billy Hickman, R-Statesboro, requires Georgia to set up a 30-member Council on Literacy. The members will include state legislators, a state Board of Education member, literacy experts, teachers, and local school district officials.
The council will be responsible for ensuring the implementation of the Early Literacy Act and provide an annual report that includes recommendations for addressing problems in the state’s literacy efforts.
Two additional bills signed by Kemp aim to improve school conditions for students with certain health conditions.
One new law, sponsored by Rep. Doug Stoner, D-Smyrna, allows all Georgia schools to obtain a prescription for and keep on hand “ready-to-use glucagon.” This drug helps people – often those with diabetes – in the case of very low blood sugar. It can be administered nasally or by injection.
Another bill signed by Kemp aims to create safer school conditions for students with epilepsy and other seizure disorders. Sponsored by Sen. Jason Anavitarte, R-Dallas, the law will allow parents or guardians to submit a seizure action plan to schools for students who have seizure disorders, including epilepsy. The plans will specify what school personnel should do in the case of a seizure.
The new law will also require the state Department of Education to develop a model seizure action plan that districts and parents can use to help formulate their plans and develop guidelines for training school nurses and personnel in seizure disorders and their management.
School bus drivers who are responsible for transporting students with seizure disorders also must receive copies of the action plan and seizure-disorder first aid training.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – After sailing through the Georgia House of Representatives, a close vote in a Senate committee blocked the progress of a bill aimed at reducing some prescription drug costs for consumers.
The “Lowering Prescription Drug Costs for Patients Act” would have passed on prescription drug rebates to some Georgia patients at the cash register. It was one of several health-related measures to mire in the 2023 Georgia General Assembly session.
The bill took aim at pharmacy benefit managers, often called PBMs. These companies are designed to help manage prescription drugs for health insurers and they often require payments – known as rebates – from drug manufacturers for featuring certain medications in approved drug lists for patients.
The Georgia bill would have required half of the value of those rebates to be passed along to Georgia patients on many commercial insurance plans.
“We don’t have any problem with … with the company making a reasonable profit,” said Rep. Mark Newton, R-Augusta, the bill’s sponsor. “When a corporate desire for excess profits starts to harm patients, I think that’s when we as legislators ought to step in and protect patients.”
“The top three PBMs control 80% of the drug choices that all Americans have,” Newton added. “One example is Caremark, CVS and Aetna – that’s a combination that has a common ownership.”
Other large PBMs Georgians may be familiar with are OptumRx, owned by UnitedHealth Group, and Express Scripts, owned by Cigna Healthcare.
Opponents argued the bill would have reduced the flexibility of small businesses to decide how to spend pharmacy rebates.
“If it passes, then that limits and restricts the flexibility of designing plans that will fit the overall group [of employees],” said Mychal Walker, chairman of the National Federation of Independent Business’ Georgia leadership council. “The owner will not be able to utilize those benefits overall in order to lower the costs.”
Walker and other opponents also argued the measure would drive up insurance premium costs.
Newton disagreed with that, saying the measure would increase premium costs by just over $1 per month and that the small increase would be offset by lowered drug costs for patients.
“[Patients will] know that they or their loved ones can access medication therapy that their doctor prescribes and that they’ll be able to do it affordably,” Newton said.
A late March hearing on the bill had initially been billed as “meeting only.” Health and Human Services committee chair Sen. Ben Watson, R-Savannah, called a vote while the meeting was in progress.
The measure lost in a 6-5 vote that did not fall along party lines, a departure from the regular partisan votes that often drive Gold Dome decisions.
Sen. Sonya Halpern, D-Atlanta, was one of the Democrats swayed by the argument that the bill would stymie small-business owners’ control over how to use the drug rebates.
“There’s no guarantee that every employee would get the prescription benefit since the rebate dollars would have to be spent down at the point of sale only,” Halpern said.
Sen. Larry Walker, R-Perry, shared Halpern’s concern.
“If we keep restricting options and flexibility for small businesses, they’re going to end up saying we can no longer afford to provide health benefits,” Walker said.
Newton pushed back against that argument, contending that the rebates in question contribute to PBM and health-insurer profits and do not get passed on to small businesses.
“A lot of what they’re making [profit] off of, is not passing it through to reduce [health insurance] premiums, but passing it through to their shareholders, which normally I don’t mind until it becomes excessive,” Newton said. “When excessive profit hurts patients, I think that’s our obligation to step in at that point and defend the patient.
Patient advocates were bitterly disappointed by the committee decision.
“For another year, PBMs and their affiliated insurance companies will continue to deny Georgians with chronic illnesses the benefits of negotiated drug rebates as they profit from the sickest of our citizens,” said Heather Breeden, the senior manager of advocacy for the National Multiple Sclerosis society.
“We are really perplexed … that our own legislators will not stand behind the patients and put them first,” echoed Dorothy Leone-Glasser, executive director of Advocates for Responsible Care. “It’s very disheartening.”
Newton was also disappointed but told Capitol Beat that he hopes the bill will get another chance at full passage during the 2024 session, the second year of the current two-year legislative term.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – A combination of state senators, health-care executives, and an insurance industry representative were named Wednesday to a study committee that will look for ways to reform the state’s certificate of need (CON) process.
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who presides over the Senate, appointed the members of the Senate Study Committee on Certificate of Need Reform after efforts to address the issue during this year’s General Assembly session failed.
Legislation that gained the most traction before falling by the wayside was a bill that would have exempted most rural hospitals from Georgia’s CON law, which requires applicants looking to build new health-care facilities or provide new medical services to demonstrate a need for them in their communities. The Senate passed the measure in late February, but it died in the state House of Representatives.
A second Senate bill that would have repealed the CON law entirely except in connection with long-term care facilities cleared a Senate committee but failed to reach the floor for a vote.
“As a sixth-generation rural Georgian, I understand from personal experience what a lack of health-care access means to rural Georgia families,” Jones said Wednesday. “Expanding access to health care and reviewing how the current certificate of need laws are hindering this process will be a focus of this study committee.”
The 12-member study committee will be chaired by Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, chief sponsor of the bill that made it through the Senate. Other senators who will serve on the panel include Matt Brass, R-Newnan; Bill Cowsert, R-Athens; Ed Harbison, D-Columbus; Kay Kirkpatrick, R-Marietta; Freddie Powell Sims, D-Dawson; and Ben Watson, R-Savannah.
Citizen appointees to the panel include Mark Baker, CEO of Hughston Clinic; Matt Hasbrouck, CEO at Memorial Meadows in Vidalia; Christine Macewen of Piedmont Health Care; Jesse Weathington, CEO of the Georgia Association of Health Plans; and Dr. Steven Wertheim, former co-president of Resurgens.
The study committee will hold meetings throughout the state in communities where proposed health-care projects were denied or limited due to CON regulations. Dates and locations will be announced at a later date.
ATLANTA – A Statesboro man faces up to five years in prison for willfully filing false income tax returns.
Samir Patel pleaded guilty Tuesday to evading the proper assessment of his personal federal income taxes.
Patel was a tax return preparer at a national return preparation business from 1999 until 2021, according to court documents. In 2015, he bought a franchise of the business in Claxton.
Patel was charged with underreporting his income for tax years 2015, 2016, and 2017.
After any prison term he serves, he also faces a period of supervised release and will be required to pay restitution and monetary penalties. U.S. District Court Chief Judge J. Randall Hall for the Southern District of Georgia will determine any sentence after considering U.S. sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors.
Tuesday’s announcement of the guilty plea came from Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department’s Tax Division and Jill E. Steinberg, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Georgia.
