ATLANTA – The Georgia Senate overwhelmingly passed a $36.1 billion fiscal 2025 state budget Tuesday, signing off on pay raises for state employees and public school teachers.
With Georgia sitting atop a $16 billion revenue surplus, the state can afford $4,000 cost-of-living increases for most state workers, with $3,000 raises on top of that for employees in state agencies being hit with large turnover rates, including law enforcement officers and welfare workers. Teachers would receive increases of $2,500.
The budget, which cleared the Senate 53-1, also contains substantial increases in funding for various education initiatives, including $243 million to account for student enrollment growth, $207 million to buy more school buses, and $109 million in school safety grants to upgrade security on public school campuses.
Senators also agreed with the budget the state House passed earlier this month to restore $66 million to the University System of Georgia that lawmakers had cut from the spending plan last year.
The budget also would increase reimbursement rates for health-care providers and provide $1.5 million for a new mental-health crisis center in Dublin and $1.2 million for a similar center in Augusta.
“Mental health is not going away,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, told his Senate colleagues before Tuesday’s vote. “It’s filling our jails and prisons, and now it’s filling our hospitals.”
Another $6 million would go toward a multi-year plan to stabilize the state’s trauma-care network.
The Senate added $15.4 million to the spending plan to beef up security at state prisons. Senators have made a priority of cracking down on the proliferation of cellphones that have been smuggled in to inmates.
Like the midyear budget, the fiscal 2025 spending plan would fund state building projects out of cash rather than bond financing. The Senate also earmarked $64 million to accelerate paying off some of the state’s previous bond debt.
The budget is likely headed next to a joint legislative conference committee to work out the differences between the House and Senate versions of the budget by Thursday, the last day of this year’s General Assembly session.
ATLANTA – The Atlanta Veterans Affairs Regional Office was formally renamed in honor of the late U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson Monday during a ceremony at the building in Decatur.
Isakson, who died in 2021, served as chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee from 2015 until he retired from the Senate in 2019.
“Senator Isakson’s values and example continue to influence the United States Senate for the better,” Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., said during Monday’s ceremony.
“Senator Isakson was a statesman among mere politicians, whose work ethic, whose commitment to the national interest over small partisan interests, and whose unyielding commitment to America’s veterans continues to have a positive impact on the Senate.”
Isakson, a Republican elected to the Senate in 2004 after serving five years in the U.S. House of Representatives, gained a reputation as a lawmaker willing to reach across the aisle to Democrats in order to pass meaningful legislation.
He hosted an annual barbecue aimed at getting Senate Republicans and Democrats talking to each other instead of pursuing partisan agendas, a practice the Senate has continued.
“He pursued the national interest by bridging the divide between partisans,” Ossoff said. “He recognized if the connective tissue between us is destroyed, it’s a risk to our national security, to our cohesion as a people, to our prosperity and security as a people.”
Ossoff sponsored the bipartisan bill naming the VA office after Isakson, which the Senate passed in 2022.
ATLANTA – The Georgia Senate passed two bills aimed at illegal immigration this week, one day after the father of murder victim Laken Riley urged lawmakers to take a tougher stand on the issue.
The 22-year-old nursing student was killed on the University of Georgia campus in Athens last month. A 26-year-old Venezuelan man allegedly in the country illegally has been charged with the crime.
“A man with an evil heart stole her life,” Jason Riley said Wednesday as the family was honored in the Senate chamber. “My vision for every senator in this chamber is that you protect citizens from this illegal invasion … so we can prevent future families from these tragedies.”
The Senate responded on Thursday by passing legislation allowing citizens to file a lawsuit against any local government that is not complying with a state law prohibiting “sanctuary cities” in Georgia, policies some municipalities around the country have adopted declaring they will not prosecute suspects accused of being in the U.S. illegally. Cities or counties that don’t comply would face losing state funds and state-authorized federal funds.
A second bill senators also approved would require local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with federal immigration authorities by notifying the U.S. Department of Homeland Security when they have a suspected illegal immigrant in custody.
The Senate’s Republican majority passed the first bill, House Bill 301, 33-18 along party lines. The second measure, House Bill 1105, passed 34-19 with only one Democrat voting “yes.”
Republicans said local governments are not above the law.
“If you go out there and want to be a sanctuary city and violate Georgia law, you are going to be held accountable,” said Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula.
Democrats accused Republicans of ignoring the thousands of law-abiding illegal immigrants who contribute to the economy by filling jobs and paying taxes.
“We are reacting to a horrible tragedy in Athens,” said Sen. Josh McLaurin, D-Sandy Springs. “We’re making bad law in response to that tragedy.”
Both bills now must return to the state House of Representatives to gain final passage.
ATLANTA – Former Georgia Insurance Commissioner and gubernatorial candidate John Oxendine pleaded guilty in federal court Friday to conspiracy to commit health-care fraud in a scheme involving the ordering of unnecessary medical tests.
Oxendine, 61, admitted that his insurance consulting business ordered the tests from a lab company in Texas in return for hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks, working with a co-conspirator, Dr. Jeffrey Gallups.
“This scheme to bill for unnecessary services has no place in our health-care system,” said Keri Farley, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Atlanta office. “It not only increased health-care costs for all beneficiaries, but they also violated the trust of patients.”
Oxendine, a Republican from Johns Creek, was elected insurance commissioner in 1994 and served four terms. He ran for governor in 2010 but finished fourth in the GOP primary.
According to U.S. Attorney Ryan Buchanan, Oxendine and Gallups submitted fraudulent insurance claims for medically unnecessary tests from Next Health, a lab in Texas. Physicians associated with Gallups’ ear, nose, and throat practice were pressured to order the tests.
The lab company agreed to pay Oxendine and Gallups a kickback of 50% of the profit from eligible specimens Gallups’ practice submitted to the company.
The pair submitted claims seeking more than $2.5 million from private health insurers, which paid Next Health almost $700,000. The company then paid $260,000 in kickbacks.
When a compliance officer raised questions about the kickbacks, Oxendine told Gallups to lie and say the payments were loans. Oxendine then told Gallups to repeat the lie after Gallups was questioned by federal agents.
“John Oxendine, as the former statewide insurance commissioner, knew the importance of honest dealings between doctors and insurance companies,” Buchanan said. “He will now be held accountable for violating the public’s trust.”
Gallups also has pleaded guilty to health-care fraud. Oxendine is scheduled to be sentenced in July.
ATLANTA – Legislation containing the most significant reforms in decades to Georgia’s law governing hospital construction and new medical services is on its way to Gov. Brian Kemp.
The General Assembly give final passage late Thursday to a bill loosening restrictions in Georgia’s Certificate of Need (CON) law.
The state House of Representatives passed the measure 95-68, followed a short time later by the Georgia Senate, which passed it 34-17. Both votes were largely along party lines in the Republican-controlled chambers after legislative Democrats argued it doesn’t go far enough to increase access to quality health care.
House Bill 1339 makes fewer far-reaching changes to the CON law than a version of the legislation the Senate passed on March 14. The Senate measure had drawn substantial opposition from the hospital industry and patient advocacy groups.
“This bill is not perfect,” Rep. Butch Parrish, R-Swainsboro, the measure’s chief sponsor, told his House colleagues shortly before Thursday’s vote. “But it’s a great start in the right direction.”
The CON law requires applicants wishing to build a new health-care facility or provide a new medical service to demonstrate to the state Department of Community Health that the facility or service is needed in that community.
The General Assembly passed the law in 1979 to comply with a federal mandate aimed at reducing health-care costs by avoiding duplication, but Congress repealed the federal statute in 1986. By 1990, 11 states – including California and Texas – had done away with their state CON laws.
The law’s opponents have long argued the CON process is so time-consuming, cumbersome, and expensive that it delays and sometimes blocks efforts to boost access to health care. The issue is particularly critical in the health-care “deserts” of rural Georgia.
House Bill 1339 takes on the problem by exempting proposals to build hospitals in rural counties from having to obtain a CON if they plan to have a full-time emergency room, accept psychiatric and substance-abuse patients, participate in Medicaid, provide indigent care, and offer a training program.
“This should make it easier for hospitals to be build in rural Georgia,” said state Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, who carried the bill in the Senate.
The legislation also includes provisions aimed at specific hospital projects. It would allow rural hospitals that have been closed to reopen without a CON, a provision aimed at the planned reopening of a closed hospital in Cuthbert.
Another provision exempting a proposed hospital in southern Fulton County from having to get a CON would pave the way for a new facility to replace the Atlanta Medical Center, which closed its doors in 2022.
The legislation also would raise the state’s rural hospital tax credit from an annual cap of $75 million to $100 million.
In an olive branch to those who argued the changes don’t go far enough, the bill also would create a state commission to look for additional ways Georgia could improve health-care access.
The House refused to go along with more substantive changes to CON sought by the Senate, including a provision that would have allowed physicians to open multiple-specialty surgical centers without a CON. Physician-owned single-specialty centers already may open in Georgia without a CON thanks to a change in the law the General Assembly enacted in 2008.
Representatives of the hospital industry were worried that a further loosening of CON to allow multi-specialty centers would flood the state with facilities that would siphon off paying patients from hospitals, leaving them with an untenable burden of uninsured patients.
“That hits directly to the bottom lines of hospitals,” said Monty Veazey, president and CEO of the Tifton-based Georgia Alliance of Community Hospitals.
Anna Adams, executive vice president for external affairs at the Georgia Hospital Association, said her organization supports provisions in the bill doing away with spending thresholds governing hospital construction projects, streamlining the CON application process, and exempting labor and delivery services from CON.
While legislative Democrats supported many aspects of the bill, most balked at voting for it because majority Republicans wouldn’t go along with expanding Medicaid coverage in Georgia. Democrats have pushed for Medicaid expansion for more than a decade, since Congress passed the Affordable Care Act.
A separate bill expanding Medicaid came closer than ever to making it to a floor vote earlier Thursday when the Senate Regulated Industries Committee defeated it on a tie vote.
“This bill does not cover a single uninsured Georgian,” House Minority Whip Sam Park, D-Lawrenceville, said during the floor debate on the CON bill.
Leah Chan, director of health justice for the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, said the failure of Medicaid expansion leaves Georgians with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid under the current law but unable to afford to pay for health insurance without coverage.
“You can build as many health-care facilities as you want, but we still have 295,000 patients living in the coverage gap,” she said.
Rep. Mark Newton, R-Augusta, turned that argument on its head in defending the CON bill.
“Without (additional health-care) facilities, an (insurance) card in your pocket won’t do much good,” he said.
The bill’s supporters also argued the new state commission on health care will provide an opportunity to continue discussing Medicaid expansion.
“This is not the end of the road for us,” said Rep. Lee Hawkins, R-Gainesville, chairman of the House Health Committee. “We’re going to keep at it.”
