by Dave Williams | Jul 23, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – State School Superintendent Richard Woods has decided not to recommend adding an Advanced Placement African American studies course to the state’s curriculum offerings during the upcoming school year.
Word of Woods’ decision came in a communication Monday from Gwinnett County Public Schools Chief Learning Officer DeNelle West to the district’s teachers. Gwinnett was among several school districts that piloted the course during the 2023-24 school year.
“This will necessitate schedule adjustments for the students impacted by this change,” West wrote. “Our commitment to a comprehensive and inclusive education remains unwavering, and students can still explore related content through other elective course available at their local schools.”
The decision not to move forward with the AP African American studies course marks the latest episode in a political dispute in Georgia over the value of diversity in the social studies curriculum offered in Georgia’s public schools.
Two years ago, the General Assembly’s Republican majorities passed controversial legislation prohibiting the teaching of U.S. history in a way that might make any student feel guilty or that they are superior or inferior to anyone else because of their race.
GOP lawmakers argued that nothing in the so-called “divisive concepts” bill banned the teaching of slavery or the civil rights movement in Georgia schools. But Democrats said the potential penalties included in the bill would make teachers reluctant to offer students the full reality of U.S. history, both good and bad.
“Woods’ decision truly stands out against the backdrop of the approval of the AP European History class!” Lisa Morgan, president of the Georgia Association of Educators, wrote in a statement released Tuesday. “What is our state Department of Education communicating to Georgia’s diverse student population?
“This ill-considered decision is in direct opposition to our integrity and professional duties as educators to ensure our students receive a honest inclusive education, which allows them to explore the full history of our world and its people.”
Woods, a Republican, was elected state school superintendent in 2014 and is serving his third term.
by Dave Williams | Jul 23, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia’s law essentially banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy is forcing women to endure high-risk pregnancies and driving OBGYN doctors out of the state, two OBGYNs and an OBGYN resident said Tuesday.
“There are a lot of political voices weighing in on this issue,” U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., said at the end of a field hearing of the Human Rights Subcommittee he chairs held at Decatur City Hall. “People need to hear from the doctors who are providing care every day, what this is really doing to pregnant women in Georgia.”
Republican Gov. Brian Kemp steered the “heartbeat bill” through the GOP-controlled General Assembly in 2019, prohibiting most abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, typically about six weeks into a pregnancy. There are exceptions for rape, incest, and medical emergencies.
Courts blocked the law from taking effect until 2022, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion that had been established in the Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973.
Abortion is a key issue in this year’s presidential election, with Democrats accusing Republicans of seeking congressional passage of a nationwide abortion ban, while Republicans argue the issue should be left to the states to decide.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Georgia OBGYNs said patients experiencing high-risk pregnancies are being forced to either continue carrying fetuses that have little chance of survival yet threaten the mother’s lives or leave the state to obtain abortions.
“High-risk pregnancies are unexpected, life-threatening, emotionally traumatizing, and life-changing for all involved,” said Dr. Suchitra Chandrasakeran, an OBGYN in Atlanta. “The current abortion ban in Georgia limits our ability to provide a compassionate and full spectrum of reproductive counseling and choices to our patients and only continues to worsen the overall future health of pregnant persons in Georgia.”
Dr. Aisvarya Panakam, a first-year OBGYN resident and native Georgian, said she decided after treating pregnant patients from Georgia who had traveled to Massachusetts not to return to Georgia to practice because of the state’s abortion ban.
“I want to practice and learn in a state where I can offer patients a full section of options,” she said. “I don’t want may hands to be tied by a law, by legislators who have very little understanding of medicine. … People without knowledge are restraining out ability to provide evidence-based care. As a result, real people are affected, real people are getting sick and having unwanted pregnancies, real people are dying.”
Atlanta OBGYN Dr. Nisha Verma said terms in Georgia’s abortion law dealing with exceptions to the ban including “irreversible” and “medically futile” are vague.
“There is no way to create a law that takes every individual, every medical situation, every family into account,” she said. “The exceptions don’t solve the problem. They don’t make sense.”
by Dave Williams | Jul 23, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A maker of instrument transformers for the utility and original equipment manufacturing (OEM) sectors is growing its footprint in Georgia.
Ritz Instrument Transformers will invest $28 million in a new plant in Waynesboro that will create 130 jobs, Gov. Brian Kemp announced Tuesday from Italy, where he is leading a weeklong trade mission.
“We’ve worked hard to bring opportunity like this to rural Georgia,” Kemp said. “We’re proud this project adds even more jobs to one of those target areas following our face-to-face meeting with Ritz during our travel to Germany in 2023.”
Ritz develops and produces instrument transformers from 600 volts to 500 kilovolts.
The Hamburg, Germany-based company operates two plants in Georgia. A temporary facility in Burke County currently supports 30 jobs, which will be transferred to the new plant in Waynesboro. Another Ritz plant in Lavonia opened in 2010.
“The investment in a new state-of-the-art factory for high-voltage instrument transformers in Waynesboro marks the single-largest investment to date for the Ritz Group and illustrates the commitment of the company to the North American market,” said Scott Flowers, CEO and general manager of Ritz USA.
“The availability of a well-trained workforce and the support extended by Burke County and the state of Georgia made Waynesboro the obvious choice for Ritz.”
The Georgia Department of Economic Development worked on the project in partnership with the Development Authority of Burke County and the state agency’s Europe office.
by Dave Williams | Jul 19, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia energy regulators already have approved a request by Georgia Power for a significant increase in electrical generating capacity to meet the needs of a growing state.
But the state Public Service Commission (PSC) still must sign off on a key component of the Atlanta-based utility’s plan: a proposal to build three new “dual-fuel” turbines at Plant Yates near Newnan. The PSC will hold a hearing on the project July 24 and vote on it next month.
In April, commissioners approved Georgia Power’s plan to add 6,600 megawatts of additional generating capacity, a huge jump from the 400 megawatts the company had predicted it would need two years ago. Driving that big increase are the growing demands of large industrial customers, including an influx of power-hungry data centers being built across the state.
Of that 6,600 megawatts, about 1,300 megawatts would come from the new turbines. The capacity of each turbine would be about 441 megawatts when using natural gas and about 351 megawatts when using ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel.
“Georgia is experiencing a historic increase in the state’s energy and capacity needs,” Georgia Power executives wrote in the company’s application for certification of the three proposed turbines. “The development of Plant Yates Units 8-10 is one of several critical steps needed to address the extraordinary near- and long-term energy needs of this state and our customers.
“Collectively, these three units will generate more then 1,300 MW of necessary peaking capacity, with the first unit available to serve customers beginning in the winter of 2026/2027. This peaking capacity resource is paramount to the company’s ability to continue to reliably meet the capacity needs of our customers and our state.”
But environmental and consumer advocacy groups that have filed with the PSC as intervenors in the case argue that building new turbines powered by oil and gas is premature and runs counter to a prevailing trend in the industry and among the public against fossil fuels.
Bryan Jacob, solar program director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said utilities should be moving away from fossil fuels as power generating sources rather than committing to new gas projects.
“We’re already over-reliant on gas,” he said. “This is doubling down on a fossil-fuel source we already rely on too much.”
“Georgians want clean energy,” added Bob Sherrier, a staff attorney with the Atlanta-based Southern Environmental Law Center.
Jacob said building the turbines now also would be premature because other options haven’t been fully explored.
“Georgia Power has an all-source procurement request for proposals that’s already out for bid,” he said. “We think the commission should look at those. … If there’s a set of resources that will meet the need at a lower cost, they’re obligated to consider it.”
But both Georgia Power executives and the PSC’s Public Interest Advocacy Staff cite provisions contained in an agreement between the two parties they say protects customers.
“The company agrees that if the application is granted, Georgia Power will not seek recovery of any project construction costs that exceed the proposed project construction cost in the company’s January 31, 2024, application for certification absent a showing that such costs are the result of circumstances beyond the company’s control,” Georgia Power asserted in the agreement.
But Sherrier said the agreement covers only construction costs, not the costs of the fuel the new turbines will burn. The commission approved a fuel costs recovery plan submitted by Georgia Power last year that raised the average residential customer’s bill by $15.90 per month.
“Fuel costs go straight to customers,” Sherrier said.
The agreement also sets out a process for monitoring the construction of the three turbines, with Georgia Power submitting progress reports to the PSC every six months. The same process was used during the construction of two additional nuclear reactors at Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle, a project that was completed in April.
Jacob said he’s skeptical of the value of construction monitoring, considering that the Vogtle reactors went into commercial operation seven years behind schedule after encountering cost overruns that more than doubled the price tag.
But Sherrier sounded a hopeful note looking ahead to the role construction monitoring could play in the Plant Yates project.
“Hopefully, there won’t be cost overruns,” he said. “But if there are, we’ll be able to see them coming and address it.”
by Dave Williams | Jul 19, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A nonprofit nonpartisan watchdog group filed a lawsuit Friday charging the State Election Board with violating Georgia’s Open Meetings Act after meeting last week without legally required public notice or a quorum.
The three Republicans on the five-member board gave preliminary approval during a special meeting last Friday to rules changes that would require local election officials to post daily updates on their websites and inside polling places during early voting and give poll watchers greater access on election nights while votes are being processed.
Action on the two rules had been postponed from three days earlier when the board’s regularly scheduled meeting ran long.
According to the lawsuit, filed in Fulton County Superior Court by the group American Oversight, notice of the special meeting wasn’t posted until late the day before the meeting took place. Even then, the notice was posted outside the meeting room rather than on the board’s website, where meeting notices are usually posted.
Neither board Chairman John Fervier nor Sara Tindall Ghazal, the board’s lone Democrat, were available to attend the meeting, and one of the three Republican board members attended virtually, in violation of the Open Meetings Act, the suit charges.
“Three members of the State Election Board rammed through a last-minute meeting to consider controversial rule changes without notifying the public,” said Chioma Chukwu, American Oversight’s executive director.
“Georgia’s Open Meetings Act and others like it are vital to a functioning democracy by helping ensure official actions are conducted in full view of the public. Attempts to maneuver around it to advance changes to Georgia’s election rules are a clear violation of this law.”
The lawsuit seeks to have the rules changes voted on during the meeting declared null and void and the meeting itself declared invalid.
The board is expected to conduct a final vote Aug. 6 on the two rules changes as well as a proposal board members tentatively approved during the earlier regularly scheduled meeting that would make it easier for local elections officials to challenge the certification of election results.
