Georgia Department of Corrections Commissioner Tyrone Oliver speaks to lawmakers on Thursday.
ATLANTA— The Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) plans to significantly downsize the largest women’s prison in Georgia and replace most of its capacity with a new prison.
The Lee Arrendale State Prison, located in Habersham County, has a 1,476-inmate capacity. Under the latest GDC budget proposal, it would continue to operate as a much smaller 112-bed “transition center,” a minimum-security facility.
“All the employees that we have there currently will still remain employed at that facility to support that new mission,” state Commissioner of Corrections Tyrone Oliver told Georgia lawmakers Thursday.
In Arrendale’s stead, the state plans to create the McRae State Prison in Telfair County.
McRae was owned by a private prison contractor and housed federal prisoners until it closed late last year. The state reportedly purchased the facility for $130 million.
“The ladies that are at that prison [Arrendale] right now are moving to McRae as soon as we get that facility opened up,” Oliver said during state budget hearings.
“While we hate to see the downsizing of this facility, we are encouraged that Commissioner Oliver is taking steps to improve the Department of Corrections statewide,” said Rep. Victor Anderson, R-Cornelia, and Sen. Bo Hatchett, R-Cornelia, in a joint statement.
“These changes are in the governor’s proposed budget…and will be deliberated significantly [through] the House and Senate appropriations process,” added the two lawmakers, who represent the area where Arrendale is located.
The corrections department is also requesting more funding to pay for prison health and pharmacy contracts. The agency needs an additional $12 million in the amended fiscal 2023 budget and another $25.1 million for fiscal 2024, Oliver said.
The department plans to create a new corrections officer role in an effort to encourage employees to stay with the department, which, like many other state agencies, faces a workforce shortage and high turnover rates.
The new “Correctional Officer Three” job will have a starting salary of around $48,000, Oliver said.
“We have correction officer one and two [ranks]. This is creating a correctional officer three position which will provide … some upward mobility for those individuals who are not ready to seek supervisory positions,” Oliver said. “It’s creating a career track for them.”
Michael Register, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, said retaining staffers is a top challenge at his agency as well. He noted that many GBI jobs require specialized training and experience, and the agency is losing many of those employees after investing in that training.
“The largest population of [employees leaving] is individuals that have worked at the agency one to five years, just in time to be fully trained, get some experience, and then they move on,” Register said. “We’ve got to find ways to … recruit the brightest and retain the brightest.”
For example, GBI faces a shortage of medical examiners. Last year, the agency completed almost 5,000 medical exams or autopsies, about a third for people who died from drug overdoses. The department faces backlogs in processing the medical examinations and in other areas.
Currently, GBI has 19 authorized positions for medical examiners, with only nine currently staffed.
GBI is attempting to fill the gaps by sponsoring visas so qualified people from outside of the United States can take up the medical examiner job, Register said. GBI has also hired physician assistants to conduct some basic exams and purchased a CT scanner to help expedite the process.
Most of the $1.2 million increase the GBI is seeking would go toward $2,000 pay raises in line with Gov. Brian Kemp’s proposed across-the-board pay increase for state employees.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Candice Broce, director of the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services, discussed the challenges her agency faces and how she plans to address them during state budget hearings on Tuesday.
ATLANTA – The mental health of Georgians, especially children, took center stage Tuesday during the first day of state budget hearings at the state Capitol.
Leaders of Georgia’s main health-care agencies told legislators how they plan to address the challenges Georgians face as well as how much those plans will cost.
Candice Broce, director of the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS), told lawmakers about the problem of “hoteling,” which refers to boarding foster-care children and youth in hotels or offices because appropriate placements cannot be found for them, usually due to complicated behavioral health issues.
“On any given night in Georgia, roughly 50 to 70 children in foster care with complex needs will sleep in a local office or hotel,” Broce said. She called the practice “heartbreaking,” adding that the practice cost the state more than $28 million in fiscal year 2022.
“Since joining this agency, we have been hell-bent on ending hoteling,” Broce said.
DFCS started a program to pay enhanced per-diem rates and provide emergency grants to incentivize caretakers to take on the foster-care children most at risk for hoteling.
The pilot project is working, Broce said. Last June, the state hit an all-time low of fewer than 20 children in hotels or offices. And, she said, stays in offices and hotels have also been shortened for many foster-care children.
Broce also said DFCS has developed draft legislation to address the hoteling problem for lawmakers to consider this session. The issue has emerged as a top concern for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, including Sen. Blake Tillery, R- Vidalia, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, D-Decatur, a leader in the state’s mental health reform efforts.
Kevin Tanner, a former state representative who took over as commissioner of the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities (DBHDD) last month, outlined several steps his agency is taking to help stem the flow of children into foster care in the first place. He noted that the Multi-Agency Treatment for Children (MATCH) Committee – created by last year’s mental-health-reform law – began meeting last month to work on child-welfare issues like hoteling.
Tanner also said his agency works with DFCS and local community-service boards to provide residential treatment to mothers who are experiencing substance abuse or behavioral health issues. The programs allow children to stay with their mothers during treatment and help prevent the fracturing of families, Tanner said.
“I look forward to … [making] sure every family at risk of foster care because of a parent’s substance abuse has access to the program in the future,” Tanner told lawmakers.
DBHDD also plans to build a behavioral health crisis center in Fulton County and convert an existing facility in Dublin to a higher-level behavioral crisis center if the legislature approves Gov. Brian Kemp’s request for $11.1 million for the two projects.
State agencies across the board are struggling to hire and retain the workers necessary to provide the social services Georgians need. Kemp’s proposed budget includes a $2,000 pay raise for all state employees.
Statewide, the turnover rate is around 25%, a historic high, said Rebecca Sullivan, commissioner of the state Department of Administrative Services. The high turnover rates come with increased financial costs as well as intangible hits, such as the loss of institutional knowledge, Sullivan said.
Tanner said his agency has been unable to fill positions at the five state psychiatric hospitals, forcing them to rely on Jackson Healthcare, a staffing agency, to fill more than 450 jobs.
Broce said many frontline caseworkers leave due not to pay but to the heavy emotional demands of the job, though she said turnover for such workers has started to decrease since the height of the pandemic.
In good news, Commissioner Caylee Noggle of the Georgia Department of Community Health explained how new funding strategies and increased federal funds will increase resources for hospitals across the state, both rural and urban. The goal, she said, is to eliminate the burden of uncompensated care that small, rural hospitals must shoulder for uninsured and low-income patients.
The state’s health-care agencies are collaborating to staff up and prepare for what is known as “the great unwinding,” which will take place in April, when the federal government will relax pandemic-era regulations that prevented states from disenrolling people from Medicaid. Georgia will need to re-examine the eligibility of more than 2 million people now enrolled in the Medicaid insurance program.
The health-care administrators said they have developed plans for what will be a complicated cross-agency operation. Kemp’s budget includes funding for the staffing and technology upgrades necessary for the big change.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – A record number of Georgians – over 846,000 – signed up for health insurance for 2023 under the Affordable Care Act during the latest open enrollment period, which ended on Sunday.
That’s about 8% of the state’s population, and at least 145,000 more than signed up for the program last year.
The program allows individuals – many of them low-income or self-employed – to sign up for private health insurance. It offers significant tax subsidies to offset insurance costs for people earning between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level, or between $13,590 and $54,360 for an individual.
The program has steadily grown in popularity in Georgia. Only about 316,000 Georgians signed up in 2014, its first year.
In Georgia, 10 insurers offered plans for 2023, including big players such as Aetna, Anthem, and Ambetter as well as upstarts like Oscar and Friday. However, not all of the plans are available in every county.
While open enrollment has closed for this year, Georgians can still sign up for Healthcare.Gov plans under certain circumstances, such as the loss of health care coverage, marriage or divorce, the birth or adoption of a child, or a major change in income.
One reason the program has soared in popularity in Georgia is that the Inflation Reduction Act a then-Democratic Congress passed last year increased the dollar amount of subsidies for people purchasing the health-care plans.
About 80% of Affordable Care Act enrollees nationwide qualify for subsidies that reduce their monthly payments to less than $10, according to the federal Department of Health and Human Services.
“My last person I [helped] only paid $8 a month health-care coverage for 2023,” Deanna Williams, an insurance navigator who works at Georgians for a Healthy Future, said during a press conference last week. “A lot of people who I’ve helped, especially in my rural area … were shocked to know that they could get a plan.”
Despite its increasing popularity, the Affordable Care Act is not without controversy in Georgia.
Earlier this year, the federal government denied the state’s application to exit the HealthCare.Gov marketplace, a key part of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s health-care agenda.
The state then established its own health-insurance portal, GeorgiaAccess.Gov, directing consumers to private insurers.
Democrats contend the state should expand Medicaid to help cover more uninsured Georgians. Last Friday, state House Minority Leader James Beverly, D-Macon, and other House Democrats introduced a bill that would allow the state to expand Medicaid.
But Medicaid expansion is unlikely to gain the Republican backing necessary to pass in the General Assembly.
However, the state does plan to expand Medicaid on a limited basis by providing the insurance to low-income Georgians who meet monthly work, education or volunteer requirements. The state initially estimated that plan, slated to start in July, would help around 64,000 Georgians obtain health insurance.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
The Augusta University Medical Center (Photo credit: Michael Holahan/Augusta University)
ATLANTA – An Augusta University Health System (AUHS) – WellStar partnership proposed last month is in line with national trends toward health-care partnerships, experts said this week as a few additional details emerged about the plan.
AUHS is a key training facility for medical residents and other future health-care providers. It houses the Medical College of Georgia, the state’s only public medical school. WellStar, a non-profit health system, currently owns nine hospitals in the Atlanta region.
A three-page letter of intent recently made public states: “WellStar would become the sole corporate member of AUHS,” meaning the non-profit hospital system would replace the current not-for-profit corporation that runs AUHS.
The AUHS holdings that would come into WellStar’s control under the proposed transaction include a 632-bed hospital, the faculty practice group for the Medical College of Georgia, the Roosevelt Warm Springs Rehabilitation facility – which includes a 32-bed acute-care hospital and a 52-bed rehabilitation facility – and other AUHS facilities and holdings, according to the letter of intent.
The letter also outlines the expected benefits of the new plan, including providing better health care to underserved populations.
The partnership would “expand the clinical platform, including a new state-of-the-art hospital in Columbia County,” according to the letter. AUHS had planned to build a 100-bed facility in the eastern Georgia county, and construction was slated to begin this year.
While few other details of the proposed partnership have been made public, health-care experts say such partnerships between academic medical centers and hospital systems are increasingly common across the country.
“In these days, a partnership is absolutely necessary,” said Dr. Andrew Balas, a professor of health management and policy at Augusta University. “Becoming part of a health system is an upside … because a stand-alone hospital is just not a viable option in the long run.”
“The need for revenue has created … innovations [or] a lot of creative business arrangements,” echoed Dr. Vikas Saini, president of the Lown Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that measures hospitals’ social responsibility. “The fact that this is happening is not particularly surprising. … What may be novel are the details.”
The Lown Institute ranked the WellStar hospital system second in the country in 2022 for the largest “fair share surplus,” that is, for how much its spending on charity care and community investment exceeded its tax exemptions. The hospital system spent $144 million more on charity care and community investment than it received in tax breaks.
Some of that may be because Georgia has not expanded Medicaid, meaning hospitals here must fund more charity care for uninsured patients than in Medicaid-expansion states, Saini said. The hospital system received a “B” grade in the Lown Institute’s social responsibility index, which measures hospital outcomes, value and equity.
WellStar drew criticism last year when it announced it was closing two Atlanta-area hospitals and emergency rooms that served large numbers of uninsured and Black patients. Many Democrats, among them gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, blamed those hospital closures on the state’s failure to expand Medicaid. At that time, WellStar said that Medicaid expansion would not have been sufficient to keep the two hospitals from closing.
The partnership would extend WellStar’s current academic profile. The hospital system has been a long-time supporter of the Kennesaw State University School of Nursing. In 2003 a $3.1 million donation led KSU to name its College of Health and Human Services after WellStar.
The proposed partnership might yield a new Augusta University teaching campus at WellStar’s large Kennestone hospital, a December statement announcing the proposal noted. This could help increase the Medical College’s capacity to train new doctors in Georgia.
Multiplestudies suggest that doctors and other health-care providers are more likely to practice where they train, meaning that one solution to Georgia’s health-care workforce shortage is to increase the state’s training capacity.
“We hope there will be a rational agreement that is respectful and supportive of the university’s tripartite mission of education, research, and service,” said Balas, who also serves as president of the Augusta University chapter of the American Association of University Professors. “Personally, I am hopeful. … I think it will work out fine.”
The partnership will need approval from both the University System of Georgia Board of Regents and the state Attorney General’s office. The Attorney General office’s review process will include a public hearing. However, details about the timeline are not yet available.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Gov. Brian Kemp is sworn in for his second term by Justice Carla Wong McMillian in an inauguration ceremony at Georgia State Convocation Center in Atlanta on Thursday, January 12, 2023. (Photo credit: Arvin Temkar)
ATLANTA – State employees will get a $2,000 pay raise if Gov. Brian Kemp can get the General Assembly to approve his budget request.
Law enforcement officers, school employees, and other state workers all need the raise, Kemp said during an inaugural address Thursday that marked the start of his second term as Georgia’s governor.
“If you want to keep good people in jobs critical to the safety and well-being of our children, our communities and our state as a whole, we must be willing to be competitive with state salaries,” Kemp said.
Kemp also said he plans to use part of the state’s current record surplus to fund a one-time $1 billion income tax refund for Georgians. He pushed through a similar income tax refund last year.
The governor is also recommending the state spend $1.1 billion to provide homeowners with a property-tax relief grant.
“We are putting you and your families first because that’s your money, not the government’s,” Kemp said.
Kemp plans to request $150 million for grants that school districts can apply for to address pandemic learning loss and security needs. Some of the funding will also be designated to help current paraprofessionals become certified teachers.
And Kemp promised to continue to build on his success in bringing high-tech manufacturing facilities to the state. He pointed to Archer Aviation’s plans to hire 1,000 people to build electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft as well as Hyundai and Rivian electric vehicle manufacturing plants and an SK battery facility as prime examples of his administration’s commitment to economic growth.
“By the end of my second term, I intend for Georgia to be recognized as the electric mobility capital of America,” Kemp told the crowd of lawmakers and supporters.
Republicans won all of the state’s constitutional offices in the November elections. Those officials were also sworn in during the inauguration event at the Georgia State University Convocation Center in downtown Atlanta.
Three former state senators took the oath of office for their new statewide roles. Burt Jones was sworn in as lieutenant governor, Tyler Harper as agriculture commissioner and Bruce Thompson as labor commissioner.
The occasion also marked the start of new terms for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Attorney General Chris Carr, Commissioner of Insurance John King, and State School Superintendent Richard Woods.
Now that the inauguration formalities are over, elected officials can turn their attention to the state’s budget. Kemp is expected to release further details of his spending recommendations Friday, and the House and Senate Appropriations Committees will begin three days of budget hearings Jan. 17.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
