An Augusta-area resident who has taken on the challenge of bringing healthy food choices to his historically impoverished community plans to take his findings to a special state Senate committee investigating food deserts and food insecurity.
Javon Armstrong lives in Sand Hills, an historic African American neighborhood in west Augusta also known as Elizabethtown adjacent to the National Register-listed Summerville Historic District.
“Our community has been stagnant for too many years,” Armstrong said. “We have an abandoned elementary school, Weed School, a quarter mile from Augusta University which is a perfect representation of our potential wasting away. It’s been empty for over 50 years.”
Earlier this week, the Senate Study Committee on Improving Access to Healthy Foods and Ending Food Deserts was told by numerous experts that Georgia has one of the highest densities of so-called food deserts in the nation. Food deserts are geographical areas where healthy food is inaccessible or expensive.
“We are the standard food desert with little access to healthy choices,” Armstrong said. “To quote (18th century French lawyer and politician) Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, ‘tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you who you are,’ which doesn’t say much about you when your diet consists of chips, soda and lo mein.”
Armstrong is hoping to tackle the issue of food insecurity by developing tower gardens, which he has already planted in his front yard.
Armstrong describes tower gardens as a soil-free growing system that can save up to 98% more water than a traditional garden.
“They’re also vertical, which means you need only 10% of the space to grow,” he said.
The towers are sold through Juice Plus, a nutritional supplement company. The towers come individually as family gardens (three towers), community gardens (12) or tower farms (50 to 100). Each tower holds 28 plants.
Armstrong said he came across tower gardens back in 2018, when the Georgia Organics Convention was held in Augusta.
“We had a Winn Dixie in the community back in the ‘80s, but ever since then, it’s Chinese food and corner stores,” he said. “Kids here don’t have a viable diet, and while it’d be great to get a community grocery store, we’re not going to get one anytime soon. We need solutions now.”
Armstrong has already spoken with state Sen. Harold Jones, D-Augusta, who introduced the resolution that created the study committee, and some local officials. He envisions a scenario where residents can eat and sell excess produce to restaurants and farmers markets, and community gardens in Sand Hills, then other Augusta-area communities.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp followed Georgia business leaders Thursday in criticizing a crucial part of the White House’s proposed tax compliance agenda.
President Joe Biden’s Americans Family Plan includes a tax compliance agenda, which would require banks and other financial service providers to report all banking transactions – personal or business – for every account that has at least a $600 balance or does $50 in transactions per month.
“This ridiculous power grab by the Biden Administration is only their latest attempt to hurt businesses and undermine the constitutional rights of hardworking Georgians,” said Kemp. “There is absolutely no reason for the federal government to have the ability to monitor nearly every checking account in the country. This is a reckless invasion of privacy and a gut punch to community banks, small businesses, and large banking institutions alike.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Charles Rettig, commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), are urging Congress to give the IRS more access to taxpayers’ bank accounts, which they say will allow the agency to target its audits more effectively.
“This wrongheaded proposal violates the privacy of almost every American in the name of catching wealthy tax cheats,” said Joe Brannen, president & CEO of the Georgia Bankers Association, in a statement issued earlier Thursday. “Consumers, small business owners and families should rightly be concerned that their personal financial information will be turned over to the IRS with no assurance their data will be protected from cyber criminals or restricted to this one idea. This costly and intrusive proposal is loaded with harmful potential, and we urge all Georgia citizens to join us in opposing it.”
“This blatant overreach by government would place an incredible burden on our state’s banking institutions and the small businesses that make up 99% of Georgia’s business community,” said Chris Clark, president and CEO of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce. “It undermines the privacy of everyday Georgians and simply outweighs any hypothetical, unproven gains.”
The proposal is part of the administration’s “tax compliance agenda” of the Americans Family Plan, and is being included in the $3.5-trillion budget reconciliation package currently in negotiation with Congress.
According to the president’s proposal, the administration said tax compliance measures are needed to ensure all Americans pay the taxes they owe. The White House said a tax gap exists in the U.S., which is the difference between taxes owed to the government and those actually paid.
According to the Treasury Department, that tax gap totaled nearly $600 billion in 2019 and will rise to about $7 trillion over the course of the next decade if left unaddressed, roughly equal to 15% of taxes owed.
Other states are pushing back as well. In a Facebook post, the Missouri Bank said, “The Biden administration has proposed requiring all community banks and other financial institutions to report to the IRS on all deposits and withdrawals through business and personal accounts regardless of tax liability.
“This indiscriminate, comprehensive bank account reporting to the IRS can soon be enacted in Congress and will create an unacceptable invasion of privacy for our customers,” the bank said. “If passed, the proposal would require financial institutions, like ours, to report the inflows (deposits) and outflows (withdrawals) of $600 or more, on personal and business accounts to the IRS regardless of customers’ consent.”
The fact of the matter is my Build Back Better Agenda costs $0 — and it won’t raise taxes on anyone making under $400,000 a year. We’re going to pay for it by ensuring those at the top and big corporations pay their fair share.
Biden himself has consistently maintained no one making less than $400,000 a year will experience a tax hike to pay for his Build Back Better agenda. “Not only that — you’ll get a historic tax cut, and see lower costs on things like child care and health care,” the president said in a recent tweet. “And all of it will be paid for by the wealthy paying their fair share.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Both of Georgia’s U.S. senators have joined 45 other Democrats to introduce the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021.
Both the offices of Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock issued statements after the legislation, named after the legendary Georgia congressman and civil rights activist, was introduced.
The legislation is designed to restore some protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that, Ossoff said, were gutted by the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent states with a history of discrimination — like Georgia — from enacting laws that discriminate against minorities.
The bill also includes Ossoff’s Election Worker and Polling Place Protection Act, aimed at protecting election workers and their families from threats of harm and safeguard election infrastructure.
The 1965 act required jurisdictions with a history of voting rights violations to get approval – or “preclearance” -from the Justice Department before making changes to local voting laws. The Supreme Court threw out that portion of the law in 2013 in the Shelby v Holder case.
The justices asked Congress to update the coverage formula used to determine which states are subject to preclearance, Warnock said. However, Congress has been unwilling to act, he said.
“Preclearance has been allowed to atrophy, and we’ve seen the results not only in Georgia but in Texas and Arizona and Pennsylvania, all across our country,” he said, referring to a wave of state election law changes critics say amount to voter suppression.
The Senate Judiciary Committee was scheduled to hold a hearing on the legislation on Wednesday, with Ossoff chairing one of the witness panels.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
A new report shows COVID-19 vaccinations may have helped prevent roughly 5,100 new COVID-19 infections and 700 deaths among seniors in Georgia during the first five months of this year .
The study, conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), also found that vaccinations were linked to a reduction of about 265,000 COVID-19 infections nationally, 107,000 hospitalizations, and 39,000 deaths among Medicare beneficiaries between January and May 2021.
“This report reaffirms what we hear routinely from states: COVID-19 vaccines save lives, prevent hospitalizations, and reduce infection,” said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra.
More than 352,000 lives were lost during the first nine months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to the availability of vaccines, nearly 80% of these deaths were among people 65 and older who were also Medicare eligible.
Between January and May of this year, when vaccination rates grew from 1% to 47% among adults 18 to 64 and from 1% to 80% among seniors, the study found an 11% to 12% decrease in weekly COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths among Medicare beneficiaries for every 10% increase in county vaccination rates.
All racial and ethnic groups in 48 states experienced reduced numbers of COVID-19 deaths, hospitalizations, and infections linked to vaccination rate increases. Texas and Hawaii were excluded from the analysis due to data reporting limitations.
The study also found that vaccines were linked to a reduction of about 5,600 deaths among nursing home Medicare beneficiaries, a group that was disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.
Becerra issued a directive last month authorizing all COVID-19 vaccine providers to make available and administer Pfizer booster shots to seniors over age 65.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia has one of the highest densities of so-called food deserts in the nation, several experts told a state Senate committee Tuesday.
“One in eight Georgians face hunger, and one in seven are children,” the Atlanta Community Food Bank’s Joy Goetz told the Senate Study Committee on Improving Access to Healthy Foods and Ending Food Deserts.
According to Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization, 1.2 million Georgians are facing hunger, including more than 377,000 children.
Food deserts are geographical areas where healthy food is inaccessible or expensive.
Alana Rhone, who works in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) economic research department, said Georgia has the sixth highest share of low-income areas whose residents also lack adequate access to supermarkets.
Food insecurity refers to USDA’s measure of lack of access, at times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members and limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate foods.
The committee was created by a Senate resolution sponsored by state Sen. Harold Jones, D-Augusta, which said more than 2 million Georgians, including 500,000 children, live in communities that lack access to affordable fruits, vegetables, and other foods that contribute to a healthy diet.
“Study is needed to determine policy and legislative prescriptions for improving access to healthy foods and ending food deserts,” said the resolution, which established the committee to look at any changes that could be made to the state’s tax and economic policies to combat food deserts, and determine how state leaders can assist local governments.
Goetz said poor food choices – such as choosing high-salt, high-fat foods over fresh fruits and vegetables – contribute to higher health costs throughout the state.
“Each food-insecure patient incurs $1,863 more per year in medical expenditures,” she said. “Food insecurity costs Georgia $1.78 billion in additional health care costs per year because of more chronic disease treatment, more diabetes hospitalizations and more hospital readmissions.”
The average cost of a meal in Georgia is $3.04, according to Feeding America’s report on Hunger in America. The Atlanta Community Food Bank is a member of the organization.
“People facing hunger in Georgia, according to the organization, are estimated to need more than $664 million each year to meet their food needs,” the food bank said.
“Hunger and food insecurity are widespread in Georgia,” Goetz said. “It causes significant stress to families. It impacts physical and mental health outcomes in all age groups. It impacts developmental and health outcomes in children, and it burdens the economy and society as a whole.”
Will Sellers, executive director of Wholesome Wave Georgia, said his organization’s goal is to increase access to and awareness of healthy food choices for all Georgians in need through local farmers and community partners.
The Georgia SNAP Connection program provides free assistance for food stamps and other benefits including Medicaid.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
