ATLANTA – A committee made up of Georgia lawmakers, health-care executives, and an insurance industry representative Tuesday recommended repealing the state law governing hospital construction and medical services.
The Senate Study Committee on Certificate of Need (CON) Reform concluded the decades-old CON law is preventing advances in health-care delivery, particularly in rural Georgia.
“Repeal seems to be the most logical conclusion I can draw,” Dr. Steven Wertheim, a former co-president of Resurgens Orthopaedics and a member of the panel, said shortly before the 6-3 vote.
Georgia’s CON law requires applicants wishing to build a new medical facility or provide a new health-care 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. However, Congress repealed the federal statute in 1986, leaving the CON issue up to the states.
While most states have retained CON statutes in some form, 11 have done away with their state CON laws, including California and Texas. South Carolina repealed its CON statute last year, with the exception of long-term care facilities.
In Georgia, legislative Republicans have pushed for years to either repeal CON or ease the law’s restrictions.
During this year’s General Assembly session, the Senate took up two bills, one calling for repeal of CON except for long-term care facilities, and the other exempting most rural hospitals from the law. Neither made it past the Senate.
Advocacy groups representing Georgia hospitals have opposed efforts to significantly reform CON or repeal the law entirely. They have argued that for-profit health-care providers would siphon off paying patients from rural hospitals, leaving them in worse financial straits than before.
Acknowledging that repealing CON might be too heavy a lift for the General Assembly, the study committee also recommended a series of reform measures that would stop short of getting rid of the law.
Those fallback recommendations include exempting maternal and neonatal care from going through the CON process. CON exemptions also would apply to medical research centers and to health-care facilities wishing to add new hospital or mental-health beds or expand the number of beds they already provide.
The study committee’s recommendations now move to the full Senate for consideration during the 2024 legislative session starting in January.
ATLANTA – A proposed state Senate redistricting map released Monday would create two additional Black majority districts in the General Assembly’s upper chamber in keeping with a federal court order.
Senate District 17 in Henry and Newton counties and Senate District 28 in Douglas and Fulton counties would become majority Black under the proposed map, released two days ahead of a special legislative session on redistricting beginning Wednesday.
The addition of two Black majority state Senate districts would comply with a ruling U.S. District Judge Steve Jones handed down last month that found the congressional, state House and state Senate redistricting maps the Republican-controlled General Assembly drew two years ago in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act.
Jones also ordered state lawmakers to add five Black majority seats to the Georgia House and one Black majority seat to the state’s congressional delegation.
Currently, Republicans hold 33-23 and 102-78 advantages in the state Senate and House, respectively. The GOP holds nine of Georgia’s 14 U.S. House seats.
The 17th Senate District is currently served by Republican Brian Strickland of McDonough, chairman of the Judiciary Committee. The 28th Senate District is currently represented by the GOP’s Matt Brass of Newnan, chairman of the Rules Committee.
Jones’ ruling ordered Black majority legislative and congressional districts added in portions of metro Atlanta that have seen dramatic growth in Black residents in recent years.
Under the proposed map, the voting-age population of Strickland’s 17th Senate District would go from 59.4% white to 60.4% Black. That would be accomplished by shifting the district’s boundaries westward to take in a large portion of majority-Black Clayton County.
Changes to the 28th District would be more significant. The district Brass now serves would be shifted northward out of Coweta County to include southwest Fulton County, eastern Douglas County, and southern Carroll County.
The voting-age population of the 28th Senate District would go from 69.4% white to 53.4% Black.
The proposed map also would modify 13 other Senate districts from their current boundaries. Eight of those districts would remain majority Black, while five would remain majority white.
The lawsuit that led to Jones’ ruling pointed to a 2020 Census that showed all of Georgia’s population growth during the decade of the 2010s was among people of color, while the state’s white population declined. However, that minority population growth was not reflected in the redistricting maps the legislature drew in 2021, the plaintiffs argued.
The proposed Senate map will be followed later this week by draft maps for Georgia’s state House and congressional districts. Lawmakers must approve new district lines by a week from Friday, the deadline Jones set for them to finish their work.
ATLANTA – A federal appellate court has upheld the method Georgia uses to elect members of the state Public Service Commission (PSC), reversing a lower-court ruling.
In a decision handed down late last week, the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals endorsed the system of electing the five commissioners statewide rather than by district.
A lawsuit filed by four Black Fulton County residents had argued that electing the commissioners statewide diluted Black voting strength in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act, making it more difficult for Black voters to elect a candidate of their choice. Specifically, the suit targeted a map of the PSC districts the General Assembly’s Republican majorities approved last year.
The state argued that have a statewide body in charge of regulating energy in Georgia would avoid provincialism. On Friday, the appellate court agreed in a 34-page ruling.
“If each commissioner represented only a district, then important questions of utility regulation – such as the location of energy and infrastructure – could turn into a zero-sum game between commissioners beholden to their districts instead of a collaborative effort to reach the best result for the entire state,” the three-judge appellate panel wrote.
The decision would appear to clear the way for elections to the PSC, which have been on hold while the case was pending.
The terms of two commissioners – Tim Echols and Fitz Johnson – expired at the end of last year, but the two were allowed to continue in their seats.
ATLANTA – A combination of legislation and spending increases are needed to improve Georgia’s foster care system, according to a report a legislative study committee adopted Monday.
The state Senate Study Committee on Foster Care and Adoption unanimously recommended legislation to shorten the time it takes children entering the foster care system to reach a permanent status – either reunification with parents or adoption – and to provide free photo IDs to foster kids.
Recommendations including pay raises for case managers, an increase in monthly adoption assistance rates, and making mental-health services available to foster and adoptive parents would require budget increases.
The Georgia Senate has put an emphasis on improving the state’s foster care system this year. Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who presides over the Senate, created a new Children and Families Committee in the upper chamber at the beginning of this year’s General Assembly session in January, then led the way in forming the study committee.
“I think we’re going to make a lot of progress,” Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, R-Marietta, who chairs both the standing and study committees, said after Monday’s vote. “There’s a window of opportunity because of support from the lieutenant governor and the commissioner (of the state Department of Human Services).”
Georgia’s foster care system was hit with a flurry of negative publicity late last month when a U.S. Senate subcommittee chaired by Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., unveiled a previously undisclosed internal audit that revealed the state Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) failed in 84% of cases brought to its attention to address risks and safety concerns.
Ossoff also held a news conference during which he reported nearly 1,800 children in state custody were reported missing between 2018 and last year.
In response, DFCS officials charged that the probe was politically motivated. Three lawyers for DFCS wrote in a letter that the subcommittee failed to request relevant information or responses from the the agency in advance of its publicized hearings and news conferences.
On Monday, the Senate study committee also recommended establishing a system of family courts in Georgia dedicated to cases involving children up to the age of three. Kirkpatrick said the state is working to launch pilot projects for the “infant-toddler” courts at three sites.
ATLANTA – Georgia Democrats scored minimal gains in the General Assembly in last year’s elections – and even lost one congressional seat – despite population growth during the last decade among Blacks, who tend to vote for Democrats.
But Democratic prospects likely will look a lot better after lawmakers gather under the Gold Dome for a special session starting Wednesday and redraw the state’s legislative and congressional lines on the orders of a federal judge appointed by then-President Barack Obama.
“(Republican incumbents are) either going to end up in districts highly likely to elect a Democrat or in a district with another Republican incumbent,” said Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia who has written extensively about redistricting. “They will have to decide which Republicans are going to walk the plank.”
The General Assembly’s Republican majorities drew the current maps two years ago in a redistricting exercise legislatures around the country go through every decade following the decennial U.S. Census to account for changes in population that occurred during the previous 10 years.
Almost immediately, civil rights and voting rights groups sued the state, claiming the new district boundaries ignored strong population growth among minorities in Georgia since 2010 and an actual decline in the state’s white population.
“All of Georgia’s population growth in the last decade was attributable to people of color,” said Rahul Garabadu, senior voting rights staff director at the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
“Georgia could have and – importantly – should have drawn additional Black majority state House and state Senate districts. Not drawing these additional Black majority districts diluted the power of Black voting strength and violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.”
U.S. District Judge Steve Jones agreed in a ruling last month that ordered the legislature to redraw the 2021 congressional and legislative maps. The lengthy 516-page ruling specifically instructed lawmakers to add one Black majority congressional district, two more Black majority Georgia Senate districts, and five additional state House seats.
“This is a huge win for Black voters in Georgia and for all Georgians who want a level political playing field and progress from the past,” said Ari Savitzky, a lawyer with the national ACLU Voting Rights Project.
The state has appealed Jones’ ruling, but – importantly – did not seek a stay in the order. As a result, the new maps lawmakers draw during the special session will be in use at least during the 2024 elections while the appeal winds its way through the courts.
While majority Republicans lost two state House seats and one state Senate seat in last year’s elections, the congressional map lawmakers drew in 2021 snared one additional GOP seat in Georgia’s U.S. House delegation.
Republicans went from an 8-6 edge to a 9-5 margin by extending Democratic U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath’s 6th Congressional District in Atlanta’s northern suburbs further north through heavily Republican Forsyth and Dawson counties and a portion of Cherokee County.
That allowed the GOP’s Rich McCormick, who had lost a 2020 a bid for Congress in Gwinnett County to incumbent Democratic Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux, to shift his focus to the redrawn 6th District seat last year and win that seat. McBath responded to being drawn an unfriendly district by running against Bourdeaux in the 7th District Democratic primary and capturing the Gwinnett-based seat.
While Jones ruled that five of Georgia’s congressional district maps violate the Voting Rights Act, the action during the upcoming special session is expected to focus on McCormick’s 6th District or the 11th Congressional District centered in portions of Cobb and Cherokee counties represented by GOP Rep. Barry Loudermilk.
Of the two, McCormick is the more likely target, said Kerwin Swint, a political science professor at Kennesaw State University. While McCormick is a freshman in the House, Loudermilk has served in Congress since 2015 and before that was a member of the General Assembly.
“Loudermilk’s been around awhile,” Swint said. “He’s bult a base of support.”
Jones was more specific in the portion of last month’s ruling pertaining to legislative seats. The judge ordered the legislature to draw two additional Black majority Georgia Senate seats in the southern portion of metro Atlanta and five more Black majority state House seats – two in the south metro, one in the western portion of the metro region, and two in the Macon area.
Swint said the most vulnerable legislative Republican incumbents in the upcoming redistricting session will be those serving in the areas Jones singled out for new Black majority districts.
But with Republicans currently holding solid majorities in both legislative chambers, there’s little likelihood the new Black majority districts will be enough to give Democrats control of either the House or Senate in the immediate future, he said.
“They think they can get close … by ’28 or so to be in a position to take it then,” Swint said.
The special session isn’t expected to take long. For one thing, Jones’ order gives lawmakers only until Dec. 8 to draw the new congressional and legislative maps.
Bullock said another factor that could allow this round of redistricting to go smoothly is that lawmakers only will be focusing on those parts of the state the judge pointed to in his ruling.
“If you’re in South Georgia, you won’t have to worry about any of these changes,” he said. “It won’t be a complete redraw.”
