ATLANTA – U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, R-Greensboro, and former Alpharetta Mayor David Belle Isle announced their candidacies for Georgia secretary of state Monday by attacking incumbent Brad Raffensperger’s handling of last year’s elections.
Hice, who immediately picked up the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, accused Raffensperger of standing by while widespread election fraud compromised the integrity of Georgia’s elections process.
“Though I am encouraged to see the General Assembly taking it upon themselves to address some of the glaring issues in our elections, Georgia deserves a secretary of state who will own the responsibilities of the office,” Hice said in a prepared statement.
“If elected, I will instill confidence in our election process by upholding the Georgia Constitution, enforcing meaningful reform and aggressively pursuing those who commit voter fraud.”
Belle Isle was runner-up to Raffensperger in the 2018 Republican primary.
“I am running for secretary of state to clean up the mess, secure the mail-in ballot, and restore voter confidence,” Belle Isle said in a prepared statement. “In the recent elections, we witnessed voter suppression on a massive scale, triggered by voter uncertainty and made worse by the secretary’s poor decisions, carelessness, and failure to lead. … It’s time to hold the secretary of state accountable.”
Raffensperger and other state elections officials have repeatedly refuted claims of widespread voter fraud in Georgia during the 2020 election cycle, and multiple federal courts either declined to take up lawsuits filed by disgruntled Republicans or dismissed them.
Trump, who has consistently refused to concede that Biden carried Georgia in the November election, put his stamp of approval on Hice’s 2022 candidacy Monday.
“Unlike the current Georgia secretary of state, Jody leads out front with integrity,” Trump wrote in a prepared statement. “I have 100% confidence in Jody to fight for free, fair, and secure elections in Georgia, in line with our beloved U.S. Constitution.”
Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and GOP Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan came to Raffensperger’s defense during the weeks of criticism other Georgia Republicans leveled at the secretary of state.
On Monday, former Georgia Rep. Buzz Brockway, who also unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for secretary of state in 2018, suggested Republicans’ targeting of Raffensperger rather than recently victorious Democrats is misplaced.
“We now have two announced primary challengers to the incumbent SOS (secretary of state) and zero announced candidates against [Democratic U.S.] Sen. Raphael Warnock,” Brockway wrote in a Twitter post. “I’m beginning to question how serious the GOP really is in blocking [President Joe] Biden’s agenda.”
The pandemic has sparked legislation to add a “chief labor officer” to the Georgia Department of Labor.
ATLANTA – A controversial proposal to hire a “chief labor officer” to help handle an unprecedented deluge of unemployment claims brought on by the pandemic squeaked through a Georgia House committee Monday.
The Industry and Labor Committee approved Senate Bill 156
6-5 and sent it to the House Rules Committee to schedule a floor vote.
The bill, which the state Senate passed 32-18 two weeks ago, would add a chief labor officer to the Georgia Department of Labor’s payroll, appointed by the governor to work with the state labor commissioner.
The measure came in response to a barrage of complaints lawmakers have been subjected to for months from jobless constituents whose unemployment claims were being delayed. Claimants have described a lack of response from the labor department, including telephone calls going unanswered.
Georgia Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler attacked the bill before the committee last week as both unnecessary and unhelpful. He said a bringing in a new management employee lacking knowledge in how the agency operates would do nothing to speed up claims processing.
On Monday, Roy Bowen, CEO of the Georgia Association of Manufacturers, echoed Butler’s concerns.
Week in and week out, the manufacturing job sector accounts for the second or third-largest number of initial unemployment claims filed with the labor department. Last week, 2,287 laid-off manufacturing workers filed for unemployment in Georgia, behind only the accommodations and food services and administrative and support services sectors.
“Georgia has handled this issue much better than any other state,” Bowen told members of the House committee before Monday’s vote. “No other department was as prepared to deal with the onslaught, the tsunami of unemployment claims.”
Bowen said hiring a chief labor officer to join a department already headed by a statewide elected commissioner would set a bad precedent.
“What you’re looking for is an ombudsman or liaison,” he said. “To call this person ‘chief labor officer’ is going to lead to havoc, confusion and undercutting of the labor commissioner.”
But the bill’s supporters say something needs to be done to help the overwhelmed department improve communications with claimants.
“This is in no way to criticize anyone personally,” Sen. Marty Harbin, R-Tyrone, the bill’s chief sponsor, said during last week’s committee hearing. “These are unusual times.”
Acknowledging the unique nature of the pandemic, the bill includes a sunset provision calling for the chief labor officer position to expire at the beginning of 2023.
The cooling tower at Plant Vogtle’s Unit 3 stands in the background.
ATLANTA – The first of two new nuclear reactors being built at Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle likely won’t go into service this November as planned, the Atlanta-based utility announced Friday.
The project could be delayed by one month or more at a cost of about $25 million for each month, Georgia Power disclosed in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The nuclear expansion at the plant south of Augusta was originally expected to cost $14 billion when the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) approved the project in 2009. The price tag has nearly doubled during the intervening years resulting primarily from the bankruptcy of Westinghouse Electric, the original prime contractor.
Georgia Power attributed the delay to “additional construction remediation work” necessary before the reactor undergoes testing and fuel loading. Originally set to occur this month, the testing has been postponed until April.
“While [Georgia Power affiliate] Southern Nuclear continues to target a November 2021 in-service date for Unit 3, the schedule is challenged and … a delay is likely,” according to the SEC filing.
Kurt Ebersbach, senior attorney for the Atlanta-based Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), said he wasn’t surprised by Friday’s announcement, considering the start date for testing has been postponed several times since last August.
He predicted the delay likely will stretch at least three months because of the time it takes to test new reactors and conduct fuel loading.
“Georgia Power customers have been paying for this project for over a decade now and were supposed to begin receiving power from it five years ago,” Ebersbach said. “These new delays mean Georgia Power shareholders will continue profiting handsomely while customers get nothing in return.”
The SELC and other opponents of the Plant Vogtle expansion have long argued Georgia Power should pursue renewable energy more aggressively and stop investing in nuclear power.
Both Georgia Power executives and members of the PSC have countered that Georgia must be able to rely on a diverse range of power-generating options to keep electric rates affordable.
Construction of Unit 3, the first nuclear reactor added to Plant Vogtle since the first two reactors went into service in 1987, is now 98% complete. The nuclear fuel assemblies for the reactor arrived on site in December.
Under the current timetable, the fourth reactor is scheduled to go into service in November of next year.
ATLANTA – Legislative Democrats and advocates for low-income Georgians say the state should spend its windfall from the latest federal COVID-19 relief bill on making a full economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
But Republican leaders say it’s too soon to commit money the state doesn’t have.
“We got a promise, but we ain’t seen a check yet,” said Georgia Rep. Terry England, R-Auburn, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. “Until you get the cash in the bank, you don’t get too far ahead in thinking what to do with it.”
The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act President Joe Biden signed into law March 11 includes $350 billion in aid to state and local governments affected by the pandemic. Of that amount, Georgia is due to receive $8.1 billion, with $4.7 billion going to the state and the rest to cities and counties.
With state tax revenues coming in stronger than expected despite the pandemic, the $27.2 billion fiscal 2022 budget the Georgia House of Representatives passed early this month would restore 60% of $2.2 billion in spending cuts the General Assembly imposed at the height of the pandemic last June.
That’s not enough, said Danny Kanso, a senior policy analyst at the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute.
“We’re in a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic,” he said. “We have to take advantage of that federal support and use these funds to [fully] restore those cuts.”
Democrats in the General Assembly say expanding Georgia’s Medicaid program is a particularly pressing need, a step they’ve been advocating for the last decade since Congress enacted the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Only 12 states, including Georgia, have declined to expand Medicaid coverage through the 2010 law.
Rejecting a full Medicaid expansion as too costly to the state, Gov. Brian Kemp instead is pursuing a Medicaid waiver that would cover more Georgians but not as many as a full expansion. The Biden administration has rejected the waiver because it is tied to work requirements, a decision the governor is appealing.
Unlike former President Donald Trump, Biden is a big supporter of the ACA and has sweetened the incentives for Medicaid expansion. The Biden administration has increased the federal match for the program from 57% to 72% for the next two years.
With 10 rural hospitals across Georgia closing their doors during the last decade, the state should take advantage of the new offer, said state Rep. Debbie Buckner, D-Junction City.
“The federal government is giving us another chance to provide health coverage through Medicaid,” she said. “We need to do something to help rural Georgia make sure health care is out there.”
But England said it would be unwise to use the COVID-19 relief money to expand Medicaid.
“You typically don’t want to use one-time funds for recurring expenses,” he said. “You might be good for 2½ years, but what do you do after that?”
Kyle Wingfield, president and CEO of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, said Kemp and the General Assembly could choose to put the federal money toward a number of non-recurring costs.
Options include expanding rural broadband, paying down the debt to the federal government the state has incurred from the deluge of pandemic-driven unemployment claims or further building up Georgia’s “rainy-day” reserves, he said.
“We want to look at things we can make a single expenditure on, not take this money and put the state in worse fiscal shape down the road,” Wingfield said.
Kanso said the best way the state could bring immediate relief to Georgia families that have suffered financial losses from the pandemic would be to spend the federal money as soon as possible.
“This is an enormous opportunity in a moment of dire need,” he said.
To accomplish that, Kemp would have to raise his revenue estimate for fiscal 2022, and the legislature would have to incorporate that increase into the budget.
But England said he doesn’t see that happening. For one thing, he suspects the state Department of Revenue soon will have to send out a flurry of income tax refunds to Georgians whose unemployment benefits were taxed.
“We’re running $800 million ahead now,” England said. “But there’s a good chance $500 million to $600 million of that will go back out the door.”
Even if the General Assembly doesn’t spend the federal money now, lawmakers could come back early in next winter’s legislative session and add all or part of it to the fiscal 2022 mid-year budget, Wingfield said.
“No one really knows what the rules are yet for this money,” he said. “Let’s wait and see what the rules are before we start making decisions.”
ATLANTA – First-time unemployment claims in Georgia ticked down slightly last week after increasing for two weeks in a row.
Jobless Georgians filed 24,700 initial unemployment claims last week, down 274 from the previous week, the state Department of Labor reported Thursday.
Meanwhile, the labor department has begun implementing the unemployment benefits extension included in the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief legislation President Joe Biden signed into law last week. The bill will extend weekly supplements of $300 to unemployed Americans through Sept. 6.
“This extension should be seamless for claimants currently receiving benefits,” Georgia Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler said Thursday. “However, many claimants will need to pay close attention to upcoming benefit year-ending dates and reapply for benefits accordingly.”
Butler explained that claimants who have reached the end of their benefit year – the 52-week period that begins on the Sunday of the week a new claim is filed – must reapply for benefits, a process that will require reporting additional work history.
“There has been a great deal of confusion regarding filing a new claim,” Butler said. “Claimants need to be aware that no matter what program you were part of, if you reached the end of your benefit year, you must reapply for regular UI (Unemployment Insurance) benefits to determine if you qualify for a new regular UI claim.”
Since the coronavirus pandemic took hold in Georgia a year ago, forcing businesses to close and lay off workers, the labor department has paid out more than $19.6 billion on more than 4.5 million claims, more than during the last nine years combined before the virus hit.
The job sector accounting for the most first-time unemployment claims last week in Georgia was accommodation and food services with 5,652 claims. The administrative and support services job sector was next with 2,985 claims, followed by manufacturing with 2,287.
More than 207,000 jobs listings are posted online at https://bit.ly/36EA2vk for Georgians to access. The labor department offers online resources for finding a job, building a resume and assisting with other reemployment needs.
