ATLANTA – Electric membership cooperatives (EMCs) are offering to accelerate the deployment of high-speed internet in rural Georgia through a deep discount to telecom providers for attachments to EMC utility poles.
But one of those providers, the Georgia Cable Association, is calling the proposal a “gimmick” that would do nothing to increase the availability of broadband in unserved rural communities.
Under legislation the General Assembly passed in June, the state Public Service Commission (PSC) will decide later this year how much EMCs can charge telecom companies for pole attachments. Pole fees have long been a sticking point as the EMCs and providers work to solve the “digital divide” between Georgia’s urban/suburban centers and rural areas.
In documents filed with the PSC late last week, the EMCs proposed what they are calling the “Georgia Solution,” a plan to charge broadband providers just $1 per pole per year for pole attachments. The offer would be good for five years as long as the new attachments bring broadband service to unserved rural EMC customers.
Georgia EMCs currently are charging telecom providers $20 per pole per year on average for broadband attachments, well above the average of about $7 per pole set by the Federal Communications Commission.
A second component of the EMCs’ plan would reduce wait times for providers to get permits for pole attachments, improving efficiency and lowering costs.
“The brave and bold solution offered by the EMCs creates real savings for broadband providers, ensures broadband expansion for those who desperately need it, and ensures consumers’ investment in broadband expansion does not leave this state,” said Dennis Chastain, president and CEO of Georgia EMC, the trade association for local EMCs representing about 4.4 million Georgians. “It’s one solution to connect all of Georgia.”
But officials with the cable association say the EMCs’ offer isn’t enough of an incentive to spur telecom providers to invest what would be required for a significant broadband expansion because it’s only good for five years. After that, EMCs could return to charging fees the providers argue are too high.
“It has no real long-term benefit,” the association said in a statement.
The cable association also points out the $1-per-pole offer only applies to new pole attachments in unserved areas. To generate enough savings to make the numbers work for providers, the EMCs would have to offer a “just and reasonable” rate for pole attachments statewide, the association argues.
In testimony filed with the PSC this week, the cable association cited an offer by Comcast to spend $27 million over three years expanding broadband into unserved rural areas if the PSC sets a “cost-based” pole attachment fee. That investment would represent almost three times the $10 million in savings Comcast would expect to achieve from lower pole fees.
Charter Communications has put another $10 million investment on the table, about twice what it would save from lower pole attachment costs.
“That’s doing exactly what we said we were going to do – put the savings into unserved areas,” the cable association said.
The two sides will have a chance to expand upon their written arguments next month when the PSC holds hearings on the pole attachment fees issue.
The commission is due to decide in mid-December the rates Georgia EMCs will be allowed to charge providers under all pole attachment agreements entered into on or after next July 1.
Part of the Cabin Bluff property in Camden County will become a state wildlife management area. (Photo Credit: The Nature Conservancy)
ATLANTA – The Georgia Board of Natural Resources voted Tuesday to acquire nearly 8,000 acres of the historic Cabin Bluff property in Camden County for designation as a state wildlife management area.
The Nature Conservancy and the Open Space Institute bought the property in 2018 along with an adjacent tract of nearly 3,200 acres. The smaller site is slated to become a retreat for a Jacksonville, Fla.-based church congregation.
Located just across the Intracoastal Waterway from the Cumberland Island National Seashore, Cabin Bluff includes a diverse landscape of salt marshes, tidal creeks and longleaf pine woodlands. It serves as habitat for threatened and endangered species including the gopher tortoise, wood stork and eastern indigo snake.
“Cabin Bluff and neighboring Ceylon are significant natural areas in Georgia,” said Kim Elliman, president and CEO of the Open Space Institute. “An incredible array of native species will continue to call the property and its waters home, and the public will have more access to the land than ever in its history.”
Several government agencies and nonprofits chipped in the $11 million purchase price of the portion of the property due to become a wildlife management area.
More than $2.5 million came through the first round of Georgia Outdoor Stewardship Act funding, a program Georgia voters approved as a constitutional amendment on the 2018 statewide ballot. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service provided $3 million in grants, and the Open Space Institute contributed 500,000.
The wildlife management area will be set aside for recreational pursuits including fishing, hunting, kayaking, wildlife viewing and nature photography. The state will officially assume ownership of the land next year.
The land also will serve as a buffer to the adjacent Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base.
ATLANTA – Health-care transparency legislation aimed at filling a gap in Georgia’s new surprise billing law will take effect this Sunday, in time for the annual insurance enrollment period.
House Bill 789 will establish a rating system Georgians can use to determine which physician specialty groups in their insurance plan’s provider network serve a given hospital.
The legislation will apply to anesthesiologists, pathologists, radiologists and emergency room doctors, typically specialists responsible for the most incidents of surprise billing, the extra hospital charges that result from procedures performed by out-of-network specialists.
The surprise billing legislation that gained the most attention during this year’s General Assembly session applies only to health insurance plans regulated by the state, Georgia Rep. Mark Newton, R-Augusta, House Bill 789’s chief sponsor, said Monday.
Newton’s companion bill is aimed at the approximately 60% of Georgians enrolled in plans that are exempt from state regulation, typically large employer plans regulated through federal law.
“The public deserves to know when they go to an emergency room if the doctor who fixes their kid’s leg or sews them up is in their [insurance plan’s network],” said Newton, who works as an emergency room doctor.
Under House Bill 789, when an insurance company advertises a hospital as in its coverage network, the insurer will be required to disclose that hospital’s “surprise bill rating.” If the hospital’s rating is less than four, the insurer will have to disclose which of the four specialties are not in its network.
Ethan James, executive vice president for external affairs at the Georgia Hospital Association, said the legislation originally called for using a “star” system to rate hospitals, prompting concerns that patients could confuse the rating with the hospital’s quality of care.
The rating system was changed as the bill went through the House to use red lights and green lights to indicate how many specialties are within a hospital’s network, he said.
James said the legislation will go a long way toward easing patients’ concerns over how much their health care will cost.
“A patient cannot heal physically if they are stressed financially,” he said. “[Now], patients will have this information when making health-care decisions.”
The legislation requires insurance companies to post hospital ratings on their websites for easy consumer access.
But Newton said he hopes the ratings system eventually will be used primarily by the human resources officers who buy insurance plans for large employers, leaving consumers free from the hassle of doing their own research.
That’s likely to happen because the disclosure the legislation requires will serve as an incentive for insurance companies to work with hospitals and specialists to offer patients robust coverage plans, he said.
“What we want is the transparency spotlight to be on the insurer, the hospital and the [specialty] provider,” Newton said. “It’s going to put pressure on all of them to come up with four checks.”
ATLANTA – First-time unemployment claims in Georgia declined by 9,274 last week to 44,892, the state Department of Labor reported Thursday.
The agency also announced Georgians have received more than $15 billion in unemployment benefits since coronavirus took hold in Georgia last March, more than during the last 27 years combined.
“Over 1.4 million Georgians have received benefits during the past seven months,” state Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler said Thursday. “Many are beginning to return to the workplace or are looking for new career opportunities.”
Those who haven’t gone back to work are facing a looming loss of unemployment benefits. Due to federal guidelines, the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program is limited to 39 weeks.
Claimants who began receiving benefits at the beginning of the program last February will begin to exhaust benefits in the next few weeks.
Since mid-March, the job sector accounting for the most initial unemployment claims in Georgia is accommodations and food services with 941,356 claims. The health care and social assistance job sector is next with 452,617 claims, followed by retail trade with 416,131.
The labor department offers online resources for finding a job, building a resume, and assisting with other reemployment needs. Employment opportunities include human resource specialists, restaurant managers, bookkeepers, 911 operators and licensed practical nurses.
The agency’s Business Services Unit is now centralizing its efforts to market virtual job fairs, customized recruitment, and other reemployment services, Butler said.
ATLANTA – Georgia’s deep-water ports are recovering quickly after taking some hits during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, the head of the Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) said Thursday.
The number of twenty-foot equivalent container units (TEUs) the Port of Savannah handled during the last fiscal year fell from 4.5 million to 4.4 million, largely due to the pandemic’s impact on business last spring, Griff Lynch, the authority’s executive director, said during his annual State of the Port address.
But by last month, business at Savannah was picking back up to the point that the port set a monthly record by moving 412,148 TEUs, an increase of 11.4% over the previous September.
To the south at the Port of Brunswick, roll/on, roll/off cargo – primarily autos – were up 1% during the first quarter of this year after declining by 8% during fiscal 2020.
“We’re actually breaking records in a pandemic,” Lynch said.
Lynch used the annual speech in Savannah – delivered online for the first time – to announce several new projects in and around the Port of Savannah and update ongoing improvements.
New projects include a 1.2- million-square-foot facility in Bryan County to be built by medical goods provider Medline Industries. Construction is expected to be completed late next year, with FedEx leasing 415,000 square feet to provide e-commerce capabilities.
Another 800,000-square-foot distribution center to handle e-commerce will be built in Liberty County, Lynch said.
At the Port of Savannah itself, plans call for straightening Berth 1 at the Garden City Terminal to expand its capacity to dock four 15,000-TEU container ships and three additional vessels simultaneously. The project will take approximately two years.
While the Berth 1 work is in progress, smaller container ships will use the port’s Ocean Terminal. Retrofitting the terminal to accommodate the container ships already is underway and should be finished by the end of this year, Lynch said.
Meanwhile, the deepening of Savannah Harbor to accommodate the new generation of giant container ships is 75% complete and due to be finished by the end of next year. The long-anticipated project has been accomplished in fits and starts over two decades due to the difficulties Georgia’s congressional delegation has faced getting enough federal funding for the work.
Also making good progress is the port’s Mason Mega Rail project, which will connect the Port of Savannah with cities in the Mid-South and Midwest. Rail cargo, which now accounts for 18% to 20% of lifts at Savannah, is expected to increase to 25% to 27% within five years.
Lynch also announced that another rail facility several hundred miles from Savannah soon will be expanded. The Appalachian Regional Port near Chatsworth in Northwest Georgia, which opened two years ago primarily to move exports by rail to Savannah, soon will build a new facility that will expand its cargo capacity by 28,000 TEUs.
“We never expected it be as successful as it is,” Lynch said.
Further into the future, the port that has become the busiest in the nation for containerized cargo exports is planning to build a new terminal on Hutchinson Island on land the port authority already owns. The new terminal will let the authority add three new berths, increasing the Port of Savannah’s capacity by 3 million TEUs per year, Lynch said.
“We’re making strategic expansions to ensure cargo fluidity as Savannah’s container trade increases,” said Will McKnight, the authority’s board chairman. “Our long-term infrastructure investments ensure GPA is ready when our customers are ready to grow.”
