ATLANTA – Jury trials are about to resume in Georgia for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic took hold back in March.
Georgia Chief Justice Harold Melton announced Wednesday he will sign an order Oct. 10 lifting the suspension of jury trials across the state.
Melton issued an order last month authorizing the resumption of grand jury proceedings at the discretion of the chief judge of each superior court after consulting with the district attorney.
Similarly, the new order gives the chief judge of each trial court the discretion “to resume jury trials, if that can be done safely and in accordance with a final jury trial plan.”
For the last five months, a statewide task force made up of judges and lawyers appointed by Melton has been developing guidelines for the safe reopening of in-person court proceedings.
Topics taken up in the guidelines include the use of masks, the reconfiguring of courtrooms and chairs, installation of plexiglass barriers, and the use of markers to ensure social distancing. Also covered are plans for guaranteeing public access to court proceedings, including setting up areas where the public can watch remotely from within the courthouse.
“From the beginning of this emergency – and even earlier – we have been preparing for this day,” Melton said. “We have put into place rigorous safety protocols for grand jury proceedings and jury trials because we understand that the public must have confidence to come and serve on juries. It is paramount to all our judges that our citizens realize that their safety has been thoroughly considered.”
Melton’s order points out that due to the time required to summon potential jurors for service, grand jury hearings and jury trials will not actually start until a month or longer after the process for resuming them begins.
Also, due to substantial backlogs of unindicted and untried cases, as well as public health precautions, proceedings will not occur at the speed they occurred before the pandemic.
“The right to a trial by a jury of our fellow citizens, in both civil and criminal cases, is fundamental to the American justice system,” Melton said.
“To delay that process has made a difficult time more difficult for everybody involved in our justice system – litigants, victims, witnesses, lawyers, judges, and jurors. We must move forward, and I am confident that due to the hard work of so many judges, lawyers, and support staff, we are ready to do so.”
Chris Clark, president and CEO, Georgia Chamber of Commerce
The coronavirus pandemic represents an economic development opportunity for rural Georgia, local business and government leaders said Wednesday during a conference sponsored by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce.
The highly contagious invisible virus has made Americans wary of living in close proximity to each other in urban settings, Larry Hanson, executive director of the Georgia Municipal Association, told in-person and online audiences at the chamber’s fourth annual Rural Prosperity Summit in Tifton.
“Density is what the coronavirus loves,” Hanson said.
“People are wanting to leave metro areas,” added Bill Gross, owner and president of W.H. Gross Construction Co. in Kingsland. “Rural Georgia is in a phenomenal spot right now.”
But rural communities won’t be able to take advantage of their coronavirus-driven attractiveness unless policy makers address systemic challenges that have long plagued rural Georgia, including access to health care, said Chris Clark, the chamber’s president and CEO.
Nine Georgia counties lack a single physician, 64 counties have no pediatrician and 79 have no ob-gyn, Clark said.
“If you don’t have quality health care in your community, it’s awful hard to bring economic development,” he said.
Likewise, rural Georgia faces disparities in academic achievement and a digital divide that leaves rural businesses and school systems with inadequate internet connectivity.
Scott Steiner, president and CEO of Phoebe Putney Health System in Albany, said rural South Georgia has been unable to lure enough health-care professionals from outside of the region to deal with a chronic shortage of doctors and nurses.
“If we really want more doctors and nurses, we’ve got to grow them ourselves,” he said.
Steiner said Phoebe Putney has been in discussions with officials from local schools and colleges to explore ways to stimulate more interest in the health-care profession among students.
An important step toward addressing the problem came last year when the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine opened the first medical school in South Georgia in Moultrie.
Several rural school superintendents said their districts are finding it difficult to provide students with the online instruction COVID-19 has forced on school systems because of the lack of high-speed internet connectivity in rural communities.
Schools are being forced to install WiFi antennas outside their buildings and set up internet hot spots in school buses in parking lots adjacent to libraries and other buildings with good internet connectivity.
“The big need in our community is broadband,” said Kermit Gilliard, superintendent of the Grady County School System. “It’s important that we partner with businesses to extend broadband in our communities.”
“It’s a great way of life,” state Sen. Freddie Powell Sims, D-Dawson, said of rural living. “But you still have to have the necessities you find in more urban parts of the state.”
ATLANTA – There’s good news and bad news in the monthly state revenues report.
The Georgia Department of Revenue collected $2.16 billion in taxes last month, a decrease of $81.3 million – or 3.6% from September of last year.
However, the first-quarter numbers tell a different story. The state brought in nearly $6.2 billion in net tax revenue during July, August and September, the first quarter of fiscal 2021, a 6.3% increase over the first quarter of the last fiscal year.
Coupled with two straight months of positive revenue numbers reported in July and August, the overall first-quarter results show Georgia’s economy is recovering after three straight months of revenue losses at the height of the coronavirus pandemic-driven business lockdown.
The main driver behind September’s revenue decrease was a loss in net sales tax collections, which fell 37.3% compared to September of last year.
Individual incomes taxes, on the other hand, were up 11.2%, resulting from a combination of an increase in payments and a decrease in refunds.
Corporate income tax collections rose 4% in September compared to the same month in 2019.
Motor fuel taxes fell slightly, 0.7%, with Georgians still driving less during the pandemic.
ATLANTA – Significant construction activity is completed or well underway at 19 of Georgia Power’s 29 coal ash ponds across the state slated for permanent closure, the Atlanta-based utility announced Tuesday.
The other 10 ash ponds are being closed in place under a plan Georgia Power first unveiled in 2015.
The company plans to spend $1.5 billion to $2 billion to close all of its ash ponds at 11 coal-fired power plants to meet federal regulations for handling coal ash as well as a stricter state rule.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency clamped down on pollution from ash ponds in response to a 2008 spill of 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash at a plant near Kingston, Tenn., that smothered about 300 acres of land.
Milestones Georgia Power cited Tuesday include dewatering of ash ponds, now in progress at six sites: Plant Bowen near Cartersville, Plant McDonough in Smyrna, Plant McManus near Brunswick, Plant McIntosh in Rincon, Plant Branch in Milledgeville and Plant Yates near Newnan, with state-approved plans for Plant Mitchell in Camilla and Plant Hammond near Rome.
The company also has installed more than 550 monitoring wells around its ash ponds and on-site landfills to measure groundwater quality.
“As Georgia Power continues to make significant progress on our plans to safely close all of our ash ponds, our focus remains on protecting the environment and our surrounding communities,” said Mark Berry, vice president of Environmental and Natural Resources for Georgia Power.
Georgia Power also is investing heavily in recycling stored coal ash. Earlier this year, the company announced plans at its retired Plant Mitchell site to remove stored coal ash for beneficial reuse.
During the next several years, about two million tons of ash are to be removed from the onsite ash ponds to help create Portland cement, which is used to make concrete. Through July, approximately 11,100 tons of ash had been removed at Plant Mitchell for reuse.
Georgia Power is also requesting proposals for the beneficial reuse of coal ash stored at active and retired coal-fired power plants across the state.
Environmental group are opposed to Georgia Power’s plan to close in place 10 of its 29 coal ash ponds and have pushed instead for the ash to be stored in lined landfills away from waterways.
But Georgia Power officials say the ponds are being closed in place using proven engineering methods and closure technologies.
ATLANTA – Georgians overwhelmingly support increased state funding of education and health care, according to a new poll.
The survey of 1,071 registered voters in Georgia conducted Aug. 26-31 found strong backing for “people-first” public policies advocated by the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute (GBPI), which commissioned the poll, Caitlin Highland, the Atlanta non-profit’s communications director, said Tuesday.
“Our economy is not inclusive of every person in our state,” she said. “We need to invest in every person and make sure no one is left out.”
The poll, conducted by the School of Public and International Affairs Survey Research Center at the University of Georgia, found the highest support – 86.8% – was for more funding for Georgia’s pre-kindergarten program to increase the number of available slots.
Nearly three of four Georgians surveyed also supported the state providing tuition-free technical college, while just more than three-quarters supported funding a need-based college scholarship program the state created two years ago but has yet to fund.
In health care, 77.5% of respondents supported steering more state funding toward public health programs.
Just more than 70% endorsed establishing a state version of the earned-income tax credit provided to low- and middle-income taxpayers at the federal level.
The poll found only slightly less support for revenue-raising ideas the GBPI has backed in recent years. A proposal to establish a formal process for evaluating the state’s return on investment on tax exemptions to businesses drew support from 68.7% of respondents.
Almost 66% favored increasing Georgia’s tobacco tax from 37 cents per pack of cigarettes – second lowest in the nation – to the national average of $1.81 a pack.
Caitlin highlighted some GBPI priorities the General Assembly passed into law this year, notably an extension of Medicaid coverage for new mothers to six months. The Medicaid extension was a major 2020 priority of Georgia House Speaker David Ralston.
“These priorities have momentum,” Highland said. “People are hungry to see these solutions.”
The survey results were weighted to ensure it was representative of Georgians by race, sex, age and education.
