ATLANTA – The Georgia Supreme Court Monday overturned a lower-court ruling requiring a hospital in rural Montezuma, Ga., to get the state’s permission to expand its capacity to serve psychiatric/substance abuse patients.
The case goes back to 2010, when Premier Health Care Investments LLC obtained a certificate of need (CON) from the Georgia Department of Community Health (DCH) to establish a 12-bed psychiatric/substance abuse program at its Flint River Hospital, which is licensed for 49 beds overall.
In 2016, UHS of Anchor, a competing facility affiliated with the Southern Crescent Behavioral Health System, filed a lawsuit after Premier Health Care expanded the psychiatric/substance abuse portion of its hospital to as many as 30 beds.
The plaintiffs claimed the DCH should require Premier Health Care to get a new CON because it was offering psychiatric/substance abuse services beyond the original 12-bed limit.
After a Fulton County Superior Court judge sided with the defendants, the Georgia Court of Appeals ruled in favor of UHS and declared Premier Health Care must obtain a new CON to operate an expanded psychiatric/substance abuse facility.
But the state Supreme Court reversed that decision on Monday, ruling a new CON is not necessary because Premier Health Care is still operating within its total capacity of 49 beds, even though it has expanded the psychiatric/substance abuse portion of its operation beyond 12 beds.
Georgia law “governs which services constitute a new institutional health service that requires a CON,” and “the reallocation of beds is not one of them,” Justice Sarah H. Warren wrote for the court in a 55-page opinion.
ATLANTA – Georgia will draw down an additional $113 million in federal coronavirus relief to help nursing homes and other long-term care facilities cope with the pandemic, Gov. Brian Kemp announced Friday.
The funding comes to augment more than $36 million the state has received for 115 skilled nursing facilities since the COVID-19 outbreak began.
Of the $113 million announced Friday, $78 million will be used for nursing home staff testing.
“My top priority from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic has been to ensure the health and safety of our most vulnerable citizens,” Kemp said. “To protect the lives of these vulnerable Georgians against COVID-19, we have spared no expense.”
Nursing homes in Georgia have been hit particularly hard by coronavirus, with one of the worst initial hot spots for the virus occurring in elder-care facilities in Albany.
Early on, the state responded by deploying National Guard personnel to help control the spread of the virus in long-term care facilities. The state also supplied tens of thousands of testing materials, sent in additional staffing to facilities that needed help and shipped vital PPE (personal protective equipment) across the state.
The portion of the new $113 million allocation not going toward testing – about $35 million – will be used for staffing support at long-term care facilities through the rest of this year, the governor said.
“As Georgia continues to see cases, current hospitalizations, deaths and test positivity rates all decline, we must remain vigilant,” Kemp said. “This funding will prioritize the health, safety and quality of life of our state’s most vulnerable citizens and allow our state to continue to moving in the right direction in our fight against COVID-19.”
ATLANTA – Georgians heading to the polls next month will decide the fate of two amendments to the state Constitution supporters have been pushing for years.
A third ballot question is being pitched as a way to increase Georgia’s stock of affordable housing.
Here is a description of the three statewide referendum measures in the order they will appear on the Nov. 3 ballot:
Amendment 1
House Resolution 164 requires that state fees and taxes collected for a specific purpose be used as intended in most circumstances.
Supporters point to a history of Georgia governors and lawmakers raiding the state’s Hazardous Waste and Solid Waste Trust funds when money is tight.
Between 2009 and 2019, only $56.4 million of $153.8 million paid into the Hazardous Waste Trust Fund was actually used to clean up waste sites. During the same decade, $72.7 million went into the Solid Waste Trust Fund, but only $22.5 million was spent getting rid of tire dumps and other waste management programs including recycling.
Governors and the General Assembly redirected the rest of that money into the state’s general fund budget for a variety of needs, particularly during years when income and sales tax revenues fell off.
“It really got bad during the Great Recession,” said Mark Woodall, chairman of the Georgia Sierra Club’s legislative committee. “But they’ll grab that money even in a good year.”
Kathleen Bowen, associate legislative director at the Association County Commissioners of Georgia, said of the two state trust funds, the Hazardous Waste Trust Fund has the greater need.
The Georgia Environmental Protection Division has done a good job bringing funds from its budget to bear to clean up tire dumps when money from the Solid Waste Trust Fund wasn’t available, she said.
But there’s not nearly enough money to clean up the 503 hazardous waste sites scattered across Georgia, Bowen said.
“The state has only been able to fund a couple of sites per budget cycle,” she said. “It costs a lot of money.”
The Georgia House of Representatives has passed the amendment to dedicate the two trust funds to their intended purposes repeatedly, a tribute to the work of the late Rep. Jay Powell, R-Camilla, who died last November.
But the state Senate has blocked the proposal just as many times. The late Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Jack Hill, R-Reidsville, who died last April, was concerned that requiring the trust fund money to stay put would leave the state without budget flexibility during economic downturns.
Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, Hill’s successor on the budget-writing committee, said he shares his predecessor’s reservations. But he said he comes down on the side of truth in advertising.
“The citizens of Georgia deserve honesty and transparency in fees,” Tillery said. “It does hamper flexibility, but transparency is worth it.”
Georgia Rep. Andrew Welch, R-McDonough, who picked up sponsorship of the constitutional amendment from Powell, said the measure contains several safeguards to protect the state when money is tight.
Under the proposal, the governor can temporarily suspend the requirement to dedicate all fees to a trust fund in a financial emergency. It also prohibits designating 1% or more of total state revenues during a given year to trust funds, and any fee or tax intended to fund a specific purpose automatically expires after 10 years.
“I worked with Jack on that, trying to address his and other members’ concerns about what you do when you have a contraction of the economy,” Welch said.
“There are adequate safeguards, which we support,” Woodall added. “You do have to keep the government running.”
Amendment 2
Welch also played a major role in Amendment 2 as chief sponsor of House Resolution 1023. It prohibits the state and local governments from using the legal doctrine of “sovereign immunity” to keep citizens from suing them when government officials commit unconstitutional actions.
The amendment stems from a 2014 Georgia Supreme Court decision that virtually gave the state blanket immunity from citizen lawsuits in a case brought by the Center for a Sustainable Coast. The group had filed suit alleging the state Department of Natural Resources was illegally allowing alterations to private property in fragile coastal wetland areas protected by state law.
The court doubled down two years later, citing sovereign immunity in refusing to consider a legal challenge to a University System of Georgia policy requiring students who are illegal immigrants to pay out-of-state tuition rates.
“Historically, citizens were able to sue their government, state or local, in state court to seek an injunction or declaration that their rights were being violated,” Welch said. “With those decisions, the citizens of this state were not able to get into the courthouse.”
Supporters put the measure into the form of a constitutional amendment after two governors vetoed previous bills passed by the General Assembly. Unlike statutes, constitutional amendments bypass the governor and go directly to Georgia voters.
Both Gov. Brian Kemp and Nathan Deal, Kemp’s immediate predecessor, argued that denying the state the defense of sovereign immunity would allow “unprecedented judicial intervention into daily management decisions entrusted to the executive branch of government,” as Deal put it in a 2016 veto message.
Welch said the proposed amendment includes provisions to limit the scope of citizen lawsuits. It prohibits plaintiffs from recovering monetary damages or attorney fees.
“We don’t want people just filing frivolous lawsuits to try to generate attorney fees,” Welch said. “This is about upholding legal rights.”
Referendum A
House Bill 344 authorizes a tax exemption for property owned by charitable organizations for the purpose of building or repairing single-family homes to be sold to individuals through no-interest loans.
If passed, the measure would help grow the stock of affordable housing in Georgia, particularly in small cities and rural communities, said Ryan Willoughby, executive director of Columbus-based Habitat for Humanity of Georgia.
“Every dollar we can save makes a difference in terms of completing a project in a timely manner,” he said.
Willoughby said helping Georgians forced to rent move into their own home is a quality-of-life issue. He cited a 2017 Georgia Tech study that found children who live in owner-occupied homes do better in school.
Offering tax breaks to encourage single-family home construction also pays off in the long run for a local community’s tax base, Willoughby said.
“Our lots are usually vacant in undeveloped areas that don’t tend to have large property tax bases,” he said. “The smaller municipalities will really benefit in a big way.”
BY THE NUMBERS
Most of the fees paid into Georgia’s Hazardous Waste and Solid Waste Trust funds from 2009 through 2019 were redirected to other uses:
Hazardous Waste Fund Solid Waste Fund
Collected $153.8 million $72.7 million
Appropriated $56.4 million $22.5 million
Redirected $97.4 million $50.2 million
Source: Association County Commissioners of Georgia
ATLANTA – Georgia schools need to diversify their teaching ranks and offer students more career pathway options, school teachers, administrators and education leaders said Thursday.
A state Senate study committee heard testimony from a series of Black male educators that more Black male teachers are needed in the schools to mentor Black boys. Only 2% of the nation’s elementary and secondary teachers are Black men.
Hiring more Black male teachers would help lower high school dropout rates and raise graduation rates, said Syntel Brown, a member of the Griffin-Spalding County Board of Education.
“Black male students benefit from having Black male teachers,” he said.
Several of Thursday’s speakers identified barriers to hiring more Black male teachers, including low pay, lack of opportunities for advancement and insufficient guidance and support.
Such obstacles make it difficult to retain the few Black male teachers schools are able to recruit, said Derek Mosley, an Atlanta educator with 25 years of experience.
“There’s an exodus of Black male teachers,” he said. “We’re not just losing teachers. We’re losing effective teachers.”
Several speakers suggested that boosting career pathway options in Georgia schools would be one way to lure more Black males into the teaching profession.
The Georgia Department of Education stopped offering career-tech diplomas in 2008 and went to a one-size-fits all system that steered all students toward college, Matt Cardoza, director of external affairs for the DOE, told senators Thursday.
Switching to multiple career pathways tailored more to students’ interests would reduce the dropout rate, Cardoza said.
“One-size-fit-all doesn’t work,” he said. “We know we lose students because they don’t see the relevance.”
Jean-David Desamour, a middle school teacher in Gwinnett County, said students more interested in a technical career than going to college for four years can earn competitive salaries in such occupations as plumbing and welding.
“We are inundated with a system that is geared toward students going to college,” he said. “Not every student is ‘college material.’ … We need to tap into what they’re good at early.”
But Sen. Freddie Powell Sims said convincing Georgians of the importance of learning technical skills is an uphill battle.
“They think technical colleges are for ‘C’ students or ‘D’ students,” said Sims, D-Dawson. “[But offering career-tech pathways] is the most sensible thing to do.”
“We should continue to promote college, but many students prefer to take a path to learning a trade – especially those currently in high demand,” added Sen. P.K. Martin IV, R-Lawrenceville, the study committee’s chairman. “This committee’s goal will be to determine what is in the best interests of our students moving forward.”
ATLANTA – Initial unemployment claims in Georgia declined last week, resuming a downward trend that began two months ago, the state Department of Labor reported Thursday.
The 43,526 first-time claims filed last week was down 5,895 from the previous week, which saw initial claims increase for the first time in eight weeks.
Since March 21, when Georgia businesses began shutting down to discourage the spread of coronavirus, nearly 3.8 million Georgians have filed initial unemployment claims, more than during the last eight years combined.
The labor department paid out almost $14.5 billion in state and federal unemployment benefits during that time.
Last week, the agency issued $669 million in benefits, mostly through a federal program President Donald Trump launched in August after Congress failed to extend an earlier program that expired at the end of July
The labor department paid out nearly $500 million through the Lost Wages Assistance program last week, bringing the total to more than $980 million.
Meanwhile, the agency reminded recipients of benefits to keep a close eye on their unemployment insurance accounts, as they would bank or credit-card accounts.
“We have seen many cases where bad actors possess an extraordinary amount of personal information that they have obtained from the dark web,” state Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler said Thursday. “A lot of these attacks have a high level of sophistication and are well executed, making it very hard to identify them as fraud by just a cursory glance.”
The labor department is working with a special task force of state and federal agencies targeting individual and organized crime. To help identify potential fraud, the agency encourages Georgians to report fraud and abuse on the department’s homepage under Online Services at www.dol.state.ga.us.
Since March 21, the accommodation and food services job sector has accounted for the most first-time unemployment claims in Georgia with 906,985. The health-care and social assistance job sector is next with 438,821 claims, followed by retail trade with 402,299.
