ATLANTA – Georgia
Attorney General Chris Carr is praising a federal appellate court decision tossing
out a key provision in the Affordable Care Act.
The New
Orleans-based Fifth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals Wednesday ruled
unconstitutional the so-called “individuate mandate” requiring most Americans
to have health insurance coverage or pay a penalty.
In 2012, the
U.S. Supreme Court narrowly upheld the individual mandate congressional
Democrats had adopted two years earlier by classifying the penalty requirement for
those who don’t comply as a form of taxation. However, two members of the
three-judge appellate panel declared the mandate no longer can be considered a
tax because the now-Republican Congress has since abolished the penalty.
Georgia is
among more than a dozen states led by Republican governors that have sued in
federal court to block what is commonly referred to as Obamacare.
“Once again,
the courts have agreed with what we already knew – the cornerstone of Obamacare
is unconstitutional,” Carr said following the ruling. “Now, we need to get back
to work and do it the right way. Congress, the states and the private sector
must seize this great opportunity to fix the mess created by Obamacare and do
right by the American people.”
President
Donald Trump has led efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act but has been unable
to get the measure through Congress.
Meanwhile, the
court challenge is not over. While ruling against the individual mandate, the
appellate sent the overall case back to a lower court to decide whether to
uphold the law’s other provisions.
Also, California
Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who heads a coalition of states that support
the law, is vowing to appeal the New Orleans ruling to the Supreme Court.
ATLANTA – A federal judge is letting Georgia Secretary of
State Brad Raffensperger move forward with a plan to purge 309,000 voters
listed inactive from the state’s rolls.
But an emergency ruling U.S. District Judge Steve Jones
issued on Monday leaves the door open for restoring at least some of those
Georgians’ voting rights following a court hearing set for Thursday.
Fair Fight Action, a voting rights organization launched by
2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams following her narrow loss
to Republican Brian Kemp filed a lawsuit to block the state’s “use-it-or-lose
it” legal stance on purging the voter rolls.
“Georgians should not lose their right to vote simply because
they have not expressed that right in recent elections,” said Lauren
Groh-Wargo, CEO of Fair Fight Action. “Georgia’s practice of removing voters
who have declined to participate in recent elections violates the United States
Constitution.”
The case involves 120,000 Georgians who haven’t voted since
2012 and have not responded to letters from the secretary of state’s office and
189,000 others who have moved away from addresses the state has on file.
Georgia Democrats have long complained about voter purges
instigated by Republican secretaries of state. More than 500,000 voters were
taken off the rolls during the summer of 2017 in the largest voter purge in
U.S. history.
“Proper list maintenance is not only required by longstanding
laws but is also important to maintaining the integrity and smooth functioning
of elections,” Raffensperger said following Jones’ ruling. “Georgia has
registered nearly a half-million voters since the last election, clear proof
that we are doing things to make it easy for people to vote.”
Fair Fight Action also charges Raffensperger with violating an
elections law Republican legislative leaders pushed through the General
Assembly last March, which lengthens the time voters can go without casting a
ballot before being removed from the rolls from three years to five. The
comprehensive measure also provides for the state’s switch to new touch-screen voting
machines equipped with a paper backup.
While Fair Fight Action argued the new law should be applied
retroactively to inactive voters, a lawyer for the secretary of state’s office
said that was not the state’s intention.
ATLANTA – Georgia energy regulators approved a rate increase for Georgia Power Co. Tuesday that will raise its basic service fee for residential customers during the next three years from $10 a month to $14, or $168 a year. Ruling on the Atlanta-based utility’s first rate case in six years, the state Public Commission voted 4-1 for a compromise the company offered last week in an agreement approved by the city of Atlanta, MARTA, The Kroger Co. and three organizations that represent Georgia manufacturers and other large commercial customers. Georgia Power originally had proposed increasing the fixed fee to $17.95 a month. In approving Georgia Power’s offer, the commission rejected alternatives advocated both by the agency’s staff and commission Chairman Lauren “Bubba” McDonald, the lone commissioner to vote against the rate hike. The staff and McDonald pushed for a lower profit margin for Georgia Power. On Tuesday, McDonald proposed setting that “return on equity” at 10.25%, well below the 10.9% ROE the utility originally requested and 10.5%, the final number the commission approved. Commissioner Tim Echols, who suggested the final number, said a 10.5% profit margin would protect Georgia Power’s financial integrity, including its credit with bond-rating agencies. “Maintaining Georgia Power’s financial integrity is important to me and the economy of this state,” he said. “This keeps the company on the low side of Moody’s and S&P’s metrics.” Environmental and consumer advocacy groups opposed to the increase in the basic monthly fee Georgia Power originally proposed remained dissatisfied with the compromise offer the commission approved. “Customers who earn a fixed or lower income suffer the most from high electric bills,” said Codi Norred, program director for Georgia Interfaith Power & Light. “Allowing Georgia Power to increase mandatory fees only makes that burden even greater.” Kurt Ebersbach, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, noted that none of the industrial intervenors that signed onto the agreement with Georgia Power represent any of its 2.2 million residential customers. “While Georgia Power did not get everything it wanted, it’s disappointing that residential customers will now suffer additional financial burden and less control over their electric bills,” he said. Commissioner Tricia Pridemore described Tuesday’s vote as a pro-business move by the PSC against burdensome government regulation. “Nationally, we see utilities filing bankruptcy due to overregulation,” she said. “Georgia is different.” As part of its agreement offer, Georgia Power will not increase rates next year. Instead, the monthly fee will go from $10 to $12 in 2021 and to $14 the following year.
ATLANTA – Georgia
Power Co. has cut the 7% rate increase it requested from state energy
regulators last summer in half.
But in an
unusual development in Georgia rate cases, the proposal the state Public
Service Commission (PSC) will take up on Tuesday is missing a key element.
Commissioners will have to decide on the fly how much return on equity (ROE) to
award the Atlanta-based utility because negotiators for Georgia Power and the
PSC staff were too far apart to reach an agreement.
As a result,
the commission will have three alternatives to consider rather than the typical
single proposal: a settlement agreement submitted by Georgia Power, a second plan
from the agency’s staff and a third in the form of a motion by commission
Chairman Lauren “Bubba” McDonald.
“It’s definitely unusual,” said Kurt Ebersbach,
senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, one of more than a
dozen parties intervening in the rate case. “There’s almost always a
stipulation agreement between the staff and company. … I’m not used to seeing
it come down to the wire like this.”
The rate
hike Georgia Power submitted last June 30 would cover a three-year period
starting Jan. 1.
The utility’s
original request of a 7% increase, a big jump by previous standards, was driven
in part by a six-year lag since it received its last adjustment. Georgia Power
agreed not to pursue a rate case in 2016 while the PSC was busy considering and
subsequently approving its proposed merger with natural-gas giant AGL
Resources.
This year, company
executives argued the utility needed the money to recover the costs of major
investments since 2013 in infrastructure improvements aimed at better serving
customers and environmental compliance expenses, including closing all of its coal-ash
ponds adjacent to power plants. Georgia Power also was hit with a clean-up bill
of more than $450 million following several major storms, including Hurricane
Michael in October of last year.
The
company’s plan to raise its basic service fee on residential customers from $10
a month to $17.95 drew a public outcry as the PSC opened hearings on the case,
including sign-carrying demonstrators marching outside the commission’s
headquarters in downtown Atlanta.
In
negotiations with the PSC staff, the utility backed away significantly from its
original stance. The new settlement agreement would reduce the proposed fee
hike to $14.
In another
major concession, Georgia Power pledged not to seek any increase next year. Instead,
the monthly fee would go up to $12 in 2021 and not reach $14 until 2022.
Liz Coyle,
executive director of the Atlanta-based consumer advocacy group Georgia Watch,
said she’s encouraged by the company’s willingness to compromise on the fees.
“I believe
we’re getting close to a resolution that will be to the benefit of Georgia
Power customers,” she said.
But Georgia
Power isn’t budging on the return-on-equity issue, which the utility sees as
vital to its credit worthiness and overall financial integrity.
“Maintaining
the company’s credit rating is critical, especially as the company goes to the
financial markets to build out the … infrastructure, comply with federal and
state [environmental compliance] obligations, all the investments [the PSC] staff
has admitted, accepted and agreed we need to make,” Kevin Greene, a lawyer
representing Georgia Power, told the commission’s Energy Committee Thursday.
The ROE
question is the main reason the company and PSC staff have failed to reach agreement.
Georgia Power originally proposed a ROE of 10.9%, while the PSC staff countered
with 9.2%.
“That’s
worth $390 million, $290 million of which would be profit for the company,”
Ebersbach said.
The
commission’s staff upped its offer last week to 10.25% – with McDonald concurring
in the motion he filed last week.
But Greene
said reducing the ROE essentially would punish Georgia Power despite a record
of stellar customer service.
“Georgia
Power is a superior performing utility,” he said. “It deserves to be treated as
such.”
But McDonald
brought up the massive cost overruns and scheduling delays Georgia Power has
encountered at its Plant Vogtle nuclear expansion project as an example of “poor
decisions” by the utility that are costing ratepayers.
He said he
took Plant Vogtle’s woes into account in crafting his motion for a lower ROE
for Georgia Power, even though costs associated with the nuclear construction
are not part of the rate case.
“You failed
to recognize the leadership decisions made over the years that didn’t work,
that could be negative to consumers,” McDonald told Greene. “You have to take
responsibility.”
Greene said
Georgia Power shareholders already have absorbed $720 million in costs
associated with Plant Vogtle. To reduce the utility’s ROE in a rate case essentially
would be to “double penalize” the company, he said.
Despite
Georgia Power’s willingness to pare back the increase in its basic service fee,
environmental and consumer advocacy groups remain opposed to the proposed
settlement agreement and are calling on the PSC to approve its staff’s
recommendations.
Notably,
none of the six intervenors in the case that signed off on the Georgia Power
agreement last week were environmental or consumer groups. Intervenors siding
with the utility include the city of Atlanta, MARTA, The Kroger Co. and three
organizations representing Georgia manufacturers and other large commercial
customers.
ATLANTA – Nonprofit hospitals in Georgia will have to make a wide range of financial data readily available to the public under rules the state Board of Community Health adopted Thursday. Board members voted unanimously to impose new reporting requirements mandated by the General Assembly last March. Republican legislative leaders proposed the bill in an effort to give consumers the ability make a more informed choice when selecting a hospital for care or treatment. Under the legislation, hospitals must list on their websites the properties they own, their debts, their policies for providing charity care to the indigent and the salaries of their 10 highest paid employees. As the legislation moved through the General Assembly, hospital lobbyists argued that gathering the additional data would put a huge financial burden on hospitals, particularly small facilities in rural communities operating with small staffs. “It takes manpower to pull together the type of reports they expect,” said Monty Veazey, president and CEO of the Tifton-based Georgia Alliance of Community Hospitals. “Many of our rural hospitals estimate it costs $30,000 to $40,000 to comply.” Ethan James, executive vice president for external affairs for the Georgia Hospital Association, said many nonprofit hospitals already make public much of the information required in the new rules. “It’s not condensed in one spot, but it’s publicly available,” he said. However, James acknowledged that compiling financial data on hospital websites where it’s easy to find is in the “public good.” He said an issue hospital administrators have been more concerned about is vague wording that leaves many of the proposed rules subject to interpretation. “We don’t want to do it wrong,” he said. “And not only do we want to do it right, but everybody needs to be doing it the same.” As an example, James cited the provision in the rules governing disclosure of top executive salaries that could have been interpreted as extending the requirement to hospital contractors. But after a presentation to the board Thursday by Rachel King, general counsel for the Georgia Department of Community Health, James said he felt comfortable the salary disclosure rule will be applied only to hospital employees. Veazey said he, too, was satisfied with clarifications of the rules King offered. “I feel pretty good about what the department did today,” he said. In other business, the board took no action on a proposed waiver the state plans to seek from the federal government to go its own way with Georgia’s Medicaid program. The General Assembly authorized Gov. Brian Kemp this year to apply for the waiver, which would take a more conservative approach to Medicaid expansion than the Affordable Care Act. Board members agreed to wait until a special called next meeting before acting on the waiver application in order to give the department more time to consider late-arriving public comment on the plan.
