by Ty Tagami | Jun 5, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia’s top elected school official announced plans to seek another four years in office Thursday, as others sign up to compete for the office against him.
If Richard Woods wins re-election to a fourth term next year, he will be sworn in in January 2027 to serve alongside a third governor.
Republican Gov. Nathan Deal was starting his second term when Woods, also a Republican, took the oath of office to lead the Georgia Department of Education in January 2015. Woods went on to serve during both of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s terms.
“As State School Superintendent, I have focused on transforming the Georgia Department of Education from a compliance-oriented agency to one centered on service and support for school districts,” Woods said in a statement issued by the education agency Thursday. “That vision will continue and, as I seek a fourth term, I am committed to expanding the resources and supports we provide directly to teachers.”
But at least two people so far are hoping to deprive Woods of that opportunity.
“He’s a nice guy, but I’ve got three children in the school system, my wife’s a schoolteacher,” said Randell E. Trammel, who lives in Cartersville and is planning to run against Woods in the GOP primary. “I don’t believe we’re offering excellence in education for every student across the state, and that comes with leadership.”
Trammell, CEO of the Center for Civic Engagement, registered on Monday to raise money for his own superintendent campaign.
Trammell is nearly a year behind Nelva M. Lee, a Locust Grove entrepreneur whom Kemp appointed to a two-year term on the state Board of Community Health in 2021. She filed to raise money last June for her run as a Republican in the superintendent’s race.
At the time, Lee was ending her run as CEO of a technical school for medical and court interpreters and translators. She said the Georgia Nonpublic Postsecondary Education Commission shut it down for no good reason last year, “and I really would like to get rid of them.”
Lee, who now runs a tokenized real estate investment business, said she also wants to be superintendent to promote charter schools and to improve Georgia education overall, which she said is at “the bottom of the barrel.”
“For a state that touts itself as business-friendly, we need to do a better job,” Lee said.
Woods’ news about his candidacy was tucked into a statement that was mainly about a different topic. The news release from the education department led with the announcement that former state Teacher of the Year Christy Todd would be taking over operational control of the education agency as Woods’ new chief of staff.
Matt Jones, who had been in that role since 2015 and had navigated the department through COVID-19 and other crises, is departing the position.
“Matt will continue to be a valued thought partner for me and for the agency, and I wish him the very best as he moves forward in his career – one I know will always be shaped by his deep commitment to Georgia’s public schools and students,” Woods said.
Among the crises Jones faced was the controversy around Woods’ decision last year to withhold recommending an Advanced Placement African American studies course last summer, which was seen as a retreat from curriculum involving diversity, equity and inclusion. Woods reversed himself after numerous critics, including Kemp and the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus, questioned his decision.
The appointment of Georgia’s 2024 teacher of the year to succeed Jones was promising news for Tracey Nance, who was Georgia Teacher of the Year in 2020 and 2021.
“Georgia Teachers of the Year are excited for Christy and look forward to her bringing a nuanced perspective of what teaching looks like today,” said Nance, who directs a fellowship for the National Network of State Teachers of the Year. “And we look forward to her being a cheerleader for all educators and for the rights of all students.”
by Ty Tagami | Jun 5, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The wide-open race for governor of Georgia in the next election will have Democrats assailing Republicans on access to health care and other quality of life issues, as a fourth liberal partisan enters the race.
State Rep. Derrick Jackson, a retired naval officer with a background in corporate marketing, cited hospital closures and Georgia’s refusal to expand Medicaid as top issues in an interview Wednesday, as the Democrat from Tyrone explained why he is contesting a fellow lawmaker, state Sen. Jason Esteves of Atlanta; former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, and Pastor Olu Brown in the Democratic primary next year.
Jackson echoed other critics of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s alternative to Medicaid expansion. The Pathways to Coverage, rolled out in 2023, had enrolled about 6,500 Georgians by early this year despite an estimated 200,000 without health insurance. To qualify, adults must work, go to school, volunteer or do other qualifying activities for 80 hours a month.
“He’s just been a disaster, in my humble opinion, around health care,” Jackson said, citing a shortage of doctors, especially in rural Georgia.
Bottoms and Esteves also cited health care as a top priority when they announced their plans to run for governor earlier this year.
State Attorney General Chris Carr was the first candidate to enter the race. The Republican is expected to see a challenge from Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who has been piling money into his own campaign fund.
Carr cited jobs as a top priority late last year, when he announced his plan to run for the state’s highest office. He also focused on combating crime and “the left’s failed immigration policies.”
Jackson, who served 22 years in the U.S. Navy, called President Donald Trump’s approach to immigration “kidnapping” and said it is an affront to core American principles and the U.S. Constitution.
“You can’t just abduct a citizen … and then you just put them on a plane, and they end up in El Salvador or Venezuela or wherever else,” he said.
Another reason he gave for running: to raise the minimum wage and help more people cope with the rising cost of food, clothes and housing.
Jackson said his seven deployments and four combat missions instilled leadership skills that make him an ideal candidate for governor, especially when paired with his nine years of legislative experience.
He said he will be a more formidable candidate after learning from his unsuccessful campaign for lieutenant governor in 2022. Jackson finished sixth with 60,706 votes, less than 9% of the total, in a crowded primary against eight other Democrats.
by Ty Tagami | Jun 3, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Lack of access to cancer screening is costing Georgia heartache and money, especially in rural areas with fewer doctors and an aging population, state lawmakers learned Tuesday.
It was the second hearing of a study committee of the Georgia House of Representatives, which met in Albany at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital to hear from experts.
The members of the Study Committee on Cancer Care Access had already heard last week in Gainesville about the state’s relatively high rates of lung and colon cancer and the potential risk of exposure to polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, particularly in parts of North Georgia.
On Tuesday, they heard about the value of screening for cancer early enough to treat it successfully and at less cost. And they learned about the challenge of providing that screening within the U.S. health-care system in general and in rural Georgia in particular.
Fewer medical students are choosing primary care because of the low pay compared to specialty fields. Fewer primary care doctors means longer drives for patients, and these doctors serve as a key gateway to screening. Add the transportation challenges to inadequate insurance coverage, and many Georgians simply aren’t getting screened for cancer, said Robert Smith, senior vice president of Early Cancer Detection Science at the American Cancer Society.
Too often, patients get screened after experiencing symptoms and learn that they have advanced cancer. Then, they either suffer through distressing treatments or succumb to the disease, Smith said. The resulting pain, in human cost, ripples out to everyone around them, he added.
This inefficiency costs society a lot of money.
“Employers tell us that cancer is the top driver of their health-care costs,” Smith said, noting that two-thirds of cancer patients miss more than four weeks of work, and more than a third miss more than three months.
Smith said the U.S. health-care system relies on overworked primary care physicians and volunteer organizations to advocate for screening. He pointed to Europe, and Sweden in particular, as a model for establishing more deliberate screening systems. Georgia lawmakers could establish such a system, relieving primary care doctors of the responsibility, he said, when prompted for recommendations.
Nita Ham, executive director of the Georgia State Office of Rural Health in the Department of Community Health, painted what she called a “pretty bleak picture” of deteriorating conditions in rural Georgia.
That’s partly due to the flight of younger people, leaving an older and more cancer-prone population behind, Ham said. But the situation is compounded by inadequate insurance coverage and by hospital closures, forcing patients to drive farther for care, she said.
Eleven rural hospitals have closed since 2001, eight of them between 2013 and 2020, Ham said.
“We certainly are concerned that there may be one or two more in the near future,” she said.
Cancer costs hospitals a significant amount, said Caylee Noggle, president and CEO of the Georgia Hospital Association. She said hospitals lose tens of millions of dollars on uncompensated cancer care statewide.
Sarah Sessoms, chief operating officer of Community Health Works, which provides low-cost and mobile cancer screening, recommended that the legislature make nonprofit hospitals report the number of cancer screenings they do. She said lawmakers could establish a minimum number of indigent screenings as a condition of nonprofit status.
by Ty Tagami | May 30, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – After more than a century of trying, Georgia may soon get its first national park, as the state’s congressional delegation puts aside partisan differences to upgrade the status of ancient mounds in Macon.
That city, long a champion of promoting Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park into a major national attraction, has already begun adding street names in the language of the native peoples who dwelled there.
The Muscogee Nation, whose ancestors were forcibly moved to Oklahoma by the U.S. government in 1836, has collaborated on national park status, and would have a role in guiding its management.
The park idea has induced similar collaboration in a normally fractured congressional delegation. Thirteen of Georgia’s 14 Republican and Democratic representatives are co-sponsoring legislation that would convert the historical park into the Ocmulgee Mounds National Park and Preserve. Georgia’s two Democratic U.S. senators are behind an identical bill in the Senate.
The current historical park would anchor the national park. Proponents would raise money to buy another 7,100 acres, expanding the attraction to about 10,000 acres. This addition would be a federally managed preserve with fishing and hunting.
That is downscaled significantly from the 80,000 acres once envisioned, but it would still have a major impact on the region, said Seth Clark, executive director of The Ocmulgee National Park and Preserve Initiative, the grassroots force behind this movement.
The preserve would guarantee a place for endangered and threatened species, said Clark, who, as mayor pro tempore of Macon-Bibb County, sees a massive boon for humans, too. Tourism would explode, boosting the economy, creating jobs and producing an estimated $34 million in added tax revenue for the region, he said.
“That’s life changing for some of our neighbors and I think it’s life changing for the Middle Georgia economy,” said Clark, who sees a unique alignment of interests that could finally push this national park idea across the finish line. It has been in circulation since at least 1933, when the Macon Historical Society and Junior Chamber of Commerce pitched it. The next year, the local congressman, Democratic Rep. Carl Vinson, introduced legislation for a national park. He wound up with the lesser national historical park designation, but the dream for top-tier status lived on. It may be closer than ever to happening due to the bipartisan collaboration as well as to support from state government, the public and businesses, including the Georgia Mining Association, Clark said. (Kaolin, a clay used to make slick paper coatings and other products, is mined around there.)
Supporters pulled these disparate interests together through years of study and negotiation. For instance, the mine owners came around after the legislation made it clear that the government could not use eminent domain to take land for the preserve, Clark said. The mandate to allow fishing and hunting proved popular, as well.
The United States has 63 national parks. The vast majority are out West, although three of Georgia’s neighbors can boast at least one. South Carolina has Congaree National Park, while North Carolina and Tennessee share the Great Smoky Mountains. Florida has three: Biscayne, Dry Tortugas and Everglades.
The National Park Service oversees another 370 battlefields, memorials, monuments, preserves, scenic rivers and other cultural and environmental sites, including the Ocmulgee mounds.
Dropping “historical” from the name could elevate Ocmulgee into a major attraction, observers say.
The park currently draws around 160,000 a year, said Jessica Walden, president and CEO of the Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce. National park status could increase that nearly ten-fold to almost 1.4 million annual visitors within a decade, she said.
This would generate several thousand jobs and about $233 million in annual economic activity, she said, noting that the proximity to Macon and its 160,000 residents would produce a synergy for both city and park.
“It’s not in the middle of Montana. It’s adjacent to downtown Macon,” she said. “So, they’re both going to benefit from that.”
Plans include new roads to tie the site to the city. Tourists also would need access to Macon’s two airports – and to the hotels and other destinations to be developed.
The site is like a core sample of cultural history. It was continuously inhabited for at least 12,000 years, beginning with the Ice Age, says the National Park Service. During the Mississippian Period, starting in the 900s, native peoples constructed mounds for their elite, landmarks that endure as a central attraction. It was the largest archaeological dig in American history, with more than 800 men turning soil in the late 1930s under the Works Progress Administration.
Then, there is the preserve. It would hug a river corridor with more than 85,000 acres of contiguous bottom-land hardwood swamp, says a 2017 study by the National Parks Conservation Association. The “Diamond in the Rough” report said this was the largest remaining block of such habitat on the upper coastal plain.
It is a migratory flyway, and home to more than 200 species of birds, 100 species of fish, 80 species of reptiles and amphibians and 50 species of mammals, including black bear.
It is also one of the few places where the endangered Ocmulgee skullcap grows. The member of the mint family sprouts leaves up to three inches long, unfurls inch-long blue-violet flowers and only lives in the watersheds of the Savannah and Ocmulgee rivers.
Business interests see the ecological, cultural – and development value.
“Establishing Georgia’s first national park and preserve at Ocmulgee Mounds will serve as a robust form of economic development for Middle Georgia while conserving the site’s important series of ecological and cultural assets,” said Chris Clark, president and CEO of the Georgia Chamber, the day after the state’s delegation to Congress re-introduced the national park legislation in March.
U.S. Rep. Austin Scott, R-Tifton, introduced his bill in the House of Representatives on March 25, the same day Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, with fellow Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock as co-sponsor, introduced an identical bill in the Senate.
All but one member of the U.S. House from Georgia signed onto Scott’s bill, the lone exception being Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Athens. (His office did not respond to an emailed query about that.)
Similar legislation had been in play last year, but more pressing concerns in Washington shoved the issue off the national agenda.
At a congressional hearing last week, Ossoff got an opportunity to ask Interior Secretary Doug Burgum for continued technical aid with the initiative, given the “overwhelming local support” for an Ocmulgee national park.
Burgum was noncommittal but did not outright nix the idea, saying he would be “happy to engage with you and take a look at this proposal.”
Scott’s office quoted the congressman saying that he was working closely with Democrats Ossoff and Warnock and with Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Albany, whose district also includes Macon. National park status “remains a top bipartisan initiative” for everyone involved, Scott said.
He said he requested a hearing on the legislation but added that he does not expect any movement on the bill before Congress finishes the budget reconciliation process.
Seth Clark, the Macon mayor pro tempore and local Ocmulgee cheerleader, remains hopeful.
“While this is probably one of the most volatile political times in my lifetime,” he said, “I believe that Congress has enough productivity in them to get this done.”
by Ty Tagami | May 29, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Cancer care is hard to come by in rural Georgia, as the medical payments system squeezes smaller service providers amid traditional challenges such as rising costs and inadequate transportation, state lawmakers learned Thursday.
A special committee of the House of Representatives is traveling the state to hear about access to cancer care, starting with a meeting in Gainesville when they heard from practitioners such as Dr. Harsha Vayas, who has a small medical office in Dublin.
“Over the decade and a half I’ve been here, things have significantly worsened,” said Vayas, who couldn’t attend and addressed the panel by video. “I believe we are at a moment of crisis, and we need to act before the last of the few practitioners like me are either driven out of business or get consolidated.”
Vayas said insurers have been pricing out smaller providers like him who have less leverage to negotiate than big hospital groups. Add to that the traditional problems such as transportation — some of his patients live 50 miles away — and medical costs, and fewer people are getting screened for cancer in time to catch it when it’s treatable, he said.
Georgia has a higher rate of cancer than the nation, said state epidemiologist and trained veterinarian Dr. Cherie Drenzek. The state had 472 people per 100,000 versus 436 per 100,000 nationally, she said. In 2022, 62,078 Georgians were newly diagnosed with cancer, with cancer of the lung and colon among the most frequent manifestations of the disease, although both have been in decline for more than two decades.
Rural areas, defined as counties with fewer than 50,000 residents, had slightly higher rates than the state average, a statistic that was more pronounced among women.
Dr. Nikita Machado, an endocrine surgeon, noted an alarming rise in thyroid cancer in Northeast Georgia, where the rate doubled that of the nation.
“The most important question then is why,” she said.
Parker Hyde, an associate professor at the University of North Georgia’s College of Health Sciences and Professions, speculated that pollution plays a role. He pointed to polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS. The non-stick and heat resistant properties of the chemical make it useful for stain resistance in rugs and flame retardant in firefighter suits, Hyde said.
“Now, the data is not strong on this, right? But we’re starting to see trend lines where there is some sort of a potential cause or potential linkage here,” he said.
