by Ty Tagami | May 6, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – As a generation of teachers retire and their burned-out younger colleagues quit sooner, complaining about the workload and the pay, public schools have struggled to keep their classrooms staffed.
Georgia lawmakers thought they had found a solution, passing House Bill 385 three years ago. It allowed retired teachers with 30 years of service to return to the classroom with full pay and pension from the Teachers Retirement System (TRS), provided they sat on the sidelines for one year.
The newly deepened bench helped, but not much, a new state audit has found.
The number of retirees who returned to the classroom represented less than 1% of the state’s teacher workforce, said “Retired Teachers Return to Work,” a report by the Georgia Department of Audits & Accounts.
“HB 385 has had a minimal effect on the continued need for teachers and on TRS,” the performance audit said. “The number of full-time retirees employed each year (approximately 350) is substantially smaller than the statewide teacher population.”
One reason, said the report, is that requirements for 30 years of service and the one-year timeout are more restrictive than similar laws in many other states.
Georgia lawmakers adopted the one-year timeout because they didn’t want to encourage teachers to retire earlier, since that could have exacerbated turnover.
But school systems told the auditors that a waiting period longer than a semester caused retirees to find jobs elsewhere, for instance at private schools, or to get a taste of retirement and decide they didn’t want to work anymore.
With HB 385 expiring next summer, lawmakers started rethinking their plan. They proposed a slightly different approach during this recent legislative session.
Georgia public schools were short 5,300 teachers as of December. Senate Bill 150, sponsored by Sen. Billy Hickman, R-Statesboro, chairman of the Senate Education and Youth Committee, would allow former teachers to return to the classroom 60 days after they retire following 25 years of service.
Lawmakers did not advance the bill, but the Senate Retirement Committee did refer it for a cost analysis. It will still be in play when lawmakers return in January for the next session of the General Assembly.
by Ty Tagami | May 5, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The lawyer who secured the legal visitor status for 133 international students in federal court last week is seeking to expand his lawsuit to potentially include thousands of plaintiffs.
Charles Kuck filed a motion late last week seeking permission to roll his case into a class action lawsuit. It seeks to add Secretary of State Marco Rubio as a defendant, “challenging the legality of Secretary Rubio to coordinate the mass revocation of student visas without notice.”
The motion added that “Congress delegated the authority to revoke ‘a visa,’ but it could not delegate the authority to revoke all visas at one fell swoop.”
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Victoria Marie Calvert of the Northern District of Georgia issued a preliminary injunction in favor of Kuck and his clients, extending the temporary restraining order she had already issued against the administration of President Donald Trump.
The original lawsuit, which named U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi as lead defendant, argued that the federal government had unlawfully revoked the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVIS) authority for those 133 current and former students, stripping them of the right to work and barring them from re-entering the country if they happened to leave.
Calvert’s order required U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to restore the visitor status of the 27 foreign nationals who were attending a Georgia college or university or doing post-graduate work. It also required ICE to do the same for 106 similar plaintiffs in other states.
Calvert determined that Kuck’s clients had a good chance of winning their case by proving that the government had acted in an “arbitrary and capricious” way against them. She also agreed with Kuck’s request to bundle the cases of the 106 plaintiffs outside the Northern District of Georgia with those within the district to reduce legal costs and the workload on the court system.
Kuck is using similar logic to expand his case to class action status.
A 204-page exhibit to his new motion, which was filed on Thursday, said 4,000 to 8,000 students had their visitor status terminated since March 24, “without due process, without notice, and in violation of the regulations.” It said a class action “is now the only avenue to keep from wasting judicial resources and the protection of the class members’ rights.”
It accused the government of unlawfully subjecting foreign student visitors to the risk of incarceration and deportation.
by Ty Tagami | May 2, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A federal judge in Atlanta ordered the Trump administration on Friday to maintain the legal status of 133 current and former international college students who were legally admitted into the United States for school only to have their status suddenly revoked.
The preliminary injunction by Judge Victoria Marie Calvert of the Northern District of Georgia was anticipated after she issued a temporary restraining order in favor of the plaintiffs last month.
A federal attorney for the administration officials named as defendants, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, produced no evidence to justify revoking the plaintiffs’ status under the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVIS), Calvert wrote.
“Defendants have had ample opportunity to provide the court with additional information about the SEVIS terminations but have consistently failed to do so,” says her order, which prohibits the government from repeating the revocations during the duration of the lawsuit. “Defendants’ failure to provide a single plausibly lawful explanation for its action is the exact circumstance contemplated by the arbitrary and capricious standard.”
Calvert concluded that the students would likely win their case, which accuses the government of acting in an arbitrary and capricious — and unlawful — way.
The anonymous plaintiffs include 27 foreign nationals attending a Georgia college or university or doing post-graduate work, the order says. Another 106 are in other states, and their attorneys argued that the cases should be bundled to reduce their legal costs and the workload on the court system.
Calvert allowed all 133 to proceed in this one case.
Calvert’s order indefinitely extends the temporary restraining order she issued two weeks ago that required U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to restore the plaintiffs’ visitor status.
The agency’s prior revocation of the students’ status stripped them of the right to work and would have barred them from re-entering the country if they left to visit home. Their attorney, Charles Kuck, argued it would have caused irreparable harm that outweighed the harm to the government, and the judge agreed.
Assistant U.S. Attorney R. David Powell failed to convince her that President Donald Trump’s administration would face irreparable harm from a ruling against the government that would “interfere with the executive’s right to control immigration.”
Calvert’s order is the latest legal setback for the president’s immigration policy after a string of court decisions favoring foreign students whose visitor status was similarly revoked without notice or explanation. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., also recently accused the Trump administration of “arbitrary and capricious” actions.
During last week’s hearing on this preliminary injunction, Powell said ICE has been busy restoring students’ status, with judges’ orders coming weekly, daily and “sometimes multiple per day.”
by Ty Tagami | May 2, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The future oversight over Georgia’s multi-billion-dollar Medicaid program is in limbo as companies battle over new management contracts after a lengthy bidding process.
The medical safety net covered 2.5 million children, pregnant woman, low-income adults, seniors and people with disabilities in Georgia last year.
The program totals $17 billion, with $5 billion from the state and the rest mostly from the federal government. The total is slated to rise to nearly $18 billion next year in the budget that lawmakers sent to Gov. Brian Kemp last month.
Georgia used to manage the Medicaid program directly, but about two decades ago the state decided to contract out the work. There have been tweaks along the way, with more companies added through competitive bidding. Then, more than two years ago, the Kemp administration initiated another competitive bid, and it could result in a major overhaul.
Two of the three incumbents — Amerigroup and Peach State Health Plan — lost.
Incumbent CareSource won a new contract, along with three newcomers: Humana Employers Health Plan of Georgia, Molina Health Care of Georgia and UnitedHealthcare of Georgia.
The change is prompting concern among doctors and other medical providers, who worry about service disruptions when their patients must enroll with one of the new management companies.
They remember what happened last year when Medicaid recipients had to undergo eligibility redeterminations after the requirement was waived during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nearly 300,000 lost coverage after enrollment peaked at more than 2.8 million in 2023.
Steven Miracle, CEO of Georgia Mountains Health Services, a non-profit in Blue Ridge with a large Medicaid clientele, thinks the new contracts will have a similar effect as his patients are forced to enroll with a different company.
“If they don’t have the information or if they aren’t able to access the technology that will allow them to sign up or if somehow, some way they miss the deadline, then there will be people who believe that they have insurance coverage that in fact don’t,” Miracle said. “People don’t pay attention, so they’re not going to be aware that that they have to re-enroll.”
Miracle’s organization is among three dozen represented by the Georgia Primary Care Association. Albert Grandy, Jr., the association’s president, drafted an open letter to Georgians in March on behalf of those organizations.
“This shift introduces a heightened risk of disruption to critical health-care services, particularly for those who depend on continuity of care to manage chronic conditions, access mental health services, or receive specialized treatments,” Grandy wrote, adding that colleagues across the state were finding it difficult to negotiate contracts with the new insurers, leaving thousands of patients unclear about whether they could continue with their current medical providers.
“These changes could have devastating consequences for patients. Delays in care, denied claims, and lapses in coverage are not just administrative headaches — they are life-threatening issues for many. Our most vulnerable populations — children in foster care, individuals with disabilities, pregnant women and seniors — cannot afford to fall through the cracks of an uncertain system,” wrote Grandy, CEO of Curtis V. Cooper Primary Health Care in Savannah.
In an interview this week, Grandy said the state might automatically assign existing Medicaid patients to one of the new insurers if they fail to enroll themselves.
So, they would still be insured, but they might find that their current doctors are out of network, he said, adding that labs, radiologists and other specialists might also be out of network and thus inaccessible.
Dr. Samantha D. Manderson, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Cordele, said patients in rural areas could find it particularly difficult to locate new providers.
“I’m especially concerned about expectant mothers who will be forced to change doctors mid-pregnancy,” she said through a spokeswoman. “Many of my rural patients would not have other options close by and would have to travel just to get the care they need, potentially delaying life-saving care.”
After the winning bids were selected, the Georgia Department of Administrative Services initiated what’s known as a protest period, during which the public can raise concerns about the pending contracts.
Kimberly Oviedo, an audiologist in Acworth, sent an email to the agency on March 10 that is among the hundreds of protest-related documents on file. She was concerned about the lengthy process that medical offices must go through to ensure their staff can be reimbursed for service.
UnitedHealthcare was non-responsive, she wrote.
“We were able to start credentialing with Molina Health, Humana, and CareSource. However, UHC says they have no idea of what the contract is that they won in GA,” Oviedo wrote. “We can’t get through to anyone with UHC to start the process. This is alarming as this is one of the largest bids won in GA.”
In an interview this week, nearly two months after she sent that email, Oviedo said she still hadn’t gotten through to UnitedHealthcare.
She said she had an initial email exchange with the company wherein an employee said UnitedHealthcare had no contract to manage Medicaid in Georgia. Although technically true — the contracts are on hold until the protests are resolved — she said the other three bid winners had contacted her to initiate the credentialing process, which she said can take six months.
Oviedo said she sent her correspondent at UnitedHealthcare links to articles about the company’s winning bid but said she never heard back. She said a large portion of her practice serves children in foster care, adding that UnitedHealthcare won that portion of the bid. She worries that her patients won’t have access to insurance and that it will affect her business.
“You can’t call anybody there. You have to go through their chat system. And then their chat person says, ‘Sorry, we don’t offer that contract,’ ” Oviedo said. “So that’s very frustrating.”
She said she made a lucky guess at an email address that worked, until the company stopped responding.
“You can sometimes reach somebody that way, but they don’t make it easy, where like Molina, you can call the rep — her phone number’s right on the email she sent saying, ‘Hey, we’re reaching out to credential you.’ “
As of late Friday afternoon, UnitedHealthcare had not responded to emails sent by Capitol Beat a week earlier seeking a response.
Among the protest documents are more serious allegations from the losing bidders, for instance that a state evaluator lowered her scores for one company after meeting with her boss, suggesting that the boss influenced the outcome; or that state employees and their consultant working on the procurement didn’t all fill out the required conflict of interest disclosures.
Both losing incumbents leveled what is possibly the most serious charge: a direct conflict of interest for CareSource.
They assert that the company hired away a Georgia Department of Community Health official during the bidding process, a woman they said had helped to write the state’s procurement competition, formally known as an “electronic Request for Proposals,” or eRFP.
That department is the agency responsible for the state’s Medicaid program and the management contracts.
She “undoubtedly would have been privy to confidential information about the development of the eRFP that would have been helpful to CareSource in preparing its proposal,” a lawyer for Peach State wrote in a protest document filed last month. At best, this creates an appearance of impropriety, the protest says, and at worst reflects “an improper effort by CareSource to gain an unfair competitive advantage.”
The protest says CareSource should be disqualified.
A spokeswoman for CareSource said the company had no comment “at this time per the RFP requirements.”
The protests have apparently delayed the new contracts. Peach State’s contract was set to expire June 30, which would have required the new contracts to be in place July 1.
But Grandy, the president of the Georgia Primary Care Association, said he heard the contract date was pushed back, initially to next summer and then to the start of 2027.
That’s fine by Miracle and his medical office in Blue Ridge.
“A longer lead time is better,” he said. “Because we’ve got to get providers credentialed with the new insurance companies. We’ve got to get the organizational relationships set up so that we can do billing collections. I mean there’s a lot that has to happen. You can’t just say, ‘Okay we’ve got a new company.’ Health care is much more complex than that.”
by Ty Tagami | Apr 30, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia’s former governor has thrown his clout behind the environmental movement to protect the Okefenokee Swamp, a move observers say will have political ramifications even though the legal impacts are probably minimal.
Sonny Perdue, a cabinet member during President Donald Trump’s first term, sent a letter to the U.S. Department of the Interior two weeks ago urging support for a years-long effort to get the national wildlife refuge designated as a United Nations World Heritage Site.
Perdue, who became chancellor of the University System of Georgia after serving as agriculture secretary for Trump, sent the message on Board of Regents letterhead, as reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Wednesday.
The April 17 letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum cites a study by an environmental conservation group that said the designation would be an economic boon for the area around the Okefenokee.
“This effort represents an extraordinary opportunity to preserve a national treasure while also delivering incredible economic benefits to the state of Georgia,” Perdue wrote.
The letter did not mention the controversy surrounding one of the world’s largest freshwater ecosystems: draft permits the Georgia Environmental Protection Division has given to Alabama-based Twin Pines Minerals for a titanium mine along the southeastern border of the swamp.
The company has said the project would not damage the refuge, but opponents cite research showing it would threaten water levels, increase the risk of wildfires, harm wildlife and pollute the water with toxins.
Twin Pines President Steve Ingle said in response to Perdue’s letter that World Heritage designation by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization would not affect the company’s bid for a mining permit.
“The application for World Heritage designation does not have any bearing on our permit application, nor does it impact our plans to mine for titanium and zirconium in Charlton County,” Ingle said in a statement issued through a spokesman. He said the company’s “exhaustive, comprehensive” studies show that the proposed operations nearly three miles from the refuge would not harm the Okefenokee “or surrounding environs.”
But mine opponents said Perdue’s letter carries political weight that could influence the state’s permitting decision, as Trump considers rolling back conservation on public lands.
“Sonny is basically putting his imprimatur, for whatever it’s worth, on a very popular issue in his home state and he’s putting it into a global context,” said veteran Georgia environmental lobbyist Neill Herring. “And he’s basically telling the president, ‘Don’t go there.’ “
Perdue’s letter comes after fellow Republican U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter of Savannah joined Democratic members of the state’s congressional delegation in sending a similar letter to the Interior Department in February.
Josh Marks, President of Georgians for the Okefenokee, which opposes the mining permits, praised Perdue’s stance and said he hoped it would influence the administration of Gov. Brian Kemp.
“It’s time for Governor Kemp to stand up for the Okefenokee by saying no to mining and yes to World Heritage Site listing,” he said, adding that a mine could jeopardize World Heritage designation “because external threats are a key factor in the evaluation process, and the scientific community universally says mining will damage the swamp.”
