by Ty Tagami | Jun 20, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — The Alabama company that planned to mine titanium dioxide next to the Okefenokee Swamp has agreed to sell its property to an environmental fund, ending — for now — a threat to more than 350,000 acres of designated national wilderness that is home to several endangered and threatened species.
The Conservation Fund announced Friday that it had agreed to buy Twin Pines Minerals’ property on Trail Ridge near the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, ending a six-year effort to protect North America’s largest blackwater swamp.
“By purchasing this land from Twin Pines, The Conservation Fund will ensure that the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge remains wild and unspoiled for all Americans,” Stacy Funderburke, the Fund’s vice president for the central Southeast region, said in a statement.
Funderburke said in an interview that the Fund had agreed to pay about $60 million for the nearly 8,000-acre property. The transaction will occur in two phases, with the first phase Friday involving a transaction for 40% of the purchase price and the final closing July 31. He said his organization continues to raise money for that final phase-two transaction.
Twin Pines had no comment but confirmed the sale through a spokesman.
The fund pulled together money from private donors with the help of advocacy group One Hundred Miles.
“Twin Pines’ decision to sell their land to a conservation buyer instead of to a mining company is a respectable response to the hundreds of thousands of voices who have spoken out against the mining proposal,” Megan Desrosiers, president and CEO of One Hundred Miles, said in a statement.
Alice Keyes, a vice president of One Hundred Miles, credited “the unbelievable public outcry” against mining the swamp.
About a quarter million people submitted comments against the mining project to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and to the state of Georgia, said the Southern Environmental Law Center, which worked against the mine.
“It was one of the largest public campaigns that I have ever been involved in,” said Keyes, who has worked on environmental issues for three decades.
The Okefenokee is a rich ecosystem hosting bald eagles, bobcats, black bears, and 13,000 alligators. Wood storks, indigo snakes and red-cockaded woodpeckers are among the endangered and threatened species that rely on the swamp.
U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Democrat who has been involved in the effort to stop the mine, called the purchase “great news for all Georgians and our beloved natural treasure.”
Threats remain, though.
Josh Marks, president of Georgians for the Okefenokee, said the purchase was a “huge victory” to protect a natural treasure “from a dangerous project promoted by an atrocious company. But the threat is not over by a long shot.”
The Conservation Fund struck a deal with DuPont in the early 2000s to stop a different titanium dioxide mine.
Marks is worried that Chemours, which spun off from DuPont a decade ago, could still mine nearby private property, and said the General Assembly should pass the Okefenokee Protection Act, legislation that has stalled.
Funderburke agreed that a couple other private properties nearby could also be mined, but said the Twin Pines sale reduced the risk. He said the company’s inability to secure a mining permit after six years of trying could discourage other mining efforts. And he said that such a large mine so close to the swamp would have set a terrible precedent.
He said other options besides outright purchases exist, such as buying conservation easements.
“The threat is not over, so the drumbeat should continue,” Funderburke said. “But this is a really important milestone in the fight against mining in the Okefenokee.”
That drumbeat has been growing louder.
Sonny Perdue, a former Republican governor of Georgia, has pushed for protecting the swamp. The long-serving cabinet member during President Donald Trump’s first term is now chancellor of the University System of Georgia. In April, Perdue urged U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to support the years-long effort to get the national wildlife refuge designated as a United Nations World Heritage Site.
The letter, which Perdue sent on Board of Regents letterhead, cited a study by an environmental conservation group that said the designation would be an economic boon for the area around the Okefenokee.
Others have used the economic argument as well. The Southern Environmental Law Center noted that the Okefenokee draws more than 700,000 visits a year, supporting more than 750 jobs and generating about $65 million in annual economic activity for the four counties around the Okefenokee.
by Ty Tagami | Jun 20, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — This fall, thousands of Georgia students will attend a private school or study at home, and state government will help them pay for it.
Republican lawmakers led a push last year to give families $6,500 a year per student toward private education.
Georgia already had a state-funded voucher program, but it was limited to students with disabilities or certain medical conditions. Another program for all students was funded through tax credits rather than money directly from the state treasury.
The new state-funded “Promise Scholarship” program doesn’t require a disability. It only requires that students live in the attendance zone of a public school performing in the bottom 25% statewide. The student either must have attended it for a year or be a rising kindergartner.
As of Monday, nearly 13,000 had applied for a scholarship and more than 8,300 were considered preliminarily eligible, which translates to a cost of between $54 million and $84 million for the upcoming school year.
The application period runs through June, so more may apply, and there will be two more windows to apply during the upcoming school year.
The money can go toward tuition and fees at approved schools. It can also offset home school costs, paying for curriculum and even medical and therapeutic services by approved providers. Transportation costs are covered, too, at up to $500 per year.
As of Monday, about 60% of the preliminarily eligible students had said they wanted to attend a private school, the rest choosing home school or other educational support services or not yet making a selection, according to the Georgia Student Finance Commission, which operates the program through a public non-profit organization. Nearly 400 private Georgia schools had been approved or were approved but still completing the registration process this week, with 150 applications denied. More than half of the approved schools were in greater metro Atlanta, with about three dozen in the city of Atlanta. Columbus, Macon and Savannah also had numerous approved schools.
More than 300 service providers made the approved list. About a third of them were outside Georgia, with several in California, Texas, Pennsylvania, New York and Florida.
Critics contended that most of the families that used the scholarships would be wealthy since they would be able to cover the cost between the state subsidy and tuition that can run to $10,000 or more.
So far, about three quarters of the preliminarily eligible students are from households earning less than 400% of the federal poverty threshold, or $106,600 a year for a family of three and $128,600 for a family of four.
Opponents of the program, including most Democrats in the General Assembly and public-school advocacy groups, argued that fly-by-night schools would take the money without properly educating the students. In the end, they said, these students would return to public schools and become their burden.
So the GOP lawmakers who pushed the bill added a requirement that all students in the program must take either the same state exams as public school students or one of three national “norm-referenced” tests to be selected by the state.
Private schools will have to report the results, along with other information, such as attendance rates and graduation rates.
Program proponents argued that public schools could not properly serve all 1.7 million students attending one in Georgia.
Shakia McCrary’s son, a rising second grader, will be among those leaving his neighborhood public school this fall.
He has learning disabilities that can lead to misbehavior if he is not kept on task, she said, describing how a teacher would put him on speaker phone so she could calm him down.
His public school in Fort Valley, south of Macon, lacks enough specialized staff to give him the attention he needs, McCrary said. So she is considering two private schools within a half hour drive because, she said, they have smaller class sizes.
The state-funded scholarship will cover all but about $1,000 of the tuition cost at each school, said McCrary, who works for a federal health insurance program.
She is thankful for the promise scholarships.
“Private school, it crossed my mind, but I knew that I just couldn’t afford it and still be able to live comfortably,” she said. If not for the state funding, her son would be heading back to public school this fall, she said, and she would be dealing with the same issues.
Republican lawmakers had been pushing for years to get the program approved, finally gathering enough votes to squeak Senate Bill 233 into law last year.
Sen. Larry Walker III, R-Perry, the Senate majority caucus secretary, sees the subsidies as an “incredibly popular” issue for his party.
“This school choice program is not just a life changer for the students and families that participate. It’s also a party expander,” Walker said at the Georgia GOP convention in Dalton in early June. “School choice introduces new constituents to our Republican values. It allows them to understand that it’s conservative Republicans, not liberal Democrats, who are fighting for better opportunities for working folks and families.”
On Thursday, fellow Senate Republicans voted to nominate Walker as their next president pro tempore. The full Senate will vote on his promotion to top-ranked senator when the body reconvenes in January.
Meanwhile, one group backing SB 233 is now promoting the scholarships, hoping as many parents as possible will access the $141 million that lawmakers allocated to it this year. Americans for Prosperity has placed four billboards around DeKalb County advertising the program, and volunteers have handwritten about 5,000 postcards to likely parents they think should know about it, said Tony West, the organization’s director in Georgia.
“We worked very hard to see Senate Bill 233 pass,” West said, “and now we want to work just as hard to make sure it’s a success.”
by Ty Tagami | Jun 18, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A major shakeup is underway in the leadership of the Georgia Senate, after the Republican caucus elected a new majority leader and tentatively named a new president pro tempore.
The two positions rank just below the lieutenant governor, who is elected by voters statewide.
Republicans, who control the Senate, selected Sen. Jason Anavitarte, R-Dallas, Tuesday as the new majority leader through next year, the second half of the two-year legislative biennium.
As the lead strategist for Senate Republicans, Anavitarte, who has served in the Senate since 2021, said he will “meet this moment with focus, discipline, and a commitment to improving lives across our state.”
Anavitarte’s promotion to third in command, behind the lieutenant governor and president pro tempore, leaves his caucus chair position vacant.
Likewise, an internal caucus vote Tuesday to nominate Sen. Larry Walker III, R-Perry, as the next president pro tempore, would create another leadership vacancy. Walker, in the Senate since 2015, is majority caucus secretary (and also chairs the Senate Committee on Insurance and Labor). The full Senate will vote on his promotion when the body reconvenes in January.
The big shuffle was triggered by the anticipated departure of Lt. Gov. Burt Jones. He has not yet announced a run for governor but is widely expected to do so, as the term-limited Gov. Brian Kemp prepares to leave office after next year.
Jones’ expected departure has prompted two top Senate leaders to run for lieutenant governor.
Sen. Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega, the former majority leader, declared for Jones’ seat in mid-May. Sen. John F. Kennedy, R-Macon, the former president pro tem, announced the same intention at the Republican state convention in Dalton in early June.
Assuming Jones vacates his spot atop the Senate, four of the six Senate Republican leadership posts below Jones will change hands for next year’s legislative session.
by Ty Tagami | Jun 18, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Federal budget cuts aimed at Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act could eventually cost 16 million Americans their health insurance coverage, and Georgia would not be immune from the impact, a health care advocacy group is warning.
The state already lags most of the country in The Commonwealth Fund’s performance indicators. Their new report, 2025 Scorecard on State Health System Performance, ranked Georgia 45th — behind all of its neighbors. The scoring is derived from indicators such as health care access and affordability, infant mortality rates and potentially avoidable emergency room visits.
The rankings are based on 2023 data, when 16% of Georgians from age 19 to 64 were uninsured compared with a national average of 11%.
Health care cuts in the budget reconciliation bill by the U.S. House of Representatives would reduce the insured population in two ways, the report says.
It predicts more than 8 million would become uninsured in less than a decade if Affordable Care Act (the ACA) premium tax credits are allowed to expire and new marketplace enrollment requirements are implemented.
And it says about 8 million more would become uninsured if proposed Medicaid work requirements and more frequent eligibility checks are enacted.
Georgia already has work requirements for its Pathways to Coverage program, a limited form of Medicaid expansion rolled out by Gov. Brian Kemp in 2023.
If the rest of the country imposes such work requirements, other states will see higher administrative costs and lower enrollment, said Sara Collins, a vice president at The Commonwealth Fund. Georgia enrolled a relatively small number in Medicaid “at an enormous federal and state expense that far outweighed what it would have cost just to do a normal Medicaid expansion,” she said.
Kemp has declined to expand Medicaid more broadly, fearing — perhaps prophetically — that Congress would reduce funding and force states to shoulder a larger share of the costs.
But Georgia still won’t be immune if the cuts come, Collins said. Because fewer Georgians had access to Medicaid, more of them chose the marketplace subsidized by the ACA tax credits.
They may face big premium increases as soon as November, with many falling off the ACA rolls by next year, she said. “The passage of the bill would still have a very big effect on people in non-expansion states like Georgia,” she said, adding that hospitals, doctors and other medical providers who rely on insured patients would also be affected.
by Ty Tagami | Jun 17, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Georgia will join other states and U.S. territories in a settlement that extracts $7.4 billion from Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family, as recompense for their role in the opioid crisis that ravaged the country for a generation.
“For years, the Sackler family profited off other people’s pain – destroying lives and families in Georgia and throughout the country,” Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said in announcing the decision to join the settlement. “While nothing can undo the harm caused, this settlement will provide our state with significant resources to support those struggling with addiction and Georgians in recovery.”
Georgia is positioned to receive $126 million for addiction treatment, prevention, and recovery services, Carr’s office said Monday, adding that local governments will be asked to join the settlement contingent upon bankruptcy proceedings.
The settlement would end the Sackler family’s control of Purdue and their ability to sell opioids in the United States, Carr’s office said. It comes after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a prior multistate settlement last year.
The Sacklers and Purdue would make installment payments, with the family contributing $1.5 billion in the first year and the company paying $900 million, the annual amounts declining thereafter.
If approved, the settlement would also open to the public more than 30 million documents related to the opioid business of Purdue and the Sacklers, according to the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office.
The settlement includes five U.S. territories and Washington, D.C., plus all states except Oklahoma, which, according to Reuters and other reports, had already reached its own $270 million settlement in 2019.
