ATLANTA – Four new ship-to-shore cranes capable of servicing the largest containerized-cargo ships have arrived at the Port of Savannah, the Georgia Ports Authority announced Friday.
The new cranes, which arrived on Thursday, will increase the crane fleet at the port’s Garden City Terminal to 34 after four older cranes were retired and recycled.
“Along with the completion of our project to improve Berth 1, these cranes will help deliver faster turn times to our ocean carrier customers, including the largest vessels calling on the U.S. East Coast,” said Griff Lynch, the ports authority’s president and CEO.
“No other terminal in the nation can bring more cranes to bear or match the efficiency, productivity, and global connectivity of the Port of Savannah.”
Two of the cranes will be 295 feet tall when fully assembled, while the other two will be 306 feet tall. The taller cranes will be offloaded at Berth 1 of the Garden City Terminal, while the other two are headed up the Savannah River to Berth 9.
The new cranes coupled with improvements to Berth 1 will increase the Garden City Terminal’s annual capacity by 1.5 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of containerized cargo.
The new equipment is part of the ports authority’s $1.9 billion infrastructure improvement plan aimed at keeping up with future supply chain needs.
Then-President Donald Trump slammed Georgia’s election system in a speech at the White House on Election Night, Nov. 5, 2020. (White House video)
ATLANTA – Former President Donald Trump turned himself in at the Fulton County Jail Thursday night to face charges that he and 18 co-defendants participated in a criminal conspiracy to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.
Trump – now the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination – and the others were indicted last week by a Fulton grand jury on charges including violating Georgia’s RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) law, submitting false documents and false statements, forgery, conspiracy to commit election fraud, and perjury. The RICO charge carries a mandatory minimum prison term of five years.
The former president traveled in a motorcade from his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., to Newark Liberty International Airport, then flew to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport for the trip via a second motorcade and motorcycle escort to the Fulton County Jail in northwest Atlanta.
The motorcade pulled into the jail’s sally port shortly after 7:30 p.m. Once there, Trump was fingerprinted and a mug shot was taken. The motorcade left the jail at 7:55 p.m.
The other defendants in the case – including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff – have been turning themselves in for booking all week to comply with a Friday deadline set by Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis.
The 97-page Georgia indictment is much broader than three other indictments handed down against Trump in recent months, both in the number of defendants and the scope of incidents it cites.
Trump is accused of asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during a phone call at the beginning of January 2021 to “find” 11,780 votes, the margin Trump needed to overcome Democrat Joe Biden’s winning margin in Georgia in the November 2020 election.
The indictment also cited a meeting of “fake” Republican electors held inside the Georgia Capitol in December 2020 to certify Trump as the winner of Georgia’s 16 electoral votes rather than Biden. Other charges relate to presentations Giuliani made to state lawmakers – also in December 2020 – leveling false allegations of election fraud, a data breach at the elections office in Coffee County, and alleged harassment and intimidation of two Fulton elections workers.
Trump is due to return to Atlanta Sept. 5 to be arraigned on the charges.
A trial date remains uncertain, with lawyers on both sides filing motions requesting dates ranging from this October to April 2026.
ATLANTA – The state agency that runs Georgia’s Medicaid program is asking for $7.2 million for a new initiative aimed at improving oversight of the private sector companies that manage health care for the state’s Medicaid recipients.
The Georgia Board of Community Health voted unanimously Thursday to seek the funds as part of the Department of Community Health’s (DCH) fiscal 2024 mid-year budget request.
Most of the money would go toward adding 49 positions to give the department the ability to predict where the Medicaid program is headed rather than being forced to react to budget needs, DCH Chief Operating Officer Joe Hood told board members before Thursday’s vote.
“We’d like to be looking at trends in advance, not just on the back end,” he said.
With the state sitting on a massive budget surplus, Gov. Brian Kemp has given agencies across state government the leeway to propose spending increases of 3% in their fiscal 2024 midyear and fiscal 2025 budget requests.
“This is our first opportunity in some time to ask for new funds,” Hood said.
The new oversight initiative comes as the DCH prepares to issue a Request for Proposals to select private-sector care management organizations (CMOs) to run Georgia’s Medicaid program. The staffing increase is aimed at helping the agency make the right choices.
“We’re under-resourced for a state of our size in CMO management,” Hood said.
Meanwhile, the DCH also is seeking $1.3 million in its fiscal 2025 budget for 7% pay raises for employees in the agency’s Healthcare Facility Regulation Division, which oversees hospitals and nursing homes.
Hood said the raises would help reduce turnover.
“We need to be closer to the market rate,” he said. “This gives us some opportunity to do that.”
Finally, the board is proposing a $1.4 million reduction in next year’s DCH budget, which would come from savings in contractual services.
Besides allowing 3% spending hikes, Kemp’s budget instructions also asked state agencies to look for ways to cut their spending by 1%.
The governor will present his budget recommendations to the General Assembly in January.
ATLANTA – A former Candler County bank teller has pleaded guilty to bank fraud after skimming nearly $90,000 from a convenience store’s deposits.
Kayla Evans, 32, of Metter is facing up to 30 years in prison and up to three years of supervised release after completing her sentence as well as substantial fines and restitution.
Evans worked as a teller for the Synovus Bank in Metter, where a local convenience store kept its account. An auditor for the store began noticing substantial discrepancies between the amount of cash presented to the bank for deposit and the amount credited to the store.
An investigation found that from July 2019 through February 2021, Evans skimmed large amounts of cash for her personal use, crediting a smaller deposit to the store. As part of her plea, she agreed to pay restitution for the full loss caused by her criminal conduct and to never again seek employment in a financial institution.
“Bank customers count on their financial institution to operate with honesty and integrity, and Kayla Evans violated that trust,” said Jill Steinberg, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Georgia. “This plea offers assurance that Evans will be held accountable for her theft.”
Evans will be sentenced following a pre-sentence investigation by U.S. Probation Services.
The investigation was led by the Federal Reserve Board’s Office of Inspector General and the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, working with the Candler County Sheriff’s Office, the district attorney’s office for the Middle Judicial Circuit, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
ATLANTA – Legislation banning teachers and other non-parental adults from talking about gender identity with minors without the consent of a parent or guardian drew a parade of opponents Wednesday, including religious conservatives.
Senate Bill 88, which was introduced during this year’s General Assembly session, would further isolate already vulnerable transgender youths, who commit suicide at higher rates than other young people, Jeff Graham, executive director of LGBTQ advocacy group Georgia Equality, testified during a hearing on the bill before the Senate Education & Youth Committee.
“This will only add to the stigma they face and make life more challenging and difficult,” Graham said.
Sen. Carden Summers, R-Cordele, the legislation’s chief sponsor, dismissed comparisons of the measure with the “Don’t Say Gay” bill Florida lawmakers passed last year.
“All we’re saying is if you’re going to talk about gender [identity] with a child under 16 years old, you need to talk to the parent or guardian,” Summers said. “It is not [a teacher’s] job to discuss gender with a child. That’s a job for a parent or guardian.”
Kate Hudson of Atlanta, founder of the non-profit organization Education Veritas, said a nationwide movement in the schools is actively encouraging students to consider changing the gender identities they were born with.
“It is an intentional effort to dismantle our society and brainwash our youth,” Hudson said. “Our children have a God-given right to an education free of this indoctrination.”
But the bill’s opponents said students cannot be indoctrinated to be something they are not and barring them from talking about these issues with teachers can only be harmful.
“If Georgia teachers aren’t able to interact with my child … my child will go to school isolated and afraid,” said Jordan Black, the Gwinnett County mother of a transgender student.
Some opponents also argued the legislature should be addressing more important education-related issues including overhauling the decades-old K-12 school funding formula and prioritizing the needs of schools in rural Georgia.
“There are other problems in our schools,” said Mason Goodwin of the grassroots organization Georgia Youth Justice Coalition. “We just got out of the pandemic. Why are we focusing on this?”
Religious conservatives who testified Wednesday expressed concern that the bill would apply to private schools as well as public schools.
Sen. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth , a member of the committee, said the state shouldn’t be dictating to private schools.
“I don’t know that we have an interest in doing what this bill does,” he said.
The Republican-controlled General Assembly passed a related bill this year limiting gender-affirming medical care for transgender children, voting along party lines. A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction last week temporarily blocking enforcement of Senate Bill 140, an order the state is appealing.
Highway workers repair a stretch of Interstate 16 this month. Photo courtesy of Georgia Department of Transportation
ATLANTA – The Georgia Department of Transportation has reopened a seven-mile stretch of westbound Interstate 16 north of Soperton after repairing a bridge over Pendleton Creek.
The highway was closed earlier this month after a routine inspection found some of the supports holding up the bridge had settled.
Motorists were rerouted around the bridge while repairs were completed. The 11-mile detour included a bridge overpass that had to be rebuilt in 2021 after a truck knocked off its supports.
The interstate was reopened to traffic last Friday evening.
