ATLANTA – Fort Benning officially became Fort Moore Thursday during a dedication ceremony at “the home of the infantry” south of Columbus.
Political and business leaders from the Chattahoochee Valley joined current base officials and Army veterans for a “closing of the colors” ceremony, furling Fort Benning’s flag to mark its formal retirement and unfurling the new Fort Moore colors.
Fort Moore is named in honor of the late Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and his wife Julia, who is also deceased. Moore’s 32 years of service in the Army included commanding combat troops in Vietnam. He received several medals for bravery under fire in both Korea and Vietnam and was well known for enforcing equal rights and fair treatment during his commands.
Julia “Julie” Moore, a champion for military spouses, was instrumental in convincing the Army to begin requiring uniformed service personnel to deliver death notifications to spouses when she saw a TV interview of a widow who found out about her husband’s death from a telegram delivered by a cab driver.
“Today, we are honoring two of our nation’s very best,” said Maj. Gen. Curtis Buzzard, commander of the Army’s Maneuver Center of Excellence at the fort. “Hal and Julie were dedicated servant leaders and people of extraordinary character. … The impact they had on families still resonates.”
Fort Benning and Fort Gordon near Augusta are among nine military bases being renamed in a move to do away with ties to Confederate leaders. Henry Benning was a general in the Confederate army.
The Moores’ five children attended Thursday’s ceremony.
ATLANTA – A large daily operation in Sumter County has entered into a consent decree with several surrounding row crop and orchard farmers resolving a federal lawsuit over pollution of creeks in the Flint River basin.
The lawsuit, filed in 2019 in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, accused Leatherbrook Holsteins LLC of violating the federal Clean Water Act by discharging manure and wastewater from a confined animal feeding operation (CAFO).
The complaint also alleged pollution from the CAFO was entering creeks from various sources, including center-pivot spraying partially treated wastewater onto crop fields, leachate from bunkers used to store silage – fodder that has been preserved by fermentation – and erosion from lots holding thousands of cattle.
In the consent decree, which the court entered Tuesday, Leatherbrook agreed to undertake a number of steps, including removing thousands of heifers from certain fields, fencing off and grassing gullies to protect the fields, and installing clay-lined catch basins to collect stormwater and silage leachate. The company also will install groundwater monitoring wells on certain fields for sampling and conduct remedial activities if the wells exceed specified levels of nitrate concentration.
The Flint Riverkeeper joined the lawsuit, represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center and Atlanta-based Stack & Associates.
“Flint Riverkeeper applauds the owners and operators of Leatherbrook for agreeing to some truly meaningful means of monitoring the cleanup, including transformative changes to their operations and other creative actions that will achieve both,” said Gordon Rogers, executive director of Flint Riverkeeper.
“We look forward to a productive relationship as the quality of the water in Bear Branch, Muckaloochee Creek, and Muckalee Creek is improved over the next several years and are then maintained at a higher level of cleanliness.”
“This consent decree is the result of years of hard work by Flint Riverkeeper to improve the water quality in its basin,” added Hutton Brown, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “We appreciate the collaborative effort to achieve this outcome, and we hope that this will be an example for other efforts to improve water quality throughout Georgia.”
ATLANTA – A New York-based long-term care advocacy group is criticizing Gov. Brian Kemp’s decision to remove a pay raise for direct care workers serving Georgians with intellectual and developmental disabilities from the fiscal 2024 state budget.
A federally funded study the state Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities conducted recommended a wage increase of $6 an hour for direct care workers, the group Caring Across Generations reported this week in a news release. The General Assembly approved the proposal and added it to next year’s budget, pending approval from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
But Kemp removed that line item from the budget last Friday, arguing the legislature failed to provide the estimated $105 million that would be required to pay for the raises.
“[That] would require the department to redirect 25% of existing program funding for other services to meet the additional cost,” the governor wrote in his message removing the item. “This unfunded mandate would have devastating impacts on the department’s ability to maintain existing levels of service to the adult developmentally disabled community.”
Vanessa Faraj, senior campaigns manager in Georgia for Caring Across Generations, said forcing direct care workers to go without the proposed pay raise will only worsen a workforce shortage.
“It’s disappointing the recommendation to increase pay from $10.63 to $16.70 per hour was disregarded because Georgia’s direct care worker shortage, caused by the lack of family-sustaining wages and benefits, harms everyone in the state — especially disabled people and older adults seeking to live and age in own homes and communities and family caregivers taking time out of the paid workforce to support the health and well-being of their family members,” Faraj said.
In his message, Kemp instructed the department not to provide the raises until the funds to pay for them have been appropriated.
Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium hosted a mass COVID-19 vaccine site at the height of the pandemic. (Mercedes-Benz Stadium photo)
ATLANTA – COVID-19 tests and vaccines will continue to be offered for free in Georgia despite the ending of the federal public health emergency later this week, Dr. Kathleen Toomey, commissioner of the state Department of Public Health, said Tuesday.
The public health emergency that took first effect in early 2020 will end on Thursday. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is ending the emergency based on declining COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, Dr. Chris Rustin, the state agency’s deputy commissioner, told members of the Georgia Board of Public Health.
“That does not mean COVID-19 is over,” he said. “While cases are down sharply, we still see … 10 to 30 deaths per week in Georgia, mostly in the elderly and immunocompromised.”
Rustin said the end of the emergency will not affect either vaccines or testing, at least in the short run while supplies last. The public health department has enough test kits on hand to continue providing them free over the counter, he said.
There is still a network of testing kiosks around the state as well as several drive-through test sites, Rustin said.
Paxlovid, an antiviral pill used to treat COVID-19, will continue to be offered free in the immediate future, he said.
Rustin said the biggest impact the ending of the public health emergency will have is in data collection. As of Thursday, national reporting of COVID-19 deaths will cease, which will make it impossible to track deaths in Georgia, he said.
In other business at Tuesday’s Board of Public Health meeting, board members approved a resolution to sell $975,000 in general obligation bonds to finance maintenance, repairs, and renovations at public health labs in Decatur and Waycross.
ATLANTA – A downturn in state tax collections predicted several months ago is starting to show up.
The Georgia Department of Revenue brought in $4.19 billion in tax revenues last month, down 16.5% compared to April of last year, the agency reported Tuesday.
The declining revenues were found primarily in individual income taxes, which fell 32.4% from April 2022.
The sharp year-over-year drop in individual income tax collections is due in large part to the first-year implementation of legislation the General Assembly passed last year that permits certain pass-through entities such as S-corporations and partnerships to make entity-level tax elections on behalf of their individual partners. The bill took effect in tax year 2022 for returns filed this year.
Individual income tax payments declined by 49.4% last month compared to April of last year. Tax refunds also were down, but the 37.9% drop in that category was more than offset by the falloff in payments, resulting in the net decrease.
Net sales taxes actually rose by 2.4%, with consumer spending still strong due to a still robust state economy. Corporate income tax receipts in April increased by 4.7% over April 2022.
With gasoline prices up significantly over last year, state motor fuel tax collections shot up by 83.5%.
The state’s chief economist, Jeffery Dorfman, told lawmakers in January that state tax revenues were likely to drop sharply this year because last year’s huge increase in capital gains tax payments was unlikely to be repeated.
ATLANTA – The commissioner of the Georgia Department of Community Health is leaving state government for a position in the private sector.
Caylee Noggle will become president of the Georgia Hospital Association (GHA) on Aug. 1, according to an association news release.
“Caylee is an accomplished leader, relationship builder and understands what it means to advocate for the betterment of others,” GHA board Chairman Dan Owens said.
Noggle was appointed commissioner of the DCH in 2021 by Gov. Brian Kemp after serving as deputy chief of staff for operations in the governor’s office and as interim chief of staff at the state Department of Public Health. Before joining the Kemp administration in 2020, she filled several management positions at the Georgia Student Finance Commission.
Longtime GHA President Earl Rogers will be retiring at the beginning of next year. Noggle was chosen to succeed Rogers following a nationwide search, Owens said.
