by Dave Williams | Jun 2, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The checks are about to go out in the mail.
The Georgia Department of Revenue will begin issuing one-time state income tax refunds to taxpayers this week, Gov. Brian Kemp announced Monday.
The General Assembly approved the rebate – the third this decade – during this year’s legislative session.
“Because we’ve managed our state’s resources wisely, we’re again able to return money to hardworking Georgians who know best how to use it,” Kemp said. “Along with our acceleration of the largest income tax rate cut in state history, this latest refund is just one more way we’re working to support the people of our state, their families, and their businesses.”
Single taxpayers and married people filing separately will receive a rebate of up to $250, with $375 going to heads of households and $500 headed to married couples filing jointly.
The state issued previous one-time tax rebates in 2022 and 2023. Most eligible taxpayers who filed both 2023 and 2024 individual income tax returns in a timely manner, have paid into the system, and do not owe the state any taxes can expect to receive a rebate within the coming weeks.
Taxpayers can check their eligibility using the Surplus Tax Refund Eligibility Tool, available through the Georgia Tax Center, by inputting their tax year, Social Security or Tax Identification Number, and Federal Adjusted Gross Income.
by Dave Williams | Jun 2, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – State Rep. Jasmine Clark, D-Lilburn, will challenge veteran incumbent U.S. Rep. David Scott, D-Atlanta, in next year’s Democratic primary, Clark announced Monday.
Clark, a microbiologist, said she wants to bring a science perspective to Democrats’ fight against Republican President Donald Trump’s agenda and to congressional Republicans who won’t stand up to the president.
“These are not normal times, and I cannot sit back and watch my community come under attack while our leaders in Washington fail to show up,” she said in a prepared statement. “I’m running for Congress to be a fighter for Georgia families, science and reason.”
Clark was elected to the General Assembly in 2018 and has survived two attempts by GOP House leaders to defeat her by redrawing her Gwinnett County district to favor Republican challengers.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree at the University of Tennessee, Clark earned a doctorate in microbiology and molecular genetics from Emory University and now serves as an assistant biology professor at Emory. She is a single mother raising two children.
Scott, who will turn 80 this month, was elected to the House in 2002 and is seeking his 12th term representing Georgia’s 13th Congressional District, which includes all of Rockdale County and parts of Gwinnett, DeKalb, Henry, Clayton, and Newton counties.
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 Dave Williams | May 30, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A Fulton County Superior Court judge has issued an injunction staying enforcement of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s order disqualifying Daniel Blackman from next month’s state Public Service Commission (PSC) Democratic Primary ballot.
Raffensperger ruled on Wednesday that Blackman failed to prove he had established residence inside PSC District 3 at least one year before this November’s general election as required by state law.
One day later, Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville stayed the order in a one-page decision pending the outcome of a hearing set for June 10. Early voting ahead of the June 17 began on Monday.
“The court does not find that the harm incurred by allowing (Blackman) to remain on the ballot pending a final hearing in this case is outweighed by the potential harm of removing him as a candidate at this juncture of the proceedings,” Glanville wrote.
Three other Democrats are vying for the party’s nomination in PSC District 3, which covers Fulton, Clayton and DeKalb counties. The winner of the primary will challenge incumbent Republican Commissioner Fitz Johnson in November.
Blackman’s lawyer, Matthew Wilson, praised Glanville’s decision.
“We are grateful to the Fulton Superior Court for granting our request for an injunction while we litigate Daniel’s appeal,” Wilson said Friday. “Once we are actually given a fair hearing, I am confident Daniel will prevail because all the facts and all the law are on his side.”
Blackman has run for the commission before, losing in a runoff to incumbent Republican Lauren “Bubba” McDonald in January 2021. After that, he joined the Biden administration as Southeast regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
by Dave Williams | May 30, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The Marietta-based Wellstar Health System is planning to build a 230-bed hospital in Acworth.
Wellstar has filed a letter of intent with the Georgia Department of Community Health, the first step toward obtaining a certificate of need (CON) for the project, the company announced Thursday.
Wellstar Health System President and CEO Candice Saunders cited population growth in northwestern Cobb County as the main driver in the need for a new hospital.
“Wellstar is improving access to care, and this new hospital is the latest in a series of projects to do just that,” she said. “The area is growing so much that even when our new tower at Wellstar Kennestone opens next year, the region will need more hospital beds.”
“Access to health care has been expanding throughout Cobb County, but we still have an unmet need for hospital beds in the northern portion of our county,” Cobb County Commission Chair Lisa Cupid added.
Besides the new Acworth hospital and the 200-plus bed tower being added at Wellstar Kennestone, Wellstar also is building a new 100-bed hospital and medical office building in Columbia County, adding a new oncology center to Wellstar Spalding hospital, and expanding Wellstar Paulding with a new 56-bed tower and parking deck.
Wellstart also is partnering with Augusta University Medical College of Georgia’s Center for Digital Health to give rural hospitals access to specialty care.
The company plans to file a CON application for the Acworth hospital by June 23.
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.
