Coronavirus has sickened tens of thousands and killed thousands more in Georgia. (Image: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Gov. Brian Kemp moved late Thursday to ease more social distancing restrictions for businesses amid the coronavirus pandemic, including ending capacity limits for restaurants and lifting the shelter-in-place order for many people 65-years and older.
The governor is also allowing live performance venues and large convention spaces to reopen on July 1 so long as they meet some distancing and sanitizing requirements. Bars will also be allowed to have the greater of up to 50 patrons or 35% of their full capacity, starting June 16.
Professional, youth and amateur sports teams will also be allowed to resume games and practices starting June 16 so long as their respective leagues allow it, according to the governor’s office. Sports leagues have previously been advised that they may draft their own distancing and cleanliness rules.
Seniors in long-term care facilities and those with chronic health conditions including lung disease, moderate to severe asthma, severe heart diseases, compromised immune systems and diabetes are still under a shelter-in-place order through June 30.
Overnight summer camps will be allowed starting June 16 so long as campers and staff can show proof that they tested negative for coronavirus before arriving at camp. Day camps and summer school classes have already been allowed to resume.
The limit on restaurant gatherings, previously set at a maximum of 25 people, will be eliminated entirely starting June 16. Seating arrangements need to allow for six feet of space between groups, according to Kemp’s order.
“For salad bars and buffets, a worker can use cafeteria-style service to serve patrons or the establishment can provide hand sanitizer, install a sneeze guard, enforce social distancing and regularly replace shared utensils to allow patron self-service,” said a news release from Kemp’s office.
Bars, bowling alleys, barbers, salons, gyms, movie theaters and amusement parks will be allowed to reopen as of Friday if they have not done so yet, pending certain safety requirements.
The latest round of restriction easing comes as Kemp continues pulling back on drastic measures put in place in April to curb the spread of coronavirus. He has cited the need to jump-start the state’s flagging economy, touting a decrease in hospitalizations and infection rates to back his decisions.
As of Thursday afternoon, nearly 55,000 people in Georgia had tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel strain of coronavirus that sparked a global pandemic. It had killed 2,375 Georgians.
Health experts across the country have warned local communities could see an uptick in infections following Memorial Day festivities late last month and as state officials peel back business and distancing requirements.
“We are still battling a pandemic and we need to stay vigilant,” Kemp said at a news conference last week. “Continue to keep your distance, wash your hands and do all the other things we have been saying for weeks and weeks now.”
The Capitol building in Atlanta looms on “crossover” eve on March 12, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Democratic state lawmakers in Georgia unveiled a broad package of criminal justice reform measures Thursday aimed at ending the state’s stand-your-ground law, punishing police officers for racial profiling and creating a group able to discipline district attorneys for abuses of power.
The package, called “Justice for All,” comes as an ambitious set of 12 different bills responding to recent instances of police violence and racial injustice, including the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery near Brunswick, George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky.
Member of the Georgia House Democratic Caucus met Thursday to outline the package ahead of the resumption next week of the 2020 legislative session, which was suspended in March as concerns mounted over the coronavirus pandemic.
“These measures go to the core of combating the disparities that exist in the administration of criminal justice in Georgia,” said House Minority Leader Bob Trammell, D-Luthersville.
“We can no longer be content with a system that only provides for justice for some,” he added. “We must work and strive to make sure that we have justice for all.”
The bills, which would be introduced once the General Assembly reconvenes on June 15, are poised to include:
Repealing Georgia’s stand-your-ground law and citizen’s arrest protections.
Prohibiting officers from racial profiling and requiring annual statistics on traffic stops, searches and data collections to be published by Georgia’s attorney general.
Implementing “anti-choke hold” rules that bar officers from applying pressure to a suspect’s throat or windpipe during an arrest.
Banning no-knock search warrants.
Ending qualified immunity for officers and the ability of officers to attend grand jury proceedings for crimes they are accused of committing.
Requiring body-worn cameras to be used by all law enforcement agencies in Georgia.
Creating an oversight committee able to recommend punishments – including removals or forced retirements – for district attorneys who engage in improper conduct.
Allowing appointed district attorneys to ask for a recusal if they have a conflict of interest.
The reform package also calls for passing a hate-crimes bill, House Bill 426, that stalled in the Georgia Senate last year but which has gained renewed support from Democratic and Republican lawmakers in recent weeks. Top Republicans including Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and others have backed the bill by Republican Rep. Chuck Efstration, R-Dacula.
Additionally, the package calls for passing a measure, House Bill 636, introduced last year in the General Assembly to create a public database of all officer use-of-force reports.
Democratic lawmakers in the Georgia Senate also put forth their own slate of bills Thursday, called the “Georgia Justice Act,” that mirrors much of what House Democrats are seeking. Many of those have already been filed in the session, while others would be introduced next week.
According to a news release, the Senate package also includes measures to:
Limit police chases and restrict the use of rubber bullets;
Boost officer training for arrests involving persons with post-traumatic stress disorder;
Create a special prosecutor and statewide licensure for police officers;
Revise state cannabis laws;
Restore voting rights for felons; and
“De-militarizing police forces.”
The bills face a tough road in the Republican-controlled General Assembly, particularly with little time left in the 2020 session and much attention being put to drafting a budget for the upcoming fiscal year that will require deep spending cuts due to coronavirus.
On Thursday, Trammell said the short timeframe should not discourage lawmakers from taking up bills in the coming weeks and that they should make the most of the extra time for bill-wrangling brought by the delayed session.
“We have the power of the General Assembly to make this happen,” he said. “And we cannot hide behind procedural rules as an excuse to delay justice for all.”
Senate Democratic leaders echoed that, noting many of their bills have been on the table for more than a year already without being schedule for a committee hearing.
“Too many of our citizens have died or been injured, while politics are at play,” said Sen. Gloria Butler, D-Stone Mountain, who chairs the Georgia Senate Democratic Caucus. “That time is over.”
State officials overseeing mental health, child welfare and elderly services in Georgia at risk of deep budget reductions prompted by the coronavirus pandemic pressed lawmakers Wednesday to ease up on some spending cuts amid less dire tax revenue collections.
The requests from some agencies Wednesday marked what will likely be a push from officials across state government for slightly pulled-back cuts as the General Assembly reconvenes next week to pass the 2021 fiscal year budget.
State agencies were asked last month to hand in proposals for cutting their budgets by 14% totaling about $3.5 billion due to the coronavirus-prompted economic slowdown. Gov. Brian Kemp signaled last week agencies may only need to cut their budgets by 11% starting July 1 as state tax revenues are not declining as much as expected.
On Wednesday, the state public health commissioner, Dr. Kathleen Toomey, urged lawmakers on one of several committees looking at the budget to let her agency avoid forcing employees to take 12-day furloughs, adding about $1.5 million back to the budget for the Department of Public Health.
She also asked lawmakers to accept fewer cuts to critical grants that fund county boards of health as state and local health officials continue fighting coronavirus. The agency’s initial 14% reduction proposal called for trimming about $17.7 million from the grants.
“We really would like to lessen the impact on our county health departments that are working hard right now to support our work on [coronavirus] as well as other issues,” Toomey told lawmakers on the Senate Appropriations Human Development and Public Health Subcommittee.
Deep budget cuts totaling $172 million were drafted last month for a host of state mental health services for thousands of Georgia’s most vulnerable residents, which aim to help stave off crisis situations for mental health patients and treat substance-abuse issues.
The state’s mental health chief asked state lawmakers Wednesday to restore much of the funding to meet Kemp’s pared back 11% budget reductions rather than the 14% cuts originally requested. That would help save around $29 million and reduce the initially proposed 24 furlough days for staff to 12 days instead.
“I know you have difficult decisions ahead,” said Judy Fitzgerald, commissioner of the state Department of Behavioral Health and Development Disabilities. “The 3% really is going to make a big difference.”
Other agencies serving children and elderly populations are looking to avoid furloughs by trimming their budgets via some layoffs and leaving vacant positions unfilled.
Jobs for 33 staffers at the state Department of Human Services would be on the chopping block to avoid furloughs for other employees needed for hands-on senior and child-welfare services, said Commissioner Robyn Crittenden.
“Furloughs would make an already difficult job even more difficult,” Crittenden said.
Furloughs of between 12 and 18 days slated for child welfare workers at the state Division of Family and Children Services would not need to be as severe with the 11% budget cuts, Director Tom Rawlings said.
Rawlings also noted Wednesday his staff members have pivoted to working more remotely, which has caused his agency to see “more productivity in the last two months than I think we could have imagined back in February.”
He said discussions are already underway encouraging private and nonprofit groups to help bridge the funding gap for child welfare services in Georgia, which would be much more manageable with 11% cuts than 14% reductions.
“We have made these recommendations for restoration with the idea … that we can work with our providers to encourage the philanthropic community to step up to the plate,” Rawlings said.
The Capitol building in Atlanta looms on “crossover” eve on March 12, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Budget cuts proposed for doctor-training programs at several universities in Georgia amid the coronavirus pandemic drew pushback Monday from some state lawmakers worried maternal care and rural hospitals would suffer with less funding.
Lawmakers homed in on proposed cuts to grant funds totaling roughly $4.5 million for Morehouse School of Medicine and $3.7 million for Mercer University’s School of Medicine to run health-care workforce training programs.
Less spending particularly for Morehouse could hit programs to curb maternal mortality in Georgia especially hard, warned Democratic lawmakers on the Senate Appropriations Community Health Subcommittee at a hearing Monday.
Those cuts would combine chronic underfunding for maternal care in Georgia with the disproportionate impact of coronavirus on black residents, who also experience high rates of maternal mortality, said Sen. Valencia Seay, D-Riverdale.
“At the end of the day, childbirth should not be where black women are dying,” Seay said Monday. “And to get the proper care, we can’t keep cutting the funds that are helping us to turn out those that are willing and capable of doing what everybody deserves – and that’s access to health care.”
State agencies were asked last month to hand in proposals for cutting their budgets by 14% totaling about $3.5 billion due to the coronavirus-prompted economic slowdown. Gov. Brian Kemp signaled last week agencies may only need to cut their budgets by 11% starting July 1 as state tax revenues are not declining as much as expected.
Funding for maternal care was a sticking point for many lawmakers during earlier budget negotiations, as Kemp called for 4% and 6% cuts to most state spending. Morehouse’s maternal mortality program was spared $500,000 in cuts originally proposed in the 2020 fiscal year budget that lawmakers declined to implement.
On Monday, Seay highlighted how the virus-inspired spending cuts have once again put funding for the Morehouse maternal mortality program in doubt. She and others who spoke at the hearing cited data indicating black women in Georgia are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related issues than white women, according to a legislative study committee report released earlier this year.
Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, agreed the cuts would hurt Morehouse as well as Mercer’s doctor-training program, both of which help boost physician employment at hospitals in rural parts of the state that tend to go underserved.
Orrock also singled out Morehouse as a historically black institution that plays a critical role in increasing the number of black and other persons of color trained in the health-care field.
“There’s a huge need for it,” Orrock said Monday. “I think it’s an important way for us to demonstrate as a legislature that we understand the need to do everything we can to resource that effort.”
Maternal care advocates also voiced opposition Monday to the proposed cuts in grant funding, which is administered by the state Board of Health Care Workforce. Breana Lipscomb, the nonprofit Center for Reproductive Rights’ maternal health campaign manager, urged lawmakers to restore $500,000 in funding for Morehouse as well as separate funding on the chopping block for certain maternal mental health programs in the state.
“We are very deeply concerned that the currently proposed cuts will reverse the progress we’ve been making in this state related to maternal mortality,” Lipscomb said Monday.
Sen. Dean Burke, R-Bainbridge, who chairs the subcommittee, stressed none of the proposed budget cuts for state agencies have been settled yet but that lawmakers are “not going to be able to do everything we may like to do.”
Monday’s hearing figured as one of several that budget-writing lawmakers in the Georgia Senate have held in recent weeks to hasten drafting of the 2021 fiscal year budget. The General Assembly is poised to reconvene next week to close out the 2020 legislative session over a hectic two-and-a-half weeks during which the budget will take center stage.
This story has been corrected to reflect that the name of the school is in fact “Morehouse School of Medicine.”
Georgia House lawmakers took up several environmental bills Friday, marking the first foray back into bill-wrangling since the General Assembly suspended the 2020 legislative session in March due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Members of the House Natural Resources and Environment Committee held a “preliminary meeting” online Friday that offered a preview of the speed with which proceedings could move once lawmakers reconvene the remaining 11 days of the 40-day session on June 15.
In a roughly half-hour meeting, lawmakers on the committee heard rundowns of seven bills dealing with environmental matters like raising the landfill fee for storing toxic coal ash and new reporting requirements for the release of cancer-causing ethylene dioxide.
No votes were taken. The committee plans to hold another meeting next week in which authors of the bills and state agency staff will address questions submitted ahead of time about the bills, said Rep. Lynn Smith, who chairs the committee.
“My hope is by having these preliminary meetings, we’re able to both be more efficient and safer when the session resumes,” said Smith, R-Newnan.
Ahead of resuming the session later this month, lawmakers have been focusing on drafting a state budget starting July 1 that is poised for deep cuts due to the virus-prompted economic slowdown.
Budget-writing committees in the Georgia Senate have held meetings since last week over agency proposals to cut roughly $3.5 billion in spending for the 2021 fiscal year.
Bills on coal ash and ethylene oxide are among dozens that have cleared one chamber in the legislature only to stall in the other as lawmakers hit pause on the session amid mounting concerns over coronavirus.
Senate Bill 123, by Sen. William Ligon, would increase the landfill fee for storing coal ash from $1 per ton to $2.50 per ton, which matches the fee charged for other waste items. The move aims to discourage an influx of coal ash transported to Georgia from power plants in surrounding states like North Carolina and Florida.
“You could say we were subsidizing coal ash in our state,” said Ligon, R-Brunswick. “More and more people are becoming concerned about that.”
Coal ash, the toxic byproduct of burning coal at power plants, was a major subject of environmental legislation filed in the session prior to its suspension in mid-March.
Also tops on the environmental agenda this year are regulations providing public disclosure of harmful ethylene oxide releases, following controversy over unreported releases at the Sterigenics plant in Cobb County.
Senate Bill 426, by Sen. Brian Strickland, would require companies to report waste spills and gas releases to the state Environmental Protection Division (EPD) within 24 hours of their occurring. The EPD would then be required to report those spills and releases on a public website.
“Hopefully it restores some trust for the citizens in these communities,” said Strickland, R-McDonough.
The Capitol building in Atlanta looms on “crossover” eve on March 12, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Democratic lawmakers in the Georgia House plan to push a series of bills later this month aimed at undoing the state’s stand-your-ground and citizen’s arrest laws following the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery.
Bills to repeal those aspects of the state’s self-defense laws will come in a package of reform measures House Democrats intend to introduce once the General Assembly reconvenes on June 15, Democratic Minority Leader Bob Trammell said Thursday.
Trammell, D-Luthersville, said the 10-bill package seeks to prevent Georgians from adopting “the notion that they can take the law into their own hands with deadly and tragic consequences.”
More details on the bills will be unveiled next week, Trammell said.
“It is necessary and imperative that all of us do everything we can to rush toward justice and make sure that this is a state and a nation with justice for all,” he said.
The latest push by Georgia Democratic leaders for criminal justice overhaul stems from the killing of Arbery, a 25-year-old black man who was shot dead as a white father and son pursued him in a neighborhood near Brunswick on Feb. 23.
The two men, Travis and Gregory McMichael, suspected Arbery of burglarizing a nearby construction site and used a truck to confront him. Widely shared video footage captured the moment Travis McMichael shot Arbery with a 12-gauge shotgun after a brief tussle between the two in the street.
A bipartisan group of state lawmakers also announced Thursday they intend to introduce legislation repealing the ability for citizens to make arrests if a crime is committed in their presence or with their knowledge.
Rep. Carl Gilliard, who is sponsoring the bill, called citizen’s arrest protections in Georgia “outdated” and “formed in the fashion of the Wild West.”
“When individuals lose their lives at the hands of civilians that become judge and jury, we must use the power of the pen to move Georgia forward,” said Gilliard, D-Garden City.
Like other states, Georgia’s stand-your-ground law allows persons to defend themselves and not retreat in the event of a threat to themselves by an attacker.
Trammell said lawmakers should not “sit back and allow people to chase down and kill someone” with intent to invoke stand-your-ground protections.
Trammel also reiterated a call by lawmakers from both parties for the Georgia Senate to pass hate-crimes legislation that would set additional penalties for those who commit crimes based on a victim’s gender, race or other identifier. The hate-crimes bill passed the House last year but has stalled in the Senate.
