Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections for August 17, 2021

Georgia Governor Joseph Terrell signed legislation creating the State Board of Health on August 17, 1903.

Georgia Tech was designated the State School of Technology on August 17, 1908 by joint resolution of the State Senate and State House.

In a quaint bit of Georgia history, on August 17, 1908, Governor Hoke Smith signed legislation prohibiting corporate donations to political campaigns. Cute!

On August 17, 1998, President Bill Clinton testified as the subject of a grand jury investigation.

The testimony came after a four-year investigation into Clinton and his wife Hillary’s alleged involvement in several scandals, including accusations of sexual harassment, potentially illegal real-estate deals and suspected “cronyism” involved in the firing of White House travel-agency personnel. The independent prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, then uncovered an affair between Clinton and a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. When questioned about the affair, Clinton denied it, which led Starr to charge the president with perjury and obstruction of justice, which in turn prompted his testimony on August 17.

Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections

More schools are closing due to COVID.

Johnson County schools will go virtual through September 13, according to 13WMAZ.

According to the Johnson County Schools Facebook page, all students at the county’s schools will be moved to virtual learning starting Tuesday, August 17 until September 13.

The post says the change is due to a number of positive coronavirus cases among students and staff.

The school system says food service will continue as it has previously during virtual instruction, as will athletic activities as long as the team is able to compete. Any changes to the schedules of both will be communicated by the schools and coaches.

Screven County schools will close from August 19th through Labor Day, according to WTOC.

According to the school system, schools will be closed to students beginning Thursday, Aug. 19. The plan is for students to return on Tuesday, Sept. 7.

The school system said schools will be open for students Tuesday, Aug. 17 and Wednesday, Aug. 18 for parents who wish to send their children to school; student absences for these two days will be excused. Masks will be required for all staff and students on those two days.

When students go home from school on Wednesday, Aug. 18, they will be able to take their Chromebook home with them. The school system said the Digital Learning Plan will be implemented beginning on Monday, Aug. 23. Between Aug. 23 and Sept. 1, teachers will post instructional content through Google Classroom on a regular basis.

Governor Brian Kemp yesterday spoke about steps Georgia will take to support its hospitals during the COVID surge. From 11Alive:

Gov. Kemp began by stating that during a call with metro Atlanta hospital CEOs, he was notified that 90% of Georgians hospitalized with coronavirus are currently unvaccinated. To help support hospitals, Kemp announced that the total number of state-supported hospital staff will be increased from 1,300 to 2,800, with many going to rural hospitals.

To further encourage state employees to get vaccinated, Kemp stated that state offices will be closed on Sept. 3, in hope that they will use that day to schedule an appointment.

Finally, Kemp added that “Georgia will remain open for business,” dismissing any notion of the state shutting down. He added that Georgians should be part of the solution.

Kemp was also joined by the state’s public health director Dr. Kathleen Toomey.

In her appearance on Monday, Toomey once again stressed that the Delta variant is much more transmissible and there has been a 90% increase as a result.

Toomey also stated that the Department of Public Health is ramping up testing and want to do everything they can to keep people out of hospitals if they don’t need to be there.

Finally, Toomey said that the state will offer an additional dose to those who are severely immunocompromised. However, she said these are not booster doses.

From Fox5Atlanta:

Gov. Brian Kemp once again urged all Georgians to talk to the doctors, pharmacists, health care providers, and even their pastors to make the decision to get vaccinated against COVID-19 as new cases and hospitalizations continue to spike.

“This safe, effective vaccine reduces the likelihood you could get infected with COVID-19, but more importantly, it will drastically reduce the chances of you ending up in a hospital bed or losing your life,” the governor said.

“This variant is much more transmissible, it goes very quickly from person to person, it causes you to become infected much more quickly, in a matter of days, instead of a week or longer,” said Kathleen Toomey, head of the Georgia Department of Public Health.

“And so the highest rates yet we’ve ever among individuals 30, 40 years old, higher rates in 50-year-olds. And these were young people who weren’t hospitalized before,” Toomey said.

“Virtually every hospital’s most pressing issue is the lack of qualified staff to treat the patients coming through their doors,” Kemp said.

The governor said the state had committed $500 million through October to provide 1,300 staff to the 68 hospitals across the state. He said after talking with Georgia Department of Community Health Commissioner Caylee Noggle, an additional $125 million will go toward assistance through December.

“To expand those efforts, I am announcing today that Commission Noggle and her team will increase the total number of state-supported hospital staff from 1,300 to 2,800. More than doubling out staffing assistance to date,” Kemp said.

About 170 of those new employees will go directly to rural hospitals. He said health officials have identified about 450 more beds in nine regional coordinating hospitals once those new health care providers are hired, but admitted it would take some time.

From the Atlanta Voice:

“I think at this point if anybody out there trusts the government; it is probably not many people,” explained Kemp. “When you have the president of the United States that says, get vaccinated, take your mask off, then they reverse that policy. There’s misinformation out there. And look, I get it. There’s vaccine hesitancy in the South.”

Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada and Texas make up 51% of the COVID case load in the United States. 48% of Georgians have received at least one shot of the COVID vaccine.

“I mean, if you look at the numbers and Georgia, you know, we’re doing better than Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana and several other states. I mean, there’s real vaccine hesitancy, we’ve talked about that, Dr. Toomey talked about that, with the Tuskegee experiment with African Americans,” said Kemp.

Kemp said he is against shutting down schools and mask mandates. But, at least 40 districts which include 770,000 students are requiring face coverings. Atlanta Public Schools, Fulton County Schools, and Gwinnett County Schools do require face coverings. Overall, nearly 45% of Georgia’s 1.7 million students do have a mask mandate.

“There’s a lot of conservative, White, rural Republicans that have vaccine hesitancy. And I think that just pushes people into a corner, you see where mass mandates are causing fights at sporting events and on airplanes and other things,” said Kemp. People know how to deal with the virus. My message to people is: look, talk to your doctor, talk to your local pharmacist, talk to whoever you trust that is involved in healthcare, or your faith leader, about the vaccine to learn more about it, learn about the science, and then make a good decision for yourself. To me it’s the best way to handle this going forward.”

From the Capitol Beat News Service via the Albany Herald:

The additional hospital staff will be provided through a continuation of the state’s no-bid contract with a private Alpharetta-based staffing firm, Jackson Healthcare, and a subsidiary. Georgia Health News reported recently that the contract, which began with the first wave of COVID-19 in Georgia last year, had brought Jackson $434 million as of July 23.

Dougherty County Commissioners  approved a $300 incentive payment to county employees to get vaccinated, according to the Albany Herald.

“To date, we have spent over $1.1 million in COVID cases alone in our health (plan),” County Administrator Michael McCoy told Dougherty County Commissioners during a Monday meeting. The last report came in early August, so “this doesn’t cover the recent hospitalizations we have had, so we know our (costs) are continuing to climb.”

McCoy recommended, and commissioners approved, the $300 incentive payments for employees who get vaccinated. The county will use funds it received through the American Rescue Plan Act to fund the program.

The most recent report showed that the rate of vaccinations for employees, at about 10 percent, lags that of the county, where 33.89 percent are fully vaccinated.

“We’re self-insured; we have to manage our costs,” McCoy said.

“I can’t wrap my head around that,” Cohilas said of the poor vaccination rate. “At one time, we literally had to order an emergency morgue to stack the bodies because we did not have enough space to store our community members.”

Hall County public schools will require masks at three schools, according to AccessWDUN.

Student test scores fell after the first year of the COVID pandemic, according to the Associated Press via AccessWDUN.

Test scores fell for Georgia students last year in the wake of the pandemic, amid questions about what the scores mean with few students taking the standardized tests in some districts.

State officials said they believe the scores would have been worse if the missing students had also taken the tests but also de-emphasized the weight they’re putting on the scores considering class disruptions stemming from COVID-19.

The Georgia Department of Education released the annual Milestones test results Monday. Students in grades 3-8 as well as high schoolers take the tests. Federal law requires most of the tests, and the U.S. Department of Education insisted that students take them, despite two requests by Georgia State Superintendent Richard Woods to cancel tests for the second year in a row.

“Given the magnitude of learning disruptions experienced this past school year, these decreases in performance really are not particularly large,” Deputy Superintendent Allison Timberlake told reporters in a briefing Friday.

Dana Rickman, president of the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education said scores “did not go down as much as we had feared,”’ but said the declines still had consequences.

Bulloch County Public Schools will change bus routes due to driver shortages, according to WTOC.

Georgians who receive food stamps will receive more benefits, according to the AJC.

About 1.6 million Georgians will soon see a bump in food stamp benefits after the federal government announced a permanent increase of about 25% in monthly funds.

The boost in maximum allowed benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — commonly known as food stamps — goes into effect in October.

In Georgia, that means the average four-person household will go from receiving a maximum of $680 per month in SNAP benefits last year to $835 beginning Oct. 1, according to data from the Division of Family and Children Services, which administers the state’s program.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger‘s office completed a purge of inactive voters, according to the AJC.

Georgia canceled over 101,000 inactive voter registrations this summer, slightly fewer than initially planned because several hundred voters restored their registrations in time, according to state election records.

The sweeping cancellations, called voter “purges” by critics, affected registrations of voters who moved or didn’t participate in recent elections. State law requires systemic cancellations every other year to remove ineligible or infrequent voters from the state’s voter rolls.

In all, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office canceled 101,217 voter registrations late last month, down from the nearly 101,800 registrations that were initially considered for removal. None of these inactive voters cast ballots in last year’s general election or runoff.

A federal judge recently upheld Georgia’s “use it or lose it” law, finding that canceled voters aren’t significantly burdened because they can re-register to vote.

Most of this year’s cancellations targeted voters who filed a change-of-address form with the U.S. Postal Service or had election mail returned to sender.

There were also 1,098 voter registrations canceled for other reasons, most often because election officials received information that they recently died.

Richmond County elections director Lynn Bailey updated a local group on changes in voting procedures after legislation passed by the Georgia General Assembly, according to the Augusta Chronicle.

“This Senate Bill 202 is a scant 98 pages long, so we won’t be going over the entire bill,” Bailey told attendees.

She focused on the highlights that would impact voters specifically, particularly around ID and absentee ballots.

Under the new law, there are four kinds of non-photo ID that voters can present when requesting an absentee ballot, and registrars can also provide free photo identification cards for people without a license or other state ID. Department of Drivers Services will also provide photo IDs for voting for free, if residents swear to being indigent.

An ID will be required for requesting an absentee ballot, but voters will not need to provide a copy of the identification card – just the driver’s license number or state ID number.

“For people who may not have a Georgia license … they can use the last four of their Social (Security number),” Bailey said.

The timeline on requesting an absentee ballot has shortened significantly. The Board of Elections could, under the old law, receive a request up to 180 days before the election and would mail ballots as late as the Friday before Election Day. Now, applications must be received between 78 days and two Fridays before the election. Ballots will be mailed between 29 days and two Fridays before the election.

The City of Dalton will require masks to enter municipal buildings, according to the Dalton Daily Citizen News.

The Dalton City Council voted 3-0 Monday night to reinstate a mask mandate within city-owned buildings such as City Hall. The rule requires staff and visitors to wear masks when in public areas of city-owned buildings or when in private areas of city-owned buildings where proper social distancing cannot be accomplished.

Dalton Mayor David Pennington also declared a state of emergency for the city, according to the Dalton Daily Citizen News.

The state of emergency allows city agencies including the Dalton Fire Department and Dalton Police Department to provide personnel to Hamilton Medical Center to supplement their staffing needs.

Pennington’s declaration calls for the activation of the city’s local emergency operations plan to detail city personnel to the hospital to supplement their staff. A memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Hamilton Medical Center that Pennington read aloud at Monday night’s meeting states that the city of Dalton will be able to provide personnel with paramedic and Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) training to the hospital as well as personnel able to assist in stocking and handling supplies and providing general assistance to the regular hospital staff. The MOU also states that at no time shall any city employee perform any function at the hospital unless under director supervision and direction of Hamilton Medical Center nurses, physicians, technicians or designated staff.

In Brunswick, qualifying started for Mayor and City Council, according to The Brunswick News.

The mayoral candidates who qualified Monday are incumbent City Commissioner Vincent Williams, Cosby Johnson, John Perry, Ivan Figueroa, Travis Riddle, Ann Senior and Robbie Tucker.

Incumbent City Commissioner Felicia Harris paid the $342 qualifying fee to seek another four years representing the South Ward. Gary Cook paid the same fee and filed the paperwork to run for the North Ward seat currently held by Williams.

All candidates will be required to submit a personal financial disclosure form within 15 days after qualifying to run for the election. And they must apply for a declaration of intention before accepting campaign contributions.

Hours for qualifying are from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. this week through Friday at the Board of Elections Office in the Office Park Building, 1815 Gloucester St. in Brunswick.

Glynn County has closed buildings to the public because of the recent COVID-19 outbreak, but staff can be reached by phone, fax, mail, email or online.

“We will continue to assist the voters of Glynn County with voter registration, absentee ballot applications, and other election needs,” said Christopher Channell, Glynn County’s elections supervisor. “Most services can be completed online at the My Voter Page website: www.mvp.sos.ga.gov. This website will allow you to register to vote, update your registration, request an absentee ballot, view your polling locations, see a sample ballot, and learn about your elected officials.”

Four candidates for Albany Commission qualified on the first day, according to the Albany Herald.

Incumbent Ward V Albany City Commissioner Bob Langstaff is in; Ward III’s B.J. Fletcher drew a challenger, and two candidates joined the race for an open Ward II seat on the first day of qualifying for fall municipal elections.

Langstaff, who has served on the commission for more than two decades, qualified to seek re-election in Ward V. Vilnis “Dip” Gaines will challenge Fletcher in Ward III.

In Ward II, former commission member Bobby Coleman and first-time candidate Jalen Johnson qualified for the seat currently held by Matt Fuller.

Norcross Mayor Craig Newton will run for reelection, according to the Gwinnett Daily Post.

The Gainesville Times looks at local municipal races that will appear on November ballots.

Five candidates qualified on the first day for Rome Board of Education seats and one qualified for City Commission, according to the Rome News Tribune.

School board incumbents Melissa Davis, John Uldrick and Will Byington qualified to keep their seats Monday. Newcomers Tracy McDew, who does marketing for Shaw Industries, and Pascha Burge, a sales manager with AT&T, also threw their hats into the ring for the city school board election.

Elaina Beeman filed paperwork to run for city commission; she will vacate her seat on the Rome school board.