Lyman Hall was elected to the Continental Congress on March 21, 1775 from St. John’s Parish; the next year he would sign the Declaration of Independence as a representative from Georgia.
On March 21, 1941, Governor Eugene Talmadge signed legislation establishing the Eastern Standard Time Zone as the only Time Zone in Georgia. Prior to that, Georgia observed two different time zones.
On March 21, 1965, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. led more than 3000 protesters in a march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery.
On March 21, 1980, President Jimmy Carter announced the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.
Former Georgia Governor and United States Senator Herman Talmadge died on March 21, 2002.
Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections
Under the Gold Dome Today – Legislative Day 32
TBD Senate Rules Committee: Upon Adjournment – 450 CAP
8:00 AM CANCELED HOUSE HIGHER ED – 506 CLOB
8:00 AM HOUSE EDUCATION – 406 CLOB
8:00 AM HOUSE MOTOR VEHICLES – 606 CLOB
8:00 AM HOUSE AGRICULTURE & CONSUMER AFF – 415 CLOB
8:00 AM Senate Education & Youth – 450 CAP
9:00 AM HOUSE RULES – 341 CAP
10:00 AM HOUSE FLOOR SESSION (LD 37) – House Chamber
10:00 AM Senate Floor Session (LD 37) – Senate Chamber
1:00 PM HOUSE PUBLIC HEALTH – 606 CLOB
1:00 PM HOUSE Judiciary Non-Civil Hong Sub – 506 CLOB
1:00 PM HOUSE GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS – 406 CLOB
1:00 PM Senate Banking & Financial Institutions – 450 CAP
1:30 PM HOUSE JUDICIARY – 132 CAP
2:00 PM HOUSE HEALTH – 403 CAP
2:00 PM HOUSE RETIREMENT – 406 CLOB
2:00 PM HOUSE DEFENSE AND VET AFFAIRS – 515 CLOB
2:00 PM Senate Ethics – 310 CLOB
2:00 PM Senate Education & Youth – 307 CLOB
3:00 PM HOUSE JUVENILE JUSTICE – 606 CLOB
3:00 PM Public Safety and Homeland Security Dean Greene Sub – 506 CLOB
4:00 PM HOUSE WAYS & MEANS – 406 CLOB
4:00 PM Senate Regulated Industries – 450 CAP
The AJC writes about Senate Bill 99, which is supported by Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones and would allegedly benefit his father’s business.
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones is promoting a measure that would pave the way for more hospitals to be built in smaller counties as part of a pending overhaul of health care rules that could financially benefit his family’s business.
The Republican is one of the most powerful supporters of Senate Bill 99, which would allow the construction of new hospitals in counties of fewer than 50,000 people without what is known as a “certificate of need” from state regulators, even if they’re close to existing hospitals. Some existing hospitals oppose the measure, saying it could endanger struggling hospitals that serve their communities.
Jones considers SB 99′s passage a top priority, saying through a spokeswoman that it’s a matter of “quality health care” for rural communities. The measure cleared the Senate in February and is set for a vote Tuesday in the House Health and Human Services Committee.
It’s not clear where the hospital would be built, but some local and state health care officials expect it to be located on land the lieutenant governor’s father, Bill Jones, owns near the sprawling River Park development along I-75 in the Middle Georgia county.
The elder Jones, who owns Jones Petroleum, is also president of Interstate Health Systems. Property records indicate that since 2021, the company bought more than 250 acres just south of River Park for roughly $30 million.
The state’s largest hospital firms have staunchly opposed changes to the certificate of need program, which governs the construction and expansion of health care facilities and regulates what kinds of services they can offer.
Wellstar Health System said the proposed facility could not only threaten the Sylvan Grove facility it operates in the county seat of Jackson but also a nearby hospital Wellstar runs in Griffin.
Veazey, who opposes the Senate measure, said he worries that overhauling certificate of need rules could lead to dozens of at-risk hospitals being pushed out of business by privately owned facilities that don’t offer emergency services.
The new facility might offer only lucrative services, he said, such as cancer treatment and surgery. That would divert the well-insured patients who would previously have gone to the community hospital — in turn, leaving the old hospital with the patients who can’t pay but must be treated by law if they show up in the emergency room.
“A new one could come in there that’s owned by a hedge fund, and build and put the community hospital out of business,” he said.
The infighting could get bound up in House-Senate negotiations in the final days of the legislative session, with proposals still pending involving sports betting, new limits on health care for transgender children and public safety proposals.
Senate lawmakers are keen to point out that their chamber has approved more than 60 House measures. Only a handful of Senate proposals have cleared the House.
For his part, Burt Jones is eager to cast the battle as one against powerful health care companies who care little for rural services.
House Bill 189 by State Rep. Steven Meeks (R-Screven) would allow heavier trucks on some state roads, and passed out of the Senate Transportation Committee, according to the Associated Press via WSAV.
The committee, on a 7-4 vote, approved a new version of House Bill 189 that would allow trucks moving agricultural and forestry commodities to carry up to 88,000 pounds (40,000 kilograms) on state roads. Now, the limit on state roads is 80,000 pounds, but trucks are allowed a variance of up to 84,000 pounds.
The bill goes to the full Senate for more debate. The House would have to approve the changes.
The higher limit would only be good until July 1, 2024. Heavier trucks wouldn’t be allowed in 13 core metro Atlanta counties, and local police and sheriff’s deputies could for the first time write tickets for overweight trucks. Now, only the state Motor Carrier Compliance Division can write tickets.
By next year, senators said, Georgia leaders need to try to find ways to increase funding for the state’s transportation system. Lawmakers have been pushing for a statewide freight and logistics plan, but it would cost another $1 billion a year, at least, to pay for projects including wider highways, improved interchanges and expanded railroads.
From the Capitol Beat News Service via the Rome News Tribune:
The legislation would apply only to trucks carrying timber or agricultural products. Representatives of the logging, farm and livestock industries have complained that having their trucks limited to 80,000 pounds would hurt their businesses by forcing them to make more trips.
Commercial trucks have become accustomed to carrying loads weighing up to 95,000 pounds since the pandemic struck Georgia three years ago. However, an executive order Gov. Brian Kemp issued during the early days of the pandemic to allow heavier trucks expired last week.
The version of the bill the state House of Representatives passed two weeks ago would have allowed commercial trucks hauling additional types of loads — including granite, concrete, and solid waste — to exceed the 80,000-pound weight limit. The original legislation introduced early last month would have applied no matter what a commercial truck was hauling.
“We believe this is a fair compromise,” Senate Majority Leader Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega, said Monday of the bill that emerged from the Senate Transportation Committee.
Senate Bill 233 by Sen. Greg Dolezal (R-Forsyth County), “The Georgia Promise Scholarship Act” passed out of House Education Committee Education Policy Subcommittee, according to the Georgia Recorder.
A bill to expand Georgia’s school voucher program moved forward in a House subcommittee Monday with a boost from powerful Republicans. It is expected to get a full committee hearing Tuesday ahead of a potential House vote.
Cumming Republican Sen. Greg Dolezal’s Senate Bill 233 would provide $6,000 to parents in the state’s lowest performing public schools to pull their children out and send them to private school.
“We have 1.7 million children, Mr. Chairman, as you know, in our public school system,” Dolezal said. “And our public school system is a fantastic resource for the vast, vast, vast majority of those students. All four of my children either do or will attend public school. The reality is, though, that public school is not the best fit for every child. And despite our best attempts to provide a fantastic public education opportunity for students, the reality is that for some students, a different path is better.”
The scholarship, which passed the Senate last month, would be offered to the families of children enrolled in public schools ranked in the bottom quarter of the state by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement. Participants would receive quarterly payments into a special account that would be limited to qualified educational expenses including tuition, private tutoring or therapy.
Rockdale County Schools Superintendent Terry Oatts said he fears the bill will withhold funds from schools that could most use them and place children with special needs into schools that do not have the same legal guardrails as public ones.
The bill passed 7-5 with the help of Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones and Majority Leader Chuck Efstration.
Jones is a member of the House Education Committee but not the subcommittee that heard the bill Monday, and Efstration is not a member of the committee. According to House rules, the speaker pro tem and majority leader are considered standing members of all committees and subcommittees, but they do not typically take part in meetings.
Brunswick Republican Rep. Rick Townsend bucked his party by voting against the measure.
The full House Education Committee is scheduled to meet Tuesday. Lawmakers suggested they would propose amendments to the bill, which means a revised version could need reapproval from the Senate if it passes the House. March 29 is the final day of the Legislative session.
Senate Bill 94 by Sen. Bo Hatchett, the “Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act,” to increase mandatory minimum sentences for gang activity, passed the State House by Committee Substitute, according to the Associated Press via WSAV.
Georgia House members on Monday turned aside objections that tougher anti-gang sentencing laws would sweep too many young people into prison for long stretches, passing a bill backed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp that would crack down on people convicted of recruiting minors into a gang.
“Gangs must recruit in order to survive, and we are sending a strong message with this bill, that if you come into our state and you are recruiting our children, that we will have severe punishment for you,” said Soo Hong, a Lawrenceville Republican who carries bills for Kemp as a floor leader.
Senate Bill 44 passed on a 99-74 vote and goes back to the Senate for more debate because the House amended it to include a much-reduced version of stricter cash bail provisions that senators are seeking.
The bill reverses a trend of Georgia lawmakers reducing mandatory sentences or refusing to add new ones. Now Kemp and other Republicans who campaigned last year on fighting crime say more criminals must be locked away for long stretches.
“What this is going to do is those who are recruiting our youth 17 years of age or younger, you are going to have them off the streets for 10 or 15 years,” said House Judiciary Non-civil Committee Chairman Tyler Paul Smith, a Bremen Republican.
House Bill 343 by State Rep. Mark Newton aims to reduce prescription drug prices by limiting pharmacy benefits managers, according to WRDW.
The purpose of a benefits manager, also known as the middleman between your doctor and your preferred pharmacy, is to negotiate the cost of prescription drugs.
But the problem, the middleman gets paid depending on how much savings they carve out.
Instead of that savings passed onto the consumer, it’s going to the middleman, while patients pay high prices at the pharmacy.
House Bill 343, the Lowering Prescription Drug Costs for Patients Act, would regulate the role of the pharmacy benefit manager negotiating the discount, and pocketing about half of it.
House Bill 773 by State Rep. Matt Barton (R-Calhoun) would rescind the charter of Ranger, according to the Rome News Tribune.
Legislation was introduced into the Georgia General Assembly this week with the intent of stripping Ranger of its municipal status after repeatedly not providing basic services for citizens, according to one local lawmaker.
A legal notice printed in Saturday’s Calhoun Times states the bill, introduced by state Rep. Matt Barton, R-Calhoun, would repeal an April 1979 act for a new charter for the Town of Ranger. The bill, which had yet to be assigned a number Monday, saw its first reading on the house floor in the Monday morning session.
Barton said that he was contacted last year by a citizen who had bought a home in Ranger and had sought help from Gordon County officials about mud on the road from a logging operation nearby.
“They got out there and said ‘you’re in the City of Ranger, we can’t help you.’ And when he couldn’t get anything done through Ranger, he reached out to me,” Barton said.
While Barton was looking into the issue that originally started near the end of last session, the same constituent had a similar issue while trying to apply for a business license. Due to having an address in the Ranger town limits, a license would have to be sought through that municipality. Again, Barton said, the citizen had no luck finding anyone to help him there.
“So now he can’t get a business license,” Barton said. “I’ve called the town’s number, and I even went out to Ranger and I couldn’t even find the City Hall building.”
The Senate Finance Committee recommended passage of House Bill 170 by State Rep. Kasey Carpenter (R-Dalton) would expand the availability of alcohol home delivery, according to the AJC.
A key state Senate committee on Monday backed a measure that in some areas would greatly expand the ability of Georgians to get wine, beer and liquor delivered to their home.
The expansion was added to House Bill 170 by Rep. Kasey Carpenter, R-Dalton, legislation that would allow the state to collect sales taxes when Georgians download books, video games or music.
The General Assembly approved limited delivery of alcoholic beverages to homes in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic was raging. However, the law limited deliveries by stores to customers who lived within their taxing jurisdiction, such as a city or county.
So instead of limiting delivery areas to within a taxing jurisdiction, HB 170 — which passed the committee 6-3 — would allow stores to deliver within a 25-mile radius.
Georgia’s Secretary of State spoke about election reform at a Kiwanis Club meeting, according to the Augusta Chronicle.
Recently, Raffensperger sent a letter to Congress asking for federal action on several changes to voting, including allowing states to update voter rolls within 90 days of an election, which is currently illegal. That, he told members of the Kiwanis Club of Augusta on Monday, was something they should be calling their congressional representatives about.
“Why does that matter?” Raffensperger asked his Augusta audience. “We have over 7.5 million people that are registered to vote in Georgia. And people have done studies. They say 11% of all Americans move every year. … That’s 200,000 people that could potentially move in that 90-day window.”
In years where a primary runs into a general election and on into a runoff , he said, it makes it particularly hard to update rolls. Raffensperger is also pushing for a constitutional amendment to prevent non-citizens from voting in local elections, something he says local governments in Georgia have considered but not yet implemented.
At the state level, Raffensperger is still looking to eliminate the runoff — the question is not whether Georgia should move away from them, he said, but what the replacement should be.
“If county election directors have a vote, they would all get rid of runoffs,” he said.
The state Legislature, however, did not take up the issue this session despite a majority of Georgians supporting the move.
Someone protested at an Augusta Rotary meeting at which the SOS spoke, according to WRDW.
A protester interrupted an Augusta appearance by Georgia’s secretary of state on Monday.
Raffensperger was there at the Kiwanis meeting but not actually speaking when Monday’s protester carried a white sign around the room. Headed with the words “RAFFENSPEGER BETRAYED GA” when he sent out millions of absentee ballots, the sign asked whether Raffensperger was bribed to cover up and to “MALIGN TRUMP.”
The crowd continued eating as the man was herded out.
After the man left, Raffensperger addressed the issue, noting that when the presidential election took place, Georgia was under emergency measures.
“We actually sent out to all active and registered voters absentee ballot applications, not the ballots,” Reffensperger said.
He said considering the COVID emergency, election officials were concerned that if they didn’t have a uniform process that voters wouldn’t just get one application mailed to them but would get multiple ones from multiple groups ranging from political parties to the candidates themselves.
“By doing that, we felt we would level the playing field – everyone got treated the same,” he said.
“Elections done right should be a bipartisan, nonpartisan issue,” Raffensperger said.
Fort Gordon is being renamed Fort Eisenhower, according to the Augusta Chronicle.
The new name for the fort was approved last fall on the recommendation of a Congressional commission tasked with identifying military assets that commemorate the Confederacy or those who served in the Confederacy and suggesting new names. Fort Benning will also be getting a new name — Fort Moore.
Houston County paid more than $1 million to resist providing gender-affirming healthcare to an employee, according to ProPublica via the Macon Telegraph.
When a sheriff’s deputy in Houston County sought surgery as part of her gender transition, local officials refused to change the department’s health insurance plan to cover it, citing cost as the primary reason.
In the years that followed, the Middle Georgia county paid a private law firm nearly $1.2 million to fight Sgt. Anna Lange in federal court — far more than it would have cost the county to offer such coverage to all of its 1,500 health plan members, according to expert analyses. One expert estimated that including transition-related care in the health plan would add about 0.1% to the cost of all claims, which would come to roughly $10,000 per year, on average.
Since at least 1998, the county’s plan has excluded coverage for “services and supplies for a sex change,” an outdated term to refer to surgeries or medications related to gender transition. In 2016, the county’s insurance administrator recommended changing the policy to align with a new federal nondiscrimination rule. But Houston County leaders said no.
In fact, Houston County’s total legal fees on the Lange case have amounted to almost three times its annual physical and mental health budget. “Is this a good use of public money? No,” said Joanna Grossman, a law professor at Southern Methodist University who focuses on sex discrimination. “It’s fair to say that this is an issue where it’s pretty clear they’re going to lose.”
Bulloch County Board of Commissioners will hold a budget retreat with staff this week, according to the Statesboro Herald.
All these county officials aren’t retreating very far, but to a place where strategizing is often done: the Gene Bishop Field House at Paulson Stadium, 2100 Malecki Drive. The Wednesday, March 22, session is projected to last from 8:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. and the Thursday, March 23, session from 8:30 a.m. until 2 p.m., with some breaks. The meetings are open to the public.
Some big numbers loom in the backfield: In the current year’s general fund budget, which runs through June 30, projected $48.38 million in revenue but allowed for $50.97 million in spending. Budgets for all the county government funds – including those for capital projects supported by the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, or SPLOST, and the Transportation SPLOST, as well as smaller special funds and the general fund – totaled $118 million.
With this in mind, she said, final budget requests, with numerical totals included, aren’t due in the county finance office until Friday, March 31, eight days after the retreat ends. Agency and departmental leaders file these through a software system, and King has seen that most have submitted requests or are working on them, she said.
Savannah Chatham County Public Schools is beginning a search for a new Superintendent as Dr. Ann Levett’s retirement approaches, according to the Savannah Morning News.
Camden County awaits action against former Camden County Public Service Authority William Brunson and three others accused of stealing more than $3.5 million dollars, according to The Brunswick News.
William Brunson, former PSA director, and three others were arrested in early 2019 for allegedly stealing more than $3.5 million from the Camden PSA over a 15-year period from 2002 until 2017.
Chuck Byerly, an investigator with the Camden County Sheriff’s Office, told The News in December that at the rate prosecutors are moving, he was worried the statute of limitations might expire before charges are filed.
Muscogee County Public Schools are considering schedule changes to align with Circadian rhythms, according to WTVM.
“When we asked ourselves does the bell schedule currently support the whole child, the answer is no,” said Dr. Travis Anderson.
Anderson is the Chief Operations Officer for the Muscogee County School District. He and a team of other school officials looked at it, and the research shows the proposed change might help kids be more successful.
“The circadian rhythm… we all have one. It happens every 24 hours. However, we know our teenagers. They are just a little bit different than we are. So their rhythm is slightly different. The research says those students should really be in school after 8:30 [AM],” said Anderson.
This is why for high school, the proposed change has them starting their day 35 minutes later at 8:45, while other school kids would start earlier.
The first bell would ring for middle school at 8:10 a.m., forty minutes earlier than it is now and 7:45 a.m. for elementary, fifteen minutes earlier.
“We will be able to get every student home by 5:30. Every student to school on time as well as have no one at the bus stop before 6 a.m.,” said Anderson.
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