Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2025
Good morning! In the news today: storm clouds over health care in Georgia, Kemp SNAPs to the rescue, and a state senator declares victory over Savannah. Finally, we note some things for your radar. Questions, comments, or story ideas? You can reach me at craig.thecurrent@gmail.com.
ANALYSIS: HEALTH CARE
Storm clouds over health costs
Gov. Brian Kemp barely mentioned the topic of health care in his state-of-the-state address last week. Little wonder, perhaps: A recent analysis of political ads in last year’s U.S. House and Senate races show that while Democrats want to make 2026 about health care, Republicans don’t.
For Georgia’s Republican governor, that’s a sea change from the same occasion a year ago, The Current’s Margaret Coker writes. Then, Kemp hailed his signature policy initiatives as a role model for the nation: a state-managed marketplace for the federally subsidized health insurance known as Obamacare, a robust reinsurance system, a Medicaid work requirement experiment.
With cuts to federal funding, however, Kemp’s signature health-care policies — a one pillar of his legacy as governor — are threatened. Data analysis of Georgia’s health care economy and insurance markets suggest that revenue for providers, along with rates of insured Georgians, will fall off a cliff this year, leaving Georgia residents and businesses in trouble.
Yet neither Kemp nor Republican leaders in the General Assembly have signaled any major initiatives to address the impact on Georgians of looming federal funding cuts. Coker examines examines the storm clouds gathering over health care in the state.
NEWS: GOVERNING
Entering the breach
Health care may be getting short shrift, but Georgia’s governor is urging state lawmakers to replace tens of millions of dollars in anti-hunger funds cut last year under the Trump administration’s “big beautiful bill,” The Current’s Maggie Lee reports.
In his proposed budget released last week, Gov. Kemp calls on the Republican-dominated state legislature to allocate $46 million to replace funds lost due to bill’s cutbacks of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. More than one-in-10 Georgians receive benefits under the program.
Passed by both houses of U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump in July, the administration’s marquee spending bill reduces federal support for state SNAP staff to 25% from 50%.
Under Kemp’s proposal, the state monies would be used starting in October to pay the more than 3,000 state caseworkers and other personnel who administer the program.
That month marks the start of the federal fiscal year, when funds from Washington for the program start drying up. After that, the additional costs to the state for supporting the program would be about $62 million annually, according to an estimate from the Georgia Department of Human Services.
NEWS: FIREARMS
‘Rogue mayors or councils’
State Sen. Colton Moore hailed it as a victory over attempts by local governments to infringe “upon our God-given rights to self-preservation” and a defeat for “rogue mayors or councils turning their towns” into anti-2nd Amendment “zones.”
Moore was referring, of course, to Savannah Mayor Van Johnson and the Savannah City Council, which two years ago approved an ordinance authorizing the city to fine a person up to $1,000 for leaving a gun in an unlocked parked car.
The victory he was lauding was a vote last week in the state Senate overturning that ordinance. It was authored by Moore, one of more than 20 candidates running to fill the North Georgia congressional seat vacated by Marjorie Taylor Greene, who resigned the seat following a split with President Trump and many in her party.
When people from northwest Georgia “want to visit a place like Savannah, they shouldn’t have to be worried about facing jail time for doing their legal duty to protect themselves and their family,” Moore argued in floor debate on the bill last year. Moore didn’t explain how an ordinance requiring that the locking of vehicles carrying firearms infringed on that duty.
Last week’s Senate vote was 32-21, with Coastal Georgia GOP Sens. Ben Watson (Savannah), Billy Hickman (Statesboro) and Mike Hodges (Brunswick) voting in favor of Moore’s bill and Democrat Derek Mallow (Savannah) voting against it. Mallow defended the ordinance, saying it regulated vehicles, not guns, and had reduced gun thefts from unlocked cars by over 30%.
NEWS: UPDATES
5 things for your radar
• Walking the walk: On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, A Better Glynn hosts a day of service in Brunswick, The Current’s Jabari Gibbs and Sarah Harwell report.
• Legislative priorities: Coastal Georgians again ranked the environment and protection of natural resources, followed by health care, as the highest priorities for state lawmakers, in an annual survey of The Current’s readers. Especially worrying, they said, are land- and energy devouring data centers. For more from the survey, click here.
• Call for help: State Rep. Jesse Petrea (Savannah) tangles under the Gold Dome with a needy constituent.
• Community pillars: Savannah Mayor Van Johnson extends Happy Founders’ Day wishes to “my beautiful, beloved sisters” of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority (“cultivating sisterhood and service”) Savannah chapter Gamma Sigma Omega.
• Sign O’ the Times: Today marks the 1st anniversary of Donald Trump’s swearing in for a second term as president, with two groups in particular voicing worries about a U.S. military invasion: Greenlanders and Minnesotans.
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Georgia’s health care economy is facing a crisis due to federal funding cuts, which could result in lower revenue for providers and reduced health coverage for Georgians, while state Democrats are making health care a key issue in the upcoming election.
Savannah’s $146M water treatment plant expansion begins amid regional growth
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