Georgia Today: Augusta's new arena; banning menthol cigarettes; backyard chicken regulations

Peter Biello: Welcome to the Georgia Today podcast from GPB News. Today is Monday, April 24. I'm Peter Biello. On today's episode, Augusta wants a new arena and residents will be given the option to pay for it. Menthol cigarettes may become a thing of the past; and in one Georgia county, rules on backyard chickens have some residents crying foul. We'll explain. These stories and more are coming up on this edition of Georgia Today.

Story 1

Peter Biello: Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill in Augusta today to give local residents the option to tax themselves to build a new arena. Two years ago, Richmond County voters rejected a proposed property tax increase to replace the aging James Brown Arena. Cedric Johnson chairs the local authority that oversees the building. He believes a five-year, one-half percent sales tax is more likely to pass in a November referendum.

Cedric Johnson: A lot of the people who were against it say that we should look at some other way of financing it. And so we did go back and look at the half a percent sales tax. One of the main reasons. I think people will see this as a good benefit is that about 40% of the dollars that we can collect from sales tax are from people outside of their original town. And again, our arena is over 40 years old and it's outdated. And so a lot of the shows that we would have come to Augusta, they won't come because we can't give them the facility that they need.

Peter Biello: Johnson says if approved, construction of the $250 million project could begin next year.

Caption

A bottle of medical cannabis oil and a cannabis plant.

Story 2

Peter Biello: Officials from the two companies licensed to grow and distribute medical marijuana in Georgia say they are close to being able to sell their product. It could be a matter of weeks before Trulieve and Botanical Sciences begin distributing low THC cannabis oil made from their greenhouses in South Georgia. SJ Nichols runs SJ Labs, the Macon company that will test the products. She says she's looking forward to medical marijuana's future in Georgia.

SJ Nichols: I think when the Georgia patients and citizens become educated on the benefits of cannabis medicinally, I believe this program will expand to look very similar to Florida. Hopefully in five years from now, we have something similar to the Florida market. And that's my optimistic expectation. It's going to take some reeducation because cannabis has a stereotype and we have to reeducate people about what it is and how it's used. So that's going to be a challenge. But once we overcome it, Georgia won't look any different from any other medical cannabis state.

Peter Biello: Nichols says patients are excited about what's to come. State lawmakers approved growing and dispensing cannabis oil for various ailments in 2019, but the rollout has been slow and tied up in legal wrangling.

Story 3

Peter Biello: Health advocates are urging the Food and Drug Administration to move forward with a proposed ban on menthol-flavored cigarettes. GPB's Ellen Eldridge reports the product historically has been marketed to Black Americans.

Ellen Eldridge: Last year, the Food and Drug Administration proposed a ban on menthol-flavored cigarets, a product historically marketed to Black people. Now, health advocates are urging the FDA to move forward. A recent report finds that banning menthol and flavored cigarettes would within the next five years eliminate disparities in lung cancer death rates between Black Americans and other racial groups. Dr. Philip Gardner is co-chair of the African-American Tobacco Control Leadership Council and advocates for a ban. He says there is a chance the FDA will decide in August, but he's skeptical.

Dr. Phillip Gardner: The short answer is the tobacco industry's pressure and influence within our government and around our agencies is what's prevented this from moving forward.

Ellen Eldridge: Gardner encourages people to get involved with No Menthol ATL and similar organizations in Georgia. For GPB News, I'm Ellen Eldridge.

Story 4

Peter Biello: Georgia employers added 8,000 jobs in March as the state's unemployment rate remains low. Georgia's unemployment rate stayed at 3.1% for the eighth month in a row, although it was up slightly from 3% in March of last year. The number of workers in the labor force grew strongly for the second month in a row to 4.89 million, easing concerns that the number of job seekers was maxed out in Georgia after a period of stagnant labor force growth.

Credit: Susan Walsh, AP

Story 5

Peter Biello: University System of Georgia Chancellor Sonny Perdue says he hopes state lawmakers will restore the $66 million they cut from the system's teaching budget next year. Perdue's remarks came last week as regents delayed setting tuition for the 2023-2024 school year until May. State senators insisted universities should cover the shortfall with cash on hand. But Perdue told regents that cash is unequally distributed among schools. A spokesperson for Gov. Brian Kemp says he and Perdue talk regularly about university needs. Legislative budget writers say they're willing to discuss restoring the money.

Story 6

Peter Biello: Bibb County School officials are calling a monthslong pilot program aimed at empowering students to steer food to their hungry classmates a success. GPB's Grant Blankenship explains.

Grant Blankenship: The program is called Helping Hands Ending Hunger. In it, member schools allow teams of students to collect some uneaten food from school lunch trays. Food-insecure classmates take the food home later. Latrina Pennamon-Nash is the principal of Ballard Hudson Middle School, one of four Bibb schools where the program has been implemented since the beginning of the calendar year. She said she was sold on the idea after seeing the program at work in Dougherty County.

Latrina Pennamon-Nash: Kids coming to school, if they're hungry, they can't focus and they definitely cannot learn. So we feel like we're helping to bridge some of that gap.

Grant Blankenship: The Bibb County School District estimates some 362 families across four schools have been helped just in the pilot period. For GPB News, I', Grant, Blankenship in Macon.

Caption

Evelyn Wilkey, 7, holds a chicken named Diva as her sister Nora, 8, holds Nugget at the Wilkey home in Catoosa County on Friday, September 2, 2022.

Credit: Matt Hamilton / Times Free Press

Story 7

Peter Biello: An amendment regulating backyard hens in a residential zone was passed last week by Northwest Georgia's Catoosa County Board of Commissioners, and it inspired pledges to unseat the current board. Those pledges came from a crowd of Catoosa County chicken advocates. The new regulations require hens be kept for personal use only. They also prohibit hens at multifamily properties and require they be secured in the owner's backyard. There are also specific rules around chicken coop locations on private property. Multiple Catoosa County residents criticized the board for restricting property rights and the ability for families to raise their own food.

Story 8

Peter Biello: Augusta Prep middle school history teacher and longtime volleyball coach Rich Bland was honored last weekend in Los Angeles as part of the 30th anniversary celebration of UCLA's 1993 men's volleyball national championship. Bland and his fellow seniors entered the 1992-93 season with some pressure as they were part of a class that had not won a national title. No four-year senior class had ever left school without a title since UCLA won its first volleyball title in 1970. In the NCAA semifinals, the Bruins routed Ohio State in three sets. UCLA then defeated Cal State Northridge in three sets on its home floor to win its 14th national title. Bland said his current students and volleyball players know very little about him being one of the top volleyball recruits in the nation when he graduated in 1988 in Buffalo, N.Y. Nor do they know much about him being part of a national championship tradition at UCLA.

All right. We've started your week with stories about chickens. We've got some volleyball in there. Pretty good week for stories so far. And it is only Monday. There is plenty more coming out of the GPB newsroom for the rest of the week. We hope you will tune in for that as well. Best way to do that is to subscribe to this podcast and we'll be there for you in your podcast feed every afternoon. If you've got feedback, we'd love to hear from you. You can email us at GeorgiaToday@GPB.org. And if you like this podcast, make sure you leave a review because that will help other folks find us. And if you'd like to learn more about any of these stories, by the way, visit GPB.org/News.

I'm Peter Biello. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

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