Georgia Today: Foster care system hearing; Electronic voting update; Ticketseller market regulation

Peter Biello: Welcome to the Georgia Today podcast from GPB News. Today is Tuesday, Oct. 31. Happy Halloween. I'm Peter Biello. On today's episode, Georgia's Department of Human Services is being accused of trying to send troubled foster kids to detention centers. State lawmakers will get an update on the status of the state's electronic voting system. And have you noticed ticket prices on the rise? A state House panel has too, and is looking into what can be done about it. These stories and more are coming up on this edition of Georgia Today.

Story 1:

Peter Biello: Georgia juvenile court judges testified to systemic failures within the state's Division of Family and Child Services during the second hearing of U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff's probe into Georgia's foster care system. GPB's Sofi Gratis has more from yesterday's hearing.

Story 2:

Sofi Gratis: Putting foster kids in youth detention facilities as illegal in Georgia, even if there's nowhere else for them to go. But that's exactly what the commissioner of Georgia's Department of Human Services, Candice Broce, suggested doing according to Georgia Juvenile Court judges. That includes Judge Carol Altmann from Paulding County, who said the state needs to find other options for kids with complex behavioral health needs.

Carol Altmann: It's loud, it's clangy, the sounds rattle, it's scary. And so for a low-level offense or because we can't find a placement, these children are then being exposed to a lot more difficult circumstances.

Sofi Gratis: Broce later denied that she encouraged judges to break the law. All three judges alleged lack of oversight from DFCS, which says it's short staffed. For GPB News, I'm Sofi Gratas.

Story 3:

Peter Biello: A federal grand jury has indicted an Alabama man for threatening Fulton County DA Fani Willis and Sheriff Pat Labatt. Charges against 59-year-old Arthur Hanson, the second of Huntsville were announced yesterday. Hanson allegedly left threatening voicemails for Willis and Labat for their roles in investigating former President Donald Trump.

Credit: Stephen Fowler/GPB News

Story 4:

Peter Biello: A panel of state lawmakers will meet tomorrow to discuss the state's electronic voting system. GPB's Stephen Fowler previews the meeting of the Georgia Senate Ethics Committee.

Stephen Fowler: There are opponents of Georgia's electronic ballot marking devices on both sides of the political aisle. They argue the machines are vulnerable to hacking and instead push for hand-marked paper ballots. The hearing Wednesday afternoon will be to get an update on the status of a patch to fix vulnerabilities found in the Dominion Voting System software by a researcher and an ongoing federal lawsuit against the machines. The secretary of state's office is piloting that patch in a handful of counties before the 2024 election. They maintain the system is secure and trustworthy. For GPB News, I'm Stephen Fowler.

Story 5:

Peter Biello: As ticket buyers pay inflated prices for popular shows, ticket sellers in Georgia are fighting over how to regulate the market. Greg Green of the Atlanta music venue The Masquerade, says the problem is secondary sellers like StubHub. He told a state House panel yesterday he put a concert for next April on sale last Friday, and now hundreds of tickets are up for resale at 10 times the price.

Greg Green: Does anyone think that these are from people who can't find a babysitter in April of 2024? It's not. These are companies who have gone in, bought these up and are looking to take advantage of the consumer.

Peter Biello: A representative for StubHub said the site gives consumers more choices to buy and sell.

Story 6:

Peter Biello: One of the largest employers in Rome's Floyd County has announced a $22 million expansion. The county's development authority said today that auto parts supplier F&P Georgia plans to expand its facility because of new contracts with automakers, Honda and Tesla. The news comes a day after county officials announced Microsoft is planning a $1 billion data center in Floyd County.

Story 7:

Peter Biello: Gov. Brian Kemp is asking federal lawmakers to back another Savannah Harbor deepening project. Kemp wrote Georgia's congressional delegation yesterday, requesting funds to study the project's economic and environmental impacts. The request comes a year and a half after a billion-dollar, decadeslong deepening project to serve larger ships officially ended.

Caption

The Flint River made 2024's Dirty Dozen list because of its vulnerability to pollution.

Credit: GPB / File

Story 8:

Peter Biello: Earlier this year, a local dispute over who could fish on a stretch of Georgia's Flint River prompted a new law meant to ensure public access to state waterways. But as GPB's Grant Blankenship explains, the law may have only muddied the water.

Grant Blankenship: The horizon of a long, low speed waterfall curls out of sight. As Alan Ragsdale tells me, I need to pay attention.

Alan Ragsdale: We're definitely going to pinball off some rocks down here, so just stay centered up.

Grant Blankenship: Ragsdale is a longtime fishing guide on the Flint River. He safely rowed us from the public boat ramp a mile upstream through this chunk of a place called Yellow Jacket Shoals and into the heart of a running argument.

Alan Ragsdale: Everything down on this side, you're free to fish and swim.

Grant Blankenship: That's on one side of an imaginary line running through the stream. Across the line is private property.

Alan Ragsdale: You'd have to have a GPS and look on a map to know where it splits between there.

Grant Blankenship: The "no fishing" signs are the only hint. Ragsdale says it was in the mid 2000s when the Department of Natural Resources Enforcement officer showed up at his house.

Alan Ragsdale: They told me I could not fish a certain section of river. I was told I'd be locked up for criminal trespass if I was seen in there again.

Grant Blankenship: Yellow Jacket Shoals' landowners had their own conflicts. One fired a gun at a family of kayakers. He's serving prison time. Later, that gunman's brother, attorney Ben Brewton, took a different tack. He sued the state to get what he wanted: a settlement agreeing he owns the fishing rights to a piece of the Flint River flowing by his land. Members of the Georgia House are still talking about it.

Man at Meriwether County meeting: ... prettiest, unspoiled rivers in the state.

Grant Blankenship: In early fall, a special House Study Committee convened at a microbrewery in West Georgia's Meriwether County to figure out how to enforce the law that passed after Ben Brewton got his way.

April Lipscomb: Okay, So Slide 19. We have the language of SB 115 right there.

Grant Blankenship: SB 115 was meant to make Brewton's case a one-time thing by reiterating the state owns the riverbed of navigable rivers. But there was a hitch: SB 115 gave no definition of "navigable." Attorney April Lipscomb of the Southern Environmental Law Center offered a few.

April Lipscomb: The United States Supreme Court has actually said that questions of navigability...

Grant Blankenship: First, the federal definition. If a river was likely used by people for trade and commerce in 1788 when Georgia became a state, it's navigable today. But Georgia has its own 19th-century definition with a far narrower scope, based in part on how well a river moves tons of freight. Scott Robinson is head of fisheries for the Georgia DNR. He told lawmakers to know what DNR calls navigable, look where DNR maintains boat ramps, like the one Alan Ragsdale now used upstream of Ben Brewton's property in Yellow Jacket Shoals.

Alan Ragsdale: And basically anywhere we put a boat ramp, we do consider downstream of there to be open to public use.

Grant Blankenship: SELC attorney April Lipscomb says this muddle leaves a situation primed for more lawsuits.

April Lipscomb: There is no really easy way for anglers or boaters or anybody to know definitively which streams are navigable and which streams are not navigable unless they go to the court system.

Grant Blankenship: That could mean fighting over access in court, one river at a time. And as more Georgia greenspace is bought and sold, Lipscomb says lawsuits can imperil any of our chances to float someplace wild. Ben Brewton, whose lawsuit is at the root of the dispute, was at the first House committee hearing. And to some degree, he and Lipscomb apparently agree.

Ben Brewton: This is a slippery slope that we're on and people need to recognize that today it's a fish. Tomorrow it's going to be something else.

Grant Blankenship: The Georgia House Committee on Fishing and Freshwater Resources wraps up its statewide listening tour in December. For GPB News, I'm Grant Blankenship in Macon.

Story 9:

Peter Biello: Georgia is bracing for its first big winter freeze of the season. The National Weather Service in Peachtree City says temperatures are expected to drop below freezing tonight in parts of the state roughly north of Interstate 85, including areas around Atlanta. A freeze warning tomorrow night and Thursday morning warns of potential damage to crops, sensitive vegetation and unprotected outdoor plumbing. Other parts of the state will chill as well with tomorrow's forecast lows of 35 in Albany, 40 in Savannah and 38 in Waycross. The National Weather Service in Jacksonville calls the Halloween cold snap a "ghoul down."

Story 10:

Peter Biello: And in sports, former Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett likely won't play for the Los Angeles Rams this season. That's the word from Rams coach Sean McVay. Bennett has been away from the Rams since the preseason for undisclosed reasons. In basketball, the Atlanta Hawks beat the Minnesota Timberwolves last night 127 to 113. And Game 4 of the World Series takes place tonight in Phoenix between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers. The Rangers lead the series two games to one.

And that is it for this edition of Georgia Today. We hope you have a safe and Happy Halloween. If you want to learn more about any of these stories, visit our website, GPB.org/news. And don't forget to subscribe to this podcast. We will be back tomorrow with more of the top stories from the Peach State. If you've got feedback, we would love to hear from you. Email us. The address is GeorgiaToday@GPB.org. I'm Peter Biello. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

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For more on these stories and more, go to GPB.org/news