Georgia Today: Solar panels boosted; Certificate of Need requirements ended; Voter reg. deadline

Peter Biello: Welcome to the Georgia Today podcast from GPB News. Today is Monday, April 22. I'm Peter Biello. On today's episode, Georgia is getting a big financial boost from the White House to help with solar panel adoption. Gov. Brian Kemp signs a law relaxing some requirements for the construction of rural county hospitals. And today is the day to register to vote in May's upcoming primary election. These stories and more are coming up on this edition of Georgia Today.

Story 1:

Peter Biello: Solar panel adoption is about to get a big boost here in Georgia. An Earth Day announcement from the White House is bringing Georgia $156 million to give the effort a little forward momentum. The grant to the nonprofit Capital Good Fund is part of the National Solar of All program aimed at disadvantaged communities. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm says Georgia has, quote, "the bones of a clean energy-based economy."

Jennifer Granholm: Manufacturing the means to a clean energy future — solar as well — and then making sure that those clean energy products are either on our roofs or part of the cars that we drive. Georgia is really leading, and we want to continue to march arm-in-arm with Georgia.

Peter Biello: The grant includes three cities Atlanta, Savannah, and Decatur.

Story 2:

Peter Biello: Researchers say 42% of Georgia children pay out of network for behavioral health care. That's according to a new report from the research institute RTI International. GPB's Ellen Eldridge reports.

Ellen Eldridge: When a child in Georgia needs a specialist, in-network, psychiatric care is much harder to find than a pediatric surgeon. Doctor Henry Harbin is a parity expert and adviser on RTI's study. He says that's partly because insurance companies choose to reimburse some doctors up to 70% more than they offer psychiatrists.

Dr. Henry Harbin: They're willing to pay this additional funding in order to have an adequate network. They're not willing to do that for, you know, for mental health professionals: inpatient or outpatient.

Ellen Eldridge: Harbin says state regulators must enforce current laws and hold companies accountable when they commit parity violations. For GPB News, I'm Ellen Eldridge.

Story 3:

Peter Biello: Rural county hospital proposals in Georgia are exempt from Certificate of Need requirements. That's under a new law signed Friday by Gov. Brian Kemp.

Brian Kemp: As we continue to experience record-breaking economic growth, the need for health care in all parts of our state is only going to increase.

Peter Biello: The change was part of a package of laws that includes a raise to the Rural Hospital Tax Credit cap, which aims to create a state commission for health care access improvement and new incentives for health care professionals in rural areas.

Story 4:

Peter Biello: Today is the deadline to register to vote in the upcoming May primary election. The election is set for Tuesday, May 21. You can register to vote on the Georgia secretary of state's website. You can also register to vote by mail, by downloading the voter registration application and mailing it to the Georgia secretary of state's office. Once registered, you can see what your ballot will look like before you head to the voting booth.

Story 5:

Peter Biello: Delta Air Lines is raising pay for flight attendants and other nonunion workers by 5%. The Atlanta-based company also said today it's boosting starting pay for all its U.S. jobs to at least $19 an hour. The pay raises affect more than 80,000 employees, and come as Delta braces for another attempt by a union to represent its flight attendants. The Association of Flight Attendants hopes to qualify for another vote among Delta cabin crews by the end of the year.

Story 6:

Peter Biello: New historic markers unveiled in Macon today will serve as the anchor points to a new digital presentation of the city's Black history. GPB's Grant Blankenship explains.

Grant Blankenship: One on Cotton Avenue describes the street's history as Macon's Black Wall Street, home to the city's first black millionaire, Charles Douglass, and where both Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King Jr. once spoke. On Poplar Street, a marker tells the story of the brick-and-mortar market, where the enslaved were browsed in a showroom, and a wall topped with glass shards prevented their escape. Macon native and longtime librarian Muriel McDowell-Jackson carried both histories in her mind for years before being tapped to write them down in bronze.

Muriel McDowell-Jackson: You meet the people, the descendants of some of these people, and they kind of swell up with pride that somebody else knows what their ancestor did — or in this case, what they overcame.

Grant Blankenship: A number of small signs with digital codes will also go up around the city for smartphone access to more of Macon's Black history. For GPB News, I'm Grant Blankenship in Macon.

Story 7:

Peter Biello: In February, a historical marker memorializing Black victims of lynching in DeKalb County was stolen. Organizers who worked to install the marker feel the disappearance is about more than just a missing piece of metal. They say it represents a larger threat to representations of Black history. GPB's Pamela Kirkland explains.

Pamela Kirkland: An empty pole is all that's left of the marker in William A. Kelly Park in Lithuania.

Donetta Smith: And this is where it was. This all cemented. They couldn't take the pole.

Pamela Kirkland: That's Donetta Smith. She spent years researching racial violence in DeKalb County to finally have a historical marker installed here in 2020.

Pamela Kirkland (on location): It's a heavy marker.

Donetta Smith: 200 pounds. Over 200 pounds.

Pamela Kirkland: The marker, if it still exists, honors Ruben Hudson, a Black man who was lynched by a white mob after being accused of raping a white woman in the late 1800s. It also honors two unnamed Black men killed in a separate incident nearby. No one knows exactly when it went missing.

Donetta Smith: And it had to be in the middle of the night because, as you can see, this is a busy corner.

Pamela Kirkland: Near a dollar store in City Hall. Even though Smith grew up in Lithonia during segregation, she said she had no idea this kind of racial violence had taken place.

Donetta Smith: The fact that nobody I talked to knew anything about these lynchings told me that this had been covered up.

Pamela Kirkland: Smith and the DeKalb County NAACP chapter worked with the Equal Justice Initiative's Remembrance Project to create the Lithonia marker. The Montgomery, Ala.-based nonprofit uncovers the history of lynching and honors victims through soil collection ceremonies and by erecting roadside markers. For Albert Fields, communications director for the NAACP DeKalb, the disappearance of the marker felt like a second attack.

Donetta Smith: This is almost like a double lynching. You lynched them the first time; we found out about it, we put a marker to remind everybody, and then you turn around and Lynch them again by stealing the remembrance.

Pamela Kirkland: A marker for Emmett Till, where the 14-year-old's body was pulled out of the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi, has been destroyed three times. The Mississippi community wanted the marker on display to show their history can't be erased from the landscape. They gave one marker to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, where Nancy Bercaw is a curator.

Nancy Bercaw: That's not something that you lightly ask a community to let go of. That sign for many down there is almost as precious as Emmett Till's very body.

Pamela Kirkland: The new marker in Mississippi is bulletproof and surrounded by security cameras. Bercaw says the vandalism of the Emmett Till marker and some other markers honoring Black history is deliberate.

Nancy Bercaw: These are not random acts of violence. It's a really active means to both suppress history, but also to terrorize the community there.

Pamela Kirkland: In 2020, the same year as the murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, a marker to lynching victim Mary Turner in the 1918 lynching rampage in the South Georgia town of Hahira was shot several times. Now, like the Emmett Till marker at the Smithsonian, Turner's vandalized marker has become a museum piece. It will be on display at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. Nicole Moore is the director of education at the center.

Nicole Moore: When people vandalize these markers and the Emmett Till marker, they steal the one in Lithonia — That's saying something. And it's really important that we make sure that people understand the terror didn't stop with the murders.

Pamela Kirkland: You can assume that visitors to the National Center for Civil and Human Rights want to wrestle with this history. But roadside markers serve a different purpose. They can surprise people with the knowledge that they're standing where an atrocity occurred. DeKalb County NAACP president Edwina Clanton says that's what vandals want to destroy.

Edwina Clanton: People don't want them to remember what they was and what land they're standing on. We want them to remember what injustice was done to our people.

Pamela Kirkland: The Equal Justice Initiative is working on a new marker for the Lithonia site. But Donetta Smith says she worries about what comes next.

Donetta Smith: Black history is threatening to some folk and hatred, unfortunately, will always be around. But the haters will not prevail.

Pamela Kirkland: For GPB News, I'm Pamela Kirkland in Lithonia.

Caption

Georgia Aquarium

Credit: File photo

Story 8:

Peter Biello: The Georgia Aquarium introduced their new African penguin chick Rigby on their TikTok page on Friday. The three-month-old chick was born on January 23rd. Every winter, the aquarium's penguin trainers offer the penguins lavender as nesting materials, similar to what they would use in their natural habitat. Rigby is not the penguin habitat — Rigby is not in the penguin habitat quite yet, as he still needs to learn how to swim.

Story 9:

Peter Biello: In sports. The most winning quarterback in Atlanta Falcons history has announced his retirement from the NFL. Matt Ryan said in a video message posted on social media that he's thankful the Falcons gave him a chance to play professional sports. Since the 39-year-old has not played since a single disappointing season with the Indianapolis Colts in 2022, he worked last season as an analyst for CBS. In his 14 years with the Falcons. Ryan led the team into the playoffs six times and into the Super Bowl once — a game the Falcons lost to the New England Patriots. In baseball, Bryce Elder is scheduled to take the mound tonight as the Braves welcome the Miami Marlins to Truist Park for the first of a three-game series. This will mark his first start for the Braves since last season. Over the weekend, the Braves won two of three against the Texas Rangers. Friday night, catcher Travis Darnell carried the team with three home runs, including a grand slam, totaling six RBIs. Darnell went deep again on Saturday night. Designated hitter Marcell Ozuna's hitting streak ended Saturday at 17, as he went 0 for 3 with a walk, but his bat remains hot. He homered yesterday, bringing his season total to nine, which leads the major leagues. In volleyball, the Atlanta Vibe pulled out a four-set win over the Orlando Valkyries yesterday afternoon. The Vibe claimed their eighth win in their last nine matches, a streak they'll look to maintain heading into their final two matches of the 2024 regular season. The win helps the Vibe remain at the top of the Pro Volleyball Federation standings, after the team already clinched a postseason spot last week, which is set to begin May 15 in Omaha, Nebraska. And in soccer, Cincinnati beat Atlanta United 2 to 1 on Saturday. Atlanta United star Yorgos Giakoumakis subbed in for Daniel Rios in the 60th minute, after missing the last two matches with an injury. Atlanta United travels to play the Chicago Fire on Saturday.

Peter Biello: And that is it for this edition of Georgia Today. If you want to learn more about any of these stories, visit our website GPB.org/news. And if you haven't subscribed to the podcast, take a moment. Do it now. That way we'll pop up in your podcast feed automatically tomorrow afternoon. And if you have feedback for us, or perhaps a story idea you'd like to pitch, let us know by email. The address is GeorgiaToday@GPB.org. I'm Peter Biello. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

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