House Rural Development Committee, June 11, 2026

Transcript

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1. 0:16:53

   Members, if you'd go ahead and grab a drink and some breakfast if you need it, and come on over and sit down, we'll get started in just a moment.

2. 0:19:45

   Okay, every- everyone, I'm gonna call this meeting of the House Rural Development Committee to order. Members, if y'all could come have a seat. Thank you so much. Thank y'all for being here today in the beautiful city of Vidalia on a beautiful June morning. Um, first thing I wanna do is thank our, uh, greater Vidalia Chamber of Commerce, and the Toombs County Development Authority, and everyone who took part in planning this, uh, this meeting today.

3. 0:20:19

   And thank y'all for, for welcoming us into this beautiful facility that we have here in downtown Vidalia. I wanna make sure I acknowledge House Media Services for everything they do for us to make our meetings happen smoothly- ... every single time. And Ben, I don't know how I feel about you being here taking photos the whole time, but I do appreciate you, Ben.

4. 0:20:48

   Um, and I, I, I, you know, would be remiss if I did not at every opportunity thank Leo Chancy, our senior policy director, for everything that he does. He is truly the brain trust of rural development, and I, I'm so thankful that even though we had to share you with the Rules Committee during session, that, that we have you with us in the interim. I'm sure we are not gonna have you back during session because of the phenomenal y- job you did, but, uh, we're happy to get you when we can.

5. 0:21:21

   All right. Um, first thing I'm gonna do is ask our Vice Chair, Joe Campbell, to open us up in a word of prayer, and then we're gonna hear from Doug Roper, the mayor of Vidalia.

6. 0:21:35

   Father, we just thank you for this day. Just thank you for this great nation that you've given us to be in. We thank you for this group of people that have a heart to, uh, to do good and to lead, lead things in the right way, and we just lift this meeting up. We pray your blessing on it and, uh, and, and anoint it, and that we do, Father, your will in us in all that we do. Thank you. Amen.

7. 0:21:58

   Mayor Roper, the city looks great this morning. It's perfect weather here.

8. 0:22:10

   So first, welcome to Vidalia. Uh, it's a pleasure to be here with you. Um, sorry I couldn't be with you last night. I'm sure knowing who your hosts were, I'm sure you had an amazing evening, um, at Terra Doca, but I was on the ball field. So I wear a bunch of different hats around here. Uh, local branch manager, Vidalia Federal Savings Bank, mayor, husband, father. So this time of year, I help coach my youngest son in All Stars, and we were on the ball field yesterday for the majority of the afternoon, but I can gladly report to you that we were able to battle back through the loser's bracket and win three games yesterday and, and won a district championship.

9. 0:22:53

   So-

10. 0:22:56

    ... we will, we'll keep working and, and, uh, compete in Statesboro over in Bulloch for a state championship later this month. But, um, I do wanna i- in, in my remarks use two examples of why the work you do is so important. Um, and I'm really, really glad that Steven McComas is sitting in this room. So if we wanted to have this meeting here five and a half years ago, our lives would've been on the line.

11. 0:23:28

    Because what this piece of property used to be to what it is today is hard to describe if you never saw what was here in the heart of downtown. It was a rundown motel that had become a place where people came and their hopes and their dreams died, where people overdosed, prostitution, gunshots. It was as bad as bad can get. But through strategic planning and partnerships, you now see what is here today, and it's where people come for their hopes and their dreams to be realized.

12. 0:24:08

    So the work that you do for rural communities is vitally important. The second example I wanna give you is September 26th of 2024, our community experienced the worst natural disaster we've ever seen. And one of the reasons why it was vitally important that we get back on our feet quickly wasn't just about serving those that call Vidalia or Toombs County home, but we are a hub for about a five to seven county area.

13. 0:24:41

    So that was early on when the leaders of both cities and the county were in the same room together planning on how are we going to respond, what are we gonna do. That was one of the first things that we discussed. We are vitally important, not just to our citizens, but for a five to seven county radius. We had to get back on our feet. So I know the, the work that you're charged with doing, um, is kinda burdensome. Um, when you might be looking at healthcare, education, um, quality of life issues, but they are vitally important for rural communities because we matter.

14. 0:25:20

    Uh, we might not be metro

15. 0:25:22

    But we know our role and we wanna be the be-best version of us. So, um, I know you could probably be in, uh, a variety of different communities today, but you're in our community. You're in Toombs County. You're in the city of Vidalia. We thank you for the work that you do from, uh, I'm gonna s- say this word very st- strategically, from one elected official to another. I wanna say thank you for the work that you do, and I say elected official because there's an, a difference between being an elected official and a politician.

16. 0:25:55

    If you wanna offend me, call me a politician. But from one elected official to another, thank you for the work that you do. Thank you for being in our community and welcome to Vidalia. Thank you, Mayor Roper. I can assure you, Mr. Mayor, that there are no politicians on this committee. Uh, right. I don't think any of us consi- consider ourselves politicians. And in fact, I, I'm with you, Mr. Mayor. I, I'm offended when somebody calls me that, that dirty word.

17. 0:26:26

    Anyway, um, y- I, I can think of nobody better to have led the community through that horrible situation than, than you and, and a lot of other people too. But, but thanks, thanks for, for what you did there and, and, uh, and for bringing up what this corner of the community was just a very few years ago. A lot of good... It's just an example of what good strategic planning and teamwork in a rural community can do.

18. 0:26:58

    So thank you. All right. Um, first up on our agenda is to hear from, uh, the Geo- Georgia Forestry Commission commissioner-- uh, director. Sorry. Let me get this right, Johnny. The director of the Georgia Forestry Commission, Johnny Sabo. We cannot have a meeting of the Rural Development Committee and not talk about forestry, especially these past two years. So thank you for coming down early this morning to give us an update.

19. 0:27:32

    Absolutely. Thank y'all and, and, uh, it is a pleasure to be here. So, um, for those that I don't know, my name is Johnny Sabo. I, I do have the pleasure of serving as the director for the Georgia Forestry Commission. And, um, I will say the last year and a half has been a whirlwind. And before I start this presentation, just I, I do wanna give a personal thanks to this, this committee and a lot of other people in this room. Um, if it was-- if it's not for the support in this state, I, I don't know the last year and a half how anybody even survives this job. So just thank you 'cause it's, it's been a lot, but we still have a long way to go.

20. 0:28:03

    Um, I always like to show this slide because this is something that I have to refer back to often and, and we're gonna talk about it, um, multiple times throughout the presentation. But, you know, using facts to drive our decision-making, that, that's really what we're all about. Also wanted to show this slide because the, the picture here is actually of what we call a reburn on the Highway 8182 fire, which some people in this room are probably pretty familiar with. Um, but when people ask why we have fires open for so long, this is what happens. After initial fire goes through, we have needle cast. The needles fall over the established lines.

21. 0:28:34

    It reburns across, and then it's, it's gone. And so this-- it just takes a long time to really extinguish fires of this size. Um, before we really jump into the fires, I wanna talk about just some of our landowner services. Get asked this often. Uh, but burn authorizations, the, the one point four eight million acres burned this year is actually our seventh highest year. So throughout the drought conditions and everything else, a lot of good work done by state agencies, federal partners, and private practitioners. Um, fire breaks, forty-two hundred miles put in in the Helene area alone.

22. 0:29:08

    That's not counting our normal fire breaks. I know we still have roughly thirty jobs pending. Um, wh- when I say this, I'm, I'm actually happy to say this. We have about thirty jobs that's gotten too wet that we can't push through. So I, I'm okay with that, that statement right now. So, um, but we're, we're still continuing to, to clean up those that originally signed up to have fire breaks and roads cleaned out. Um, on top of that, just some of our numbers for just burns completed this fiscal year-- or burn assists completed for this fiscal year, a hundred and twenty-eight thousand acres.

23. 0:29:40

    Um, usually we do about ten percent of our total number. We're down a little bit low this year, but for obvious reasons, we kinda had to stop pretty early in prescribed fire and, and shift our, our efforts. Uh, forest industry updates. So I'll spend a little bit of time here. But the first thing I wanna start with is kinda call your attention to the, the picture, and that's just a rendering, um, of the facility that's going into Morgan Green, our Morgan Green County unit. And so that will be the state's first mass timber facility as far as the state agency is concerned. Um, I'm, I'm really happy with where we are in that process.

24. 0:30:12

    Architectural drawings are complete. Working with SmartLam out of Dothan. Uh, we're guaranteed to source Georgia-grown lumber, so w- we will know that it is, it is Georgia-grown timber that's gonna make that facility. Um, and doing really well on a budget. So that was one thing I know that I got challenged when we were presenting about the-- uh, about it as far as, you know, it-- 'cause there's a, there's a, a misconception out there that mass timbers roughly cost about ten percent more than normal building materials. Well, I'm actually happy to say that so far through all projections, I, I, I feel pretty good about being under budget to the point where we're gonna build a learning facility onto the back and still be under budget.

25. 0:30:53

    And so that'll-- that one can serve as there's a Morgan Green land in our group. Um, a lot of people in the community are excited about it. Training with our fire department. So just a lot of different things we can do with that facility. But really, really happy with where that's progressing. So we're going through civil now. I don't have a date yet of, of expected completion, but we're, we're, we're doing the site prep, um, working through civil engineering, and then once we have that, we'll place the order with SmartLam, which they're expecting, and then we'll get moving on it. So, um, very excited about that project

26. 0:31:23

    Georgia Grown Wood, uh, that is a true collaboration between Georgia Forest Commission, Georgia Forestry Foundation, Department of Ag, private industry, and economic development. Uh, there's been a four-part video series created. They are working through those right now. A designated website for Georgia Grown Wood to go live sometime in July. And then from that, the actual informational material, kiosk handouts, and everything else for economic development to go promote Georgia Grown Wood to, you know, not just around the state, but to other states, you know, other countries, and then really highlight who we are and what we have to offer.

27. 0:32:01

    Uh, the Forestry Innovation Initiative, that was a project between us and Georgia Tech. Um, that project is well underway. I don't know if anybody has, has heard, um, but Carson, Dr. Carson Meredith, who was leading the Renewable Bioproducts Institute, he got picked up to be a department head at the University of Tennessee. So happy for him, um, hate to lose him, but, but, um, we have somebody stepping in right behind him, and so that, that project's moving forward. The other thing we did at the Forestry Commission was we reallocated a position to solely focus on this.

28. 0:32:35

    Um, so we, we created an associate chief, our utilization and marketing division. And that is his job. His name's Ryan Phillips. He was our associate chief in forest management, and he will do outstanding with it. Uh, the goal is to have a request for proposal out shortly after the, the first of the fiscal year, um, receive those bids back, and we're already working with some private companies to make sure things that we're throwing out there would align, you know, w- with, with their practices. And we get those out there and then get that moving and start getting a pilot facility built. So my goal is by the time we start regular session, not, not next week, we start regular session, that, that we're telling you, "Hey, we're breaking ground here and, and here's, here's, here's where we're going." Um, economic development.

29. 0:33:16

    Sorry, I'm gonna have to grab some notes real quick.

30. 0:33:22

    I actually got this from Sydney yesterday, and I just thought this was a great stat. So, so far in, in this fiscal year, we've had 40 new leads, landed 21 projects for 243 new jobs, retained 1,484 additional jobs to secure for $150.1 million in investment in the forest industry, right? So I, I know we lost the pulp and paper mills that, that utilize a lot of woods, and we have a long way to go, but this just shows me how dedicated everybody is to, to ensuring this industry stays viable and stays on its feet.

31. 0:33:53

    And, uh, they are outstanding partners to work with. And the last bullet point on here, SGSF stands for Southern Group of State Foresters. So that's, that's myself and my 12 other counterparts. Uh, we got to meet last, last week in, uh, in Florida was our annual meeting. And every state is facing this, and I know we talked about it. South Carolina lost industry a couple years ago. Uh, Alabama and Mississippi, um, have been ahead of us to some degree. And so we're trying to look at this holistically as well. So I'll, I'll give you an example of the three mill closures we had.

32. 0:34:23

    We lost 8.2 million tons. Well, Georgia lost about 4 million tons. The other 4 million tons was coming out of Florida, Alabama, South Carolina, right? Historically, these mills are somewhere on our border. And while I want them in Georgia, if, if somebody just has a different incentive, so like, I, I'll give an example. We've been working with a company, and they, they basically want a cash handout from the state. Georgia does not do that. South Carolina is willing to do that. Well, if we can locate them, say, you know, in Aiken, where there's a bridge, and we can pull wood still from Georgia landowners, to me, that's still a win.

33. 0:34:58

    And so th- those are some of the things we're trying to work through t- collectively, and, and how do we not just attract them to Georgia, but how do we attract them to the Southeast? And so that, that's really important when we talk about, you know, the future of forestry because while South Georgia has been the primary wood basket of the world, collectively it is really the Southeast. And, and I'm gonna talk about some of those numbers holistically at the end of the pr- presentation.

34. 0:35:24

    Um, back up to, to the wildfires and just emergency response a little bit. And I-- we've had a lot of questions about, you know, if you knew fires were coming, how have you prepared? What have you done? So I wanna take a step back. About two years ago, we restructured. And I think many of y'all have heard this before, and we, we, we basically took everything that was siloed and forced it together and, and put decision-making down to the lowest possible level. Um, when we announced that restructuring, it was in November. It went live in January, which is the peak of our landowner services. And our landowner services went up by 35% over a five-year average.

35. 0:35:56

    Not adding positions, not doing anything, you know, that, that needs help or investment. It's really just a restructuring and, and, you know, giving people the decision-making space and the tools and resources they need. Um, you know, and it continues to, to, you know, evaluate and, and learn from past things. Um, I, I did this presentation earlier this week to the Southern Commodity Conference for all the Southern states for Farm Bureau. And, and I gave us an example for after-action reviews, and that's something we will continue to do, especially after these fires that we've just had.

36. 0:36:28

    But something as simple as the hurricanes, um, it, it's a silly example, but I think it's a great one. We learned after Michael, if a major hurricane's coming through, we leave all the bay doors open because the roof may blow off, but we can get our equipment out. If the bay doors are twisted and pinned shut, we can't help anybody, right? So, um, we keep notes from every fire that we've ever had in a database, and we can go back and review it or every incident we've ever worked. And then, of course, I don't think I have to tell you all about the legislative investment and what that has meant to, to our group. And I really, really just wanna say thank you.

37. 0:37:00

    But when you look at some of these numbers, they're really pretty impressive. When we talk about, you know, 63 tractors in the last two years, um, I'll tell you we still got some work to go, so I hope to talk about that this coming winter. Um, you know, the 42% raise over the last five years for our wildland firefighters has made a huge difference, and, and our foresters. Uh, the new suppression helicopter increased operational funding and then just interoperability. And that interoperability made a big difference with our other state agencies this, this year. Um, we still have a long way to go on that when we start talking about working with volunteer fire and, and other emergency management, you know, at, at the local county level.

38. 0:37:37

    But it is, it is well on its way, and we are headed where we need to.

39. 0:37:44

    Wildfire preparedness. Um, just as a side note, this, this is the Highway 82 fire, and when a lot of people are saying, "Hey, why, uh, why can't you stop it?" Or, "What's happening here?" This was the day it made a significant run towards the Browntown Road, towards the northeast side of the fire where we, we lost more homes unfortunately. Um, what is happening here is what we call a plume-dominated wildfire, which people will say, "Oh, a fire's plume-dominated." It's actually really rare. Um, unfortunately, it was not rare for multiple days on both of these fires. But if you look at the twist and convection it has, we, we had roughly 150-foot flame lengths.

40. 0:38:18

    So when people are saying, "Hey, put the fire out," we're trying to put out a, you know, tornado on fire with 150-foot flames with tractors. And so at, at the end of the day, there's really not much you can do but protect people, animals, get everybody out of the way, and wait for a change in conditions. We have to wait for a tactical advantage. And so tho- those were kind of some of the things that people were facing in a really just a very dangerous situation and in happy with the safety record we had there. Uh, we do have a Type 3 incident management team that was established a couple years ago.

41. 0:38:50

    They have went everywhere from Alaska to California, North Georgia, Florida, have been all over and really brought back a wealth of experience, and they were very instrumental in the Pineland fire. Um, they deployed to the Pineland fire. This the-- Well, it broke out on the 18th, they deployed on the 19th, and this fire started on the 20th. So we kind of got behind the curve with, uh, with the resources to have another management team to come in. Um, but you know, it worked out. Fuel mitigation, uh, that's the, uh, the program that has administered, um, the $135 million that was allocated to us and $132 million for landowners.

42. 0:39:27

    I want to say during session, I was reporting only somewhere around eight million spent. We're, we're somewhere around 18 million now. That program has really started to pick up and funding's starting to increase, and we expect that to really increase once block grant funding goes out. Uh, a little over 42,000 acres have been cleaned up through that program, so just instrumental. Um, I won't go into all these, but one thing I, I, I will really touch on is the, the increased public relations and outreach. And to me, what's been vital on that one is not just general public, but is just the, the increased, um, from where I sit, you know, with, with groups like y'all, with the governor's office, having that communication.

43. 0:40:05

    And so I know I've got a lot of questions around the burn ban that we did, and I just-- I want to kind of peel back the layers for this group on how that happened and, and the why, and w- why we decided to use that tool when we did. And so I was able to go sit down with, with the governor's chief of staff, Lauren, I want to say it's February 19th, and said, you know, "Hey, here's my authority. Here's the governor's authority. And just so you know, when people are calling the governor to do a burn ban, unless he does an executive order and it gets very specific, if he declares a burn ban in this state, by law, it stops all hunting, fishing, logging, movement of equipment in the woods, and it's l- labeled as an extreme fire emergency." So we don't ever want the governor to issue a burn ban in this state because of the way the law's written.

44. 0:40:48

    But I have the authority to do so in cooperation with, with Commissioner Harper, and so that we can, we can limit silviculture and ag burning, and we work with the counties to do debris burning and land clearing. And so to me, that was a tool when our resources got stretched so thin and we knew Florida was going to be stretched thin. That's the only place that really has tractors that can fight fire in southern rough like we have, that we had no choice but to implement that. So it was more from a resource allocation standpoint, and as soon as we were able to free up some resources and start moving them, you know, back to their home units, then that's, that's when we lifted that burn ban.

45. 0:41:26

    Um, Pineland Road fire. I kind of want to set the stage for this a little bit. We had been running fires since December 8th. That was our-- December 8th was our last day we had not run significant fire. So while session was going on and everybody's trying to do a lot of prescribed burning, we were extremely busy. Um, I mentioned meeting with Lauren on, on February 19th. February 22nd, we had our first thousand-plus acre fire. And these things tend to increase exponentially unless we, unless we get a lot of rainfall. And we know we were getting into D4 drought conditions and what was, what was starting to happen.

46. 0:41:58

    And, uh, so February 22nd, we had that fire. We, we had the first thousand-acre fire in Charlton County. April 2nd, we had what was known as the Shar- Sargent fire. Started in Florida. We, we caught it in Georgia. Um, that fire was only 2,400 acres, but it was on two federal agencies, two states, and three counties, right? So that just sounds like heartburn when you, when you think about it. But really through the GOAL organization, if you've ever heard of that, the Greater Okefenokee Alliance of Landowners, we were able to, um, all work together to suppress that fire pretty quickly.

47. 0:42:31

    Fast-forward to the 18th, Pineland Road fire. Um, that fire was what we call truly fuels driven, which a lot of times in, in our part of the world where we don't have topography like the mountains and they're wind driven, but our fuels were so dry and so volatile, they were running in multiple different directions. So, um, if you look on the 20th, and it's-- I don't know if I have a pointer here or not. Anyway, we had a head here, head here. It was running this way and running that way. So we had four heads going in multiple directions at once, and that, that trend kind of continued.

48. 0:43:04

    And it was the same thing we were seeing on the 82 fire until the, the sea breeze would sl- hit us in the afternoon. Uh, that-- the Pineland fire, unfortunately, 35, uh, hunt camps were lost, but no homes. Um, the city of Fruitland was threatened for a lot of the fire. Um, and then on the very west end, there's a road called Will Ruish Road, and we know that was a pretty critical point for us and-- 'cause if it jumped that road, we would've had to evacuate the community of Statenville. And so that, that was a very, very critical piece for us.

49. 0:43:35

    Um, can't thank our counterparts from Florida enough, just some of the relationships that our guys on the south end have. That evening when it was hitting the road hard, they called them and, and If y'all know anybody from Florida, thank them because they didn't, they didn't ask permission. They just came and helped, and then they went home the next morning, snuck back across the line. But if we wouldn't have had that cooperation, I don't know that we would've held it on this road. Um, and of course, I can't thank our people enough. Uh, at peak, two hundred and seventy-two personnel, twelve aircraft. That's a lot moving around in the air.

50. 0:44:05

    And this fire, uh, total cost was somewhere right around fifteen million.

51. 0:44:11

    Highway eighty-two fire, about ten thousand acres smaller, but unfortunately the worst home loss we've ever had from a single fire in this state. A hundred and ten homes lost. But on the other side of that, just within the fire footprint, so I'm not talking about just on the fringes, I mean within the fire footprint, three hundred and fifty homes saved, right? And I think that number gets lost a lot. And so there, there's a lot of people I'm very thankful for because that, that was, uh, extreme conditions. Um, I didn't mention on the Pineland fire we had one minor injury and one minor injury on this fire.

52. 0:44:44

    So for the conditions, the amount of moving, moving pieces and parts, six hundred and thirty-two personnel, um, the, the amount of aircraft that was in the air. At one point we had ten what we call LATs, large air tankers, doing load and returns from Lake City. We, uh, we actually started to run out of jet fuel and retardant in Lake City and started having to do it from Chattanooga. And so I, I don't-- I'm fairly positive when I say between us and Florida this past year, we've done more tanker drops in about two weeks than we did in all the other years combined in the history of our states.

53. 0:45:18

    Um, but absolutely crucial to what we were doing. And just so you know that our federal counterparts, they, they, as soon as they started seeing everything happen, they moved everything from across the country and had it staged to us without us even asking. So once again, those relationships matter and the, and the communication and working beforehand matter. Uh, this fire total cost was just under twenty million. Um, and, and I will throw the caveat, the one cost that I don't track is National Guard, and I think they were somewhere between three and four. I know the governor's office does.

54. 0:45:49

    But for all other resources, contractual, other state agencies and everything else, we're looking about thirty-five million between these two fires. To put that in perspective, my annual budget is fifty-two million. So yeah.

55. 0:46:06

    So fiscal year to date, where are we? Um, forty-nine hundred wildfires, right? Eighty-eight percent increase in fires. Um, so just really dry year, which I don't think I have to stress to or tell anybody about. Um, we take a lot of pride in our average fire size being five acres. We took a hit to that this year, so we're, we're gonna need a few years to kind of work that back down. But average fire size of eighteen acres. And, uh, you know, really just once again, just a, a lot of effort and a lot of work done by our, by our team a- and many other cooperating agencies, es- especially the DNR.

56. 0:46:41

    I, I do want to mention them. They were a, a huge help to us. But Department of Ag, um, uh, h- uh, State Patrol, I mean, every agency was engaged. I mean, I even seen a Department of Corrections fire crew out there. I mean, there, there was-- When I say we put everybody on deck, the day that the, the Brantley County fire happened in Treutlen County, we had somebody dragging a grill down the road. It must have had hot embers. I'm assuming it was either a grill or dragging chains, and they lit ten miles of highway frontage. And so we had our local board member from here out there helping move equipment around.

57. 0:47:14

    So when-- if, if they had a GFC title in some way, shape, or form, they went to work. And so we, we had our board members engaged in everything we could do. It was truly all hands on deck.

58. 0:47:25

    And then just, just looking ahead, you know, what, what does this mean for us? Um, you know, we're gonna go back and we're gonna do our after-action reviews. We're gonna work with the GM Incident, All Hazard Incident Management Team on what they seen and what we can do better next time. How do we need to train better? Is there something we can do at GIPSTIC a little bit more to train our fire departments? Um, is there a way that we can help outfit our rural fire departments better? And what I do want to close with is when we talk about wildfire, and everybody see-- thinks wildfire's a Western issue, the Southeast, once again, I'm going Texas, Oklahoma, up to Virginia, fifty-six percent of all wildfires in the nation happen in the Southeast.

59. 0:48:01

    But the Southeast is private lands management with a robust prescribed burn program and healthy forests, and so we're just really aggressive. Um, roughly ninety-three million acres in urban interface. So what we've seen in Brantley County, roughly eighty-four percent of Georgians live in the urban interface like that. So, so nobody's immune from it. If we think we live in the mountains or somewhere else, you don't have to look back too far to think about, um, 2017 when we were having a lot of fires in Appalachian Mountains. We had them in north Georgia. Um, it's just, it's part of it.

60. 0:48:31

    It happens. And in the Southeast, we also fight fire roughly three hundred days out of the year. Um, we don't have season ending snow events, and our firefighters go become ski instructors, you know, during the winter months. And so it is, it is truly a full-time job. Um, the other thing, you know, we face is when we talk about forest health issues, southern pine beetle, Mississippi and Alabama has been facing that a lot, loss of industry. They range from Arkansas to South Carolina, and then defragmentation. So the, the latest stats show that roughly twenty-three million acres of forest land are projected to be lost by 2060.

61. 0:49:04

    You know, so how do we protect our forests? How do we protect our way of life? But the good news is, you know, the South, in my mind, continues to lead the way, right? Uh, seventy percent of the nation's prescribed burns happen in the South, so seven point five million acres, and there's a lot that other states are finally starting to catch on to, to help with that. Uh, two hundred and forty-five million acres of for- forest land and two hundred and fifty billion in economic impact, fifty-nine billion in Georgia alone. And so when we talk about forestry, we understand it, it's, it's our livelihoods, it's our jobs, and it's our way of life.

62. 0:49:38

    And so that, that's something that the Georgia Forest Commission, I know the association and many others are, are really committed to protecting. And I know many of y'all in this room, so are all of y'all. And I just, I just want to say thank you. I, I do appreciate the opportunity. Um- And, uh, I think the last thing that I did not hit on that I wanna touch on real quick is block grant. I get a lot of questions about that, and of course, Commissioner Harper and his team are leading the way. Uh, we have roughly 5,800 applications. Uh, I don't know the breakdown between forest and other commodities, um, but that takes a moment to go through those applications.

63. 0:50:11

    We have roughly 20 reviewers. Uh, I have nine foresters that are fully dedicated to just reviewing those applications and trying to work with landowners. And, and we understand some of those-- sometimes this process can be cumbersome, and, uh, unfortunately there is things that we have to collect for the federal government to be able to hand money out. And so one thing that we're committed to is making sure we get it right working with the landowners or, or their representatives. So we're-- there's a lot of time spent going back and forth and making sure that we are helping them get that application 100% correct. And so that, that's our goal.

64. 0:50:41

    I know that's Commissioner Harper's goal, and also a goal of just getting the money out as quickly as possible, but we want it to be right. So with that, I will hush and I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you very much for that. I, I appreciate that you bring the science of forestry to us whenever you present. I think that's something that I think is lost on a whole lot of people that just drive by the pine trees- Mm-hmm ... on a daily basis. They don't think about the science and the data that, that you at the commission are, are using to make sure that that industry is healthy and protected.

65. 0:51:17

    And despite all the challenges that it has faced lately- That's right ... um, you've got some great programs you're working on, and, and I thank you for that. I, I'm sure we have some questions from the committee. I have one, um, just to start with. Is it true that a member of our committee is a volunteer firefighter and came down from extreme Mor- North Georgia- Allegedly. Yes, ma'am ... uh, to, to fight that fire? Yes, ma'am. And, and I-- and is that true? It a- absolutely.

66. 0:51:48

    Absolutely. That's what I thought. Although I didn't get to see him, but everybody I bumped into said, "Have you seen Chastain out here?" I said, "I, I have not," but- Oh, good ... yeah. So, so for, for those watching and for those of you here, I, I wanna make sure y'all know that Representative Johnny Chastain, uh, just about last summer I think, became a volunteer firefighter. Is that right? Firefighter one, firefighter two. Yeah. Thank you. And- Well- ... and immediately, um, came down to South Georgia to help out when, when, when, when he was needed, so thank you for that.

67. 0:52:20

    There, there was, there was over 100 different departments from Georgia there, 150 different structural apparatus. Um, there was a lot of moving pieces and parts- Yeah ... for sure. So something I'd like to never do again. I hope not. I think that's something important to, to make sure everybody understands that our, our state operates very well as a team. Our agencies, um, there's a lot of d- moving parts when it comes to running a, a state of our size. But I think that for the most part, especially when it comes to agriculture and forestry, uh, our different agencies and, um, partners work very well together.

68. 0:52:57

    W- do you feel? Oh, a- absolutely. So I'll, I'll give a, a ... You know, once again, I, I mentioned DNR. Here's-- I mean, so my, my main communications person, um, she had an emergency happen. She had to step away the day the Brantley County fire broke out. And so we had worked with DNR during, um, the ice storms, and so I knew their main external affairs, Haley, and I called Walter. I said, "Walter," I said, "I need Haley's help." And he said, "She'll, she'll be there this afternoon, whatever you need." You know, and so she was essentially a GFC employee until we were wrapped up or until Wendy, our communications person, was able to come back.

69. 0:53:32

    And in between that, tractors, like I said, uh, Commissioner Tyler Harper, you know, he was out there. Uh, the governor, at least three trips, um, out, out there that he was with me. I'm not real sure if he ran any, uh, operations or I wasn't with him, but that's, um, you know, it just, just fully engaged. And, and once again, when I said all hands on deck, I think the video that some scene of the, there's a, a light dropping retardant back behind a white house. That was, uh, that, that was me calling back there, working that one. So when I said it was all hands on deck, it was, it was all hands on deck, and just, yeah, couldn't, couldn't do it without the team.

70. 0:54:05

    That's great. Uh, we do have a few committee questions. Yes, ma'am. And committee, I would just, um, we're already a few minutes behind, and we do have a hard stop point, but I do want you to be able to ask your questions, but let's keep them pretty to the point and, and work them pretty quickly. I'll just start over here with, uh, Representative Mike Cameron. Well, number one, I just want to thank you for your diligence. Um, you've called me from airports and all kinds of other places. Yes, sir. You, you stay on top of stuff. And as you know, I have three mountains in, in my district, and a couple years ago, one of them kind of lit up a little bit, and y'all stayed at it and stayed at it.

71. 0:54:40

    It was stubborn, but it, it wasn't humongous, but it was big enough to, to be worrisome to the population. And I think the one thing we need to realize is in Georgia, we have a lot of good people in the right spots, and you're one of them, and I appreciate your, your efforts. Thank you, sir. I just want to say that. Representative Campbell. I couldn't quite follow all your numbers in ‑‑ but is it a fair statement to say that basically every county in Georgia was, was sending equipment?

72. 0:55:12

    Absolutely. Yes, sir. Yeah. Um, a few of the counties around this area, I didn't strip down to one tractor, but for the most part, every county I had to strip down to one tractor or leave a chief ranger on a tractor and send everybody else. Uh, we, we pulled a all hands on deck. Um, every forester, every person I had was either in fire or fire suppression. Uh, a lot of moving pieces, parts people don't see. We even called what we call an expanded dispatch and set up an area command in Macon, and I pulled people from Alaska and all over the place to help move resources around.

73. 0:55:42

    And so, um, Macon was a, a happening place. And so yes, sir, it was-- We had, we had state-to-state resources from, uh, uh, I think 13 different states, uh, as far as Alaska, and on top of all the federal resources from everywhere. We had seven type one hand crews in South Georgia, which I'm not sure that we've ever had that even when the swamp's burning, that many hand crews. Um, but it was just because of the urban interface and the amount of ... attention to detail that every, every little thing needed. So we would, we would take drones and fly twice a day just around the houses with, with IR cameras, and then immediately give that data to the, to the hand crews, and they can go find those hotspots- ...

74. 0:56:23

    and immediately extinguish them a- along with the volunteer fire department. So it was, uh, it, it- we were as aggressive as we could be when we could be.

75. 0:56:30

    All right. Chairman Greene.

76. 0:56:33

    Thank you. Uh, Director, you had the perfect storm here, that everything that could go wrong, you know, set you up for a disaster in the State of Georgia. What can the legislature do, knowing some of the things you're faced with, what can we do to make sure that if we have this again, what could we do at the legislature to, uh, help you?

77. 0:57:04

    Not getting into specifics, but I'll say just the, the continued support. We're gonna have up years and down years, right? We're gonna have wet years. But if we, if we let our fleet, our tractors, our technology fall behind, then when we do have a year like this, we're years behind, right? We've been working on this for two or three years to have the right moving pieces and parts, um, for when this did happen, and unfortunately, we still lost 110 homes. And so it's just that continued diligence, just understanding-

78. 0:57:28

    Yeah

79. 0:57:29

    ... that we're gonna have good years and we're gonna have bad years. And, um, and just not letting our foot off the throttle. But I'm... Yes, sir.

80. 0:57:38

    Representative Williams.

81. 0:57:41

    Thank you, Madam Chair. I, I was going down, I went down several times. I was gonna help fight the fire, Johnny, but when I heard Chastain was there- ... I gave in to him.

82. 0:57:52

    Yes, sir.

83. 0:57:53

    Um, the two mill closings in my area, one in Riceboro, in my county, and of course, IP-

84. 0:58:00

    Yep

85. 0:58:00

    ... in Savannah.

86. 0:58:01

    Yes, sir.

87. 0:58:01

    Over 1,300 jobs and affected about 5,000 landowners. W- Has any progress been made, I haven't gotten an update lately, on the fumigation restrictions with the European U- Union that prevents us from shipping chips?

88. 0:58:22

    That one continues to be a challenge. Um, I know the AGL, Advancing Georgia Leaders, they actually met with EUDR and, and European leadership. They went over there this past summer, um, or this past spring, sorry. And that was, uh, you know, one of the topics along with the, the EUDR regulation. Unfortunately, I think that's gonna be one that's continued, gonna continue to be a battle. Um, I do know there's a new company coming into the port there that's gonna increase exports, at least that's what we're projecting. Uh, I got to speak with some, some of the Georgia port people, I think Monday evening.

89. 0:58:55

    Um, and they're, they're pretty excited about the project and the projections. Uh, the other thing I will say is, while I'm not under any, um, NDAs, I've worked pretty hard to build some trust and confidence, so I won't disclose anything. But I'll say there are several projects that, that I feel like, and economic development feel like are very real and, and, um, have been established in other places. So it's not somebody with just an idea, you know, that, that they are really focusing in on Georgia. And so that's, uh, I'm, I continue to re- remain optimistic.

90. 0:59:28

    Um, I'd like to get an announcement sometime soon. That would make me feel better, knowing that E won't say announce, we're probably, you know, two to three years from even taking wood. But I really continue to remain optimistic about it. Yes, sir.

91. 0:59:39

    Thank you.

92. 0:59:40

    Thank you. We're gonna do one last question. Uh, our volunteer firefighter, Representative Johnny Chastain.

93. 0:59:47

    Oh, thank, thank you, Chair Lady. Now, I will be really quick, but I co- I had to just make a couple of quick comments about what I saw that, um... So we went to Echols, Clinch, and Brantley, the Pineland fire and the 82 fire. But really the comments I would wanna make is what I personally saw out of the Georgia Forestry Commission group. And I mean, there was hundreds of assets there from all over, um, Georgia. The Insurance Commissioner's Office, as you said, uh, Department of Ag, and it just went on and on. But the, the Forestry Commission was unbelievable, really.

94. 1:00:17

    I mean-

95. 1:00:18

    Thank you

96. 1:00:18

    ... and the, the way you got, it was just the, the equipment, the, the personnel, uh, all the, the briefings, the meetings. But-

97. 1:00:26

    Mm-hmm

98. 1:00:26

    ... uh, the way it all came together was really, I mean, you guys done a great job.

99. 1:00:30

    Thank you.

100. 1:00:30

     And the, the one, the one thing that really sticks in my mind is like the, you just have to see the equipment they had on site down there and how many of the big, the dozers with the plows and the, the equip for the power line breaks and the fires. And the one g- gentleman that just barely got off of his dozer before it burned to the ground there where the governor made the press conference.

101. 1:00:50

     Mm-hmm.

102. 1:00:50

     Uh, we were real close to that. So it was, to do all of that and not have a loss of life was pretty, pretty darn good. I know that we had the asset losses and things like that, but you guys done a great job, so just appreciate everything you did.

103. 1:01:03

     Thank y'all. And, and, and the same with, you know, yourself and all the volunteer fire departments. We, it, it is truly a team effort.

104. 1:01:10

     Director Sabo, thank you so much-

105. 1:01:11

     Thank y'all

106. 1:01:12

     ... for what you do and for your presentation.

107. 1:01:19

     On to Brittany Hall with the Georgia Association of Man- Manufacturers. I'll give you, give you as much time as you need to get ready, although I don't know that you need much time. Okay. And, and, uh, members, if your, if your microphone is not muted, I'll just remind you to go ahead and re-mute that.

108. 1:01:40

     There we go.

109. 1:01:43

     All right. Try not to move either.

110. 1:01:49

     You ready?

111. 1:01:50

     Yeah, I'm ready.

112. 1:01:51

     Brittany Hall with the Georgia Association of Manufacturers is a great friend of, of this committee. And, uh, we really do appreciate you coming and updating on, uh, the state of manufacturing and what, what, uh, what's working, what we can do to help make it a better

113. 1:02:11

     ... climate for manufacturers and particularly how do we get more of them to rural Georgia. Thank- We're, we're gonna help with that. We have a plan. So th- thank you Chair Lady Hagan, and thank you to the committee for having us. And I would also like to thank the local chamber here. Great event last night. Debbie, you did a great job pulling all that together, so thank you for that as well, and for the hospitality of the community. I love rural Georgia. I'm from rural Georgia. Um, as Lisa said, my name is Brittany Hull. I'm our Vice President, Governmental Affairs for Georgia Association of Manufacturers.

114. 1:02:43

     So we're gonna jump right in, um, and I'm gonna tell a little bit about what GA... We call ourselves GAM. It's short. Georgia Manufa- Georgia Association of Manufacturers is a mouthful. So just to give you a little background on us, we're 126 years old. The only organization that beats us are the stupid trial attorneys. But anyways, I can say that 'cause I'm a manufacturer. Um, but we are the voice of manufacturing in Georgia. Um, we are one industry, one voice, and our mission is to be visible, vocal, and vital, and we represent all of manufacturer's interest across Georgia, whether you're a member of ours or not, because it's important to economic development here in Georgia.

115. 1:03:21

     So let's, let's talk a little bit about what we're seeing. So skilled labor is a huge issue for manufacturers. We need skilled laborers in, and what we're really finding is it's hard to fill that. Um, we're have a high demand in manufacturers for welders, mechanics, technicians, as you can imagine, and we're also seeing a big high demand now for coding as well as the AI boom comes in. Although manufacturers have been using AI for a long time before it was the cool word. Um, but we're definitely seeing a lot more, a lot more advanced manufacturing, um, with that.

116. 1:03:53

     And so trying to find those positions has been... or h- to fill those positions is becoming slightly difficult. So then the other thing that we're seeing that's causing a labor shortage in manufacturing is we have some seasoned manufacturers that have been in since, you know, the '60s, '70s, and they're retiring or ready to retire or we're helping them retire. Um, but what happens when you do that is you lose a lot of institutional knowledge, and trying to bridge that gap between folks leaving and folks coming in s- faces certain challenges, especially at the supervisor and technician level, 'cause manufacturing is not a one-size-fits-all as you go through a plant.

117. 1:04:38

     So one thing that we're trying to do to get folks there is change the perception of manufacturing. So when you think of manufacturing, a lot of folks, especially individuals my age, um, think dark, dirty, dingy, dangerous. "My grandfather worked there. Why would I wanna go work there?" We're really trying to change that perception 'cause quite frankly, most manufacturers are clean. They use a lot of AI. You could eat off the ground, and people just don't really understand that, so we're really trying to change that perception.

118. 1:05:09

     And we're doing that really starting in the high schools, which we'll get into here in a little bit, um, and trying to give awareness of what modern manufacturing is to individuals. So some of the challenges, though. We talked about this I think last year, Chairman Hagan, was when we came and presented as what are some of the challenges. It's the challenges you see everywhere. So it's childcare, transportation. Believe it or not, soft skills. Having a kid come out of school and being able to do this right here and have a conversation, look you in the eyes, show up to work, not be on drugs when you show up to work.

119. 1:05:45

     I mean, those are some big issues, and we consider that part of the soft skill. And then, um, having a lower labor force participation in some communities, rural communities being one of those, trying to get folks to rural communities. And then affordable and available housing is a big issue for manufacturers. So mentioned a little bit rural workforce limitations. We have smaller labor pools in rural Georgia. Again, trying to get folks there. How do they get from their house to the manufacturing facility?

120. 1:06:18

     I will give a shout-out to Lowndes County. The city of Valdosta has a program where they actually have basically a city Uber, and for $2, someone can get on that. And they thought that it was gonna be more for folks to go back and forth to grocery, buy groceries, or go do entertainment stuff. But what they found out is people are actually using that to go to work. So there are things across the state that are working in rural Georgia. Um, we just need to see more of that. And then again, s- attracting folks to rural Georgia.

121. 1:06:50

     I'm a rural Georgia girl. I love it. I don't like the big city. But taking someone from a big city to rural Georgia where maybe not all the amenities are there that they're accustomed to, but teaching them that that's okay. You don't need all of that stuff.

122. 1:07:06

     So safe to say that workforce is just definitely the top concern of manufacturers. So how do we address this? So how do we address the challenges? We collaborate with individuals like you. We work with education, and we work with, uh, our local chambers as well. So what we are working on, and I wanna show this before we get into it. One thing the legislature did that was extremely helpful and helped us is Representative Matt Gambill's House Bill 192. So it was the top state for talent, and we added manufacturing into that.

123. 1:07:40

     I believe it was the 2025 session. And so it puts manufacturing into the education curriculum. But what this graph... I don't know if I have a pointer. But anyway, this graph here, what it'll show is we're seeing a perception change. So when I grew up, I was told, "College, college, college, college. If you don't go get a four-year degree, you will never have a career." Well, that's not true anymore. We need technical. We need that skilled laborer. We need someone who can walk in after a two-year degree, and they may get the first year in high school as a senior, and then one year and go straight right into, um, the workforce.

124. 1:08:16

     So we saw a significant drop. It's 75% of people thinking a college education was extremely important Down to 35% saying, "It's not that important. Go get a job." And so we've really tried to jump on that. And so that means our trade schools hopefully are getting a boost in enrollment. Um, but what we're doing is looking at, all right, so what's the emerging talent? So in case you don't know, nationwide, depending on what numbers you look at, you have 200,000 jobs available nationwide, and that could actually go up closer to 400 if you take out ...

125. 1:08:51

     or if you add in, like, your admins and things of that nature. So it's a huge number of jobs available. In Georgia, hmm, depends on who you ask. We still have a lot of jobs. It could be 8,000, it could be 20,000. It just depends on how you look at the numbers. But long story short, we have jobs available, and we have an emerging talent coming out. So high school graduates, technical college system, as well as the university system, you have 225,000 students coming out. So how do we connect them to manufacturing?

126. 1:09:23

     Well, we'll skip this slide. So workforce initiatives. So what GAM does is we work and take real action. We partner with our technical schools. We have great relationships with the Manufacturing Institute at Georgia Tech, as well as at UGA and Kennesaw. We work with the Department of Labor, especially on the second chance hires. We helped, as you'll see, uh, the Fair Chance Hiring Guide. We helped write- write that, um, with the Department of Labor. And then we work with our local governments and chambers, those that really get engaged and work, and then nonprofits as well.

127. 1:10:01

     So we're seeing, we're seeing a lot of movement on this. And the other big thing, and Chairman Hayen, you had something similar, um, dealing with second chance hires or first offenders, which is important. We have members, especially in North Georgia, that will go in and work with the prison system the last 12 months of that, uh, inmate's time being spent, and again, non-violent offenders. They'll go in and they'll actually teach them a trade, and when they walk out, they walk right into a manufacturing facility.

128. 1:10:30

     So Manufacturing Georgia. We talked about this last year. This is something that GAM really probably had im- been implemented about a month when we first talked to you. So what this does is it is building a strong talent pipeline. So we have employee referrals and community partnerships that tap into local talent pools. We have apprenticeship programs that go through this, as well as on-the-job training that makes entry more compelling. And this also, we collaborate with schools, trade school ... I'm sorry, we collaborate with high schools, trade schools, as well as community colleges to kind of get them involved and to understand what manufacturing is.

129. 1:11:08

     Again, that not dark, dirty, dangerous. So on the program, we have over 3,200 users and 72 companies. But what it does is it enables that connection. So again, most kids maybe don't think of manufacturing, but when you expose them to it, they're like, "Oh, this is kind of cool." And we do this in a really, really neat way. Um, but we have been very blessed to work with some really great schools, and I'll get into that here in a little bit.

130. 1:11:40

     But what this is, is it is certified for the Career Technology and Agricultural Education Program. And so I just wanna give you a little update on numbers. We started what we call Maker Mojo. And so it's essentially a video game where kids can go in and learn what happens in a manufacturing facility. So we had 100, or over 1,000 players i- across 52 counties here in Georgia. And basically, the 713 clicks for Maker Mojo game took them straight into Manufacturing Georgia.

131. 1:12:13

     So they played a game, and then they went and saw where they could actually do this in real life.

132. 1:12:19

     So this is the game. Um, it's very ... It, it reminds me of, like, the farm, where you go and you build your farm, or you build your home or something like that. So basically, they go in, again, approved for classrooms by the Georgia Department of Ed- Education. And when the students go in and play the game, they're learning about manufacturing technology, or technology and, uh, vocabulary that they aren't necessarily gonna get in a classroom, right? I mean, manufacturing's very different in that certain ... Like, you've gotta know what a wrench is.

133. 1:12:50

     You've gotta know if it's a Phillips head or a flathead. I mean, there's certain things that kids just don't know these days. So they go in, and so they'll play this game, and again, learn about the terminology in manufacturing, but they also learn what it's like to weld. They learn what it's like to assemble and build. And what's really neat is, this is like my favorite part of the program, by the way. So when they go in and they play the game, they're asked for their zip code. And we do that because once they get that zip code, and they go in and they play the game, and they're like, "Hey, I have an affinity to really building things." So then it pings one of the companies on Manufacturing Georgia that says, "Hey, student Leesa Hagan is playing this game, has a real affinity to building.

134. 1:13:38

     Let's match you two." And so this is an example of Toyota Tires. I'm sorry it's kind of cut off there. But Toyota Tires, the person liked the electrical side of it, paired them, and now they're talking about a job, you know, coming right out of school. High school, technical school, whatever age the student was. So this here was one of our, um, opportunities. We partnered with the Be Pro Be Proud Bus. And so students at Jenkins High won a visit from their local manufacturers and a, from a vis- a visit from the Be Pro Be Proud Bus, which is really cool.

135. 1:14:15

     Um, you go in, and it essentially is an assembly, a manufacturing assembly on the bus. It's really cool. And they can go in, and they play virtual reality games that simulate manufacturing. And so we did this with some of our partners at Georgia P- Pacific, Mitsubishi Power, Hyundai, and Savannah Economic Development. It's a great opportunity really to showcase manufacturing, especially over in that area. And, oh, just kidding. So students also, they, they did this 'cause they won the competition in Manufacturing Mojo, which honestly my counterpart, Robert Jones, could probably tell you more about that competition.

136. 1:14:52

     But it was the first of its kind, and we are extremely excited to have this happen. And then just if you want, this is a QR code that takes you straight to Manufacturing Georgia, my contact, as well as... And it's, I'm sorry it's not showing up, but I'll send it to you, Chairman Hagan, and, um, Robert's contact from Workforce Development. But with that, I'm happy to take any questions.

137. 1:15:14

     All right. Thank you. Uh, and we've got serious challenges in rural Georgia in manufacturing in general because of workforce issues. But I- I- that's really cool, the creative ways that y'all are matching people with an aptitude for manufacturing with, with real jobs that they, they-

138. 1:15:36

     Thank you

139. 1:15:36

     ... But I know some people that needs to get out and apply that. All right. Does, does anyone from our committee have a question?

140. 1:15:44

     Yes, ma'am.

141. 1:15:44

     All right. Representative Williams.

142. 1:15:47

     Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Brittany, as always.

143. 1:15:50

     Yes, sir.

144. 1:15:50

     You're always easy to talk to and full of information, and I certainly appreciate that. You mentioned childcare-

145. 1:15:57

     Mm-hmm

146. 1:15:57

     ... early. In another job that does not pay, I'm chairman of the Development Authority in Liberty County, and we're looking at an experimental program to place childcare on site in the-

147. 1:16:12

     Mm-hmm

148. 1:16:12

     ... development parks, one of the parks, a big park that we have, which would be a big help because, especially for female employees, it's very tough. You actually sometimes will have, you've got two kids, you're gonna pay more for childcare than you're gonna make at the end of the week.

149. 1:16:29

     You're gonna have a second mortgage.

150. 1:16:31

     We, we-

151. 1:16:31

     I have two kids.

152. 1:16:32

     Appreciate you, you own that. But my question truly is, in rural Georgia, with manufacturing any place, water, sewage is vital.

153. 1:16:43

     Mm-hmm.

154. 1:16:44

     When, and we're trying to develop a water reclamation plant in Liberty County, and the naysayers have come out of the woodwork. You know, everybody needs it, but not in my backyard. Does the Manufacturing Association provide any input in areas like that, that can bring facts instead of the internet to the table to talk about and, and, and reassure people in the community of the safety of reclamation plants?

155. 1:17:20

     If we are asked, we would be happy to.

156. 1:17:22

     You just got asked.

157. 1:17:23

     Yes, yes. I realize I just got asked. We could definitely talk an awful lot about that. And, and yeah, I mean, it's a local government, maybe education, where we could probably help with that as well. I mean, manufacturers do some amazing things when it comes to water conservation, energy conservation. I mean, those are things that we could absolutely share. Yes.

158. 1:17:43

     Okay. Be in touch.

159. 1:17:44

     So call me.

160. 1:17:45

     Call you.

161. 1:17:47

     Thank you.

162. 1:17:47

     Okay. Thank you very much.

163. 1:17:49

     Don't have any more questions. Thank you so much. While our next speaker is on his way up, um, Clint Hutchinson from the Mercy Ministries, if you wanna make your way up. While he's, he's doing that, Representative Williams.

164. 1:18:04

     Yes, ma'am.

165. 1:18:04

     You mentioned, um, childcare-

166. 1:18:07

     Childcare

167. 1:18:08

     ... on site. Where, how far along are y'all on that process?

168. 1:18:11

     In the planning stages. We've got several industries out there. We took it after a model that's near Griffin, and the idea is you don't even have to go t- look for them. Bring them on site, and during your lunch, you can visit your children. But, uh, we, we've got a real problem with hiring mothers, especially young mothers.

169. 1:18:37

     We do.

170. 1:18:38

     Uh-huh.

171. 1:18:38

     Will you keep us posted on the progress of that?

172. 1:18:42

     Certainly.

173. 1:18:42

     I'd be very interested to, to, to find out as you progress through there that, uh, how that's going and-

174. 1:18:48

     Certainly

175. 1:18:49

     ... what impact it has.

176. 1:18:50

     Be glad to. We're trying to do it. Rise, we have a group called Rise made up of eight counties, to include Chatham, where we have a joint effort. We're looking at some models with them also. So it's an interesting time.

177. 1:19:09

     All right. Thank you. Um, okay. We, if you're looking at the agenda, we were gonna have a presentation from Manna Nutrition. They're located in Fitzgerald, Georgia, and they were not able to be here today, expectedly. Uh, I do want us to hear from them at some point because it's an incredibly, um, inspiring mission that they have. So we'll, we'll get them back here at some point.

178. 1:19:40

     Um, but I'm so thankful that Clint Hutchinson with the Mercy Ministries was able to, on very short notice, as in about 7:00 this morning, just go ahead and had his presentation ready. And i- I told him we're gonna, we're gonna be crunched for time, so he's, he knows he's just introducing this to us at this point. But we have some more information, and he's, he's been our chaplain of the day, I think it was last, last year.

179. 1:20:07

     Yes.

180. 1:20:07

     So you, if he looks familiar, that's why. And also, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that Speaker of the House, Jon Burns, just walked in, and the lovely and incredible Dale Burns has come in. And, um, we appreciate you being here with us today.

181. 1:20:25

     Okay. Um-

182. 1:20:27

     So take it away, Clint. Absolutely. So, um, just to say thank you for giving me this opportunity. When I got the phone call about this, I'd just went over to my daughter's house and I picked up my grandson. We'd come through, I got my biggest, uh, bell pepper out of the garden, so it was a fantastic morning, and then I get to hear, get to talk to you guys. So, uh, just thank you for everything you do for the state and all the things you've done to make sure we have an ability to do the work that we do. So I appreciate that. So I am executive director of the Mercy Ministries. Uh, our mission is to provide healthcare and hope, compassionate healthcare and hope to those in need in our community, and, uh, we do that in multiple ways, and today you're just gonna get a little quick overview of that.

183. 1:21:08

     Uh, but we can kinda, uh, go and really build off of this verse right here. Uh, a great friend of mine wrote this verse in a really popular book, and it talks about the fact that when you serve the least of these, you're really taking care of your own self. And, uh, so the emphasis is not as much so on making, uh, Jesus really enjoy you, but it's actually calling you to look at the very least of your community, 'cause when the very least of your community is taken care of, it is a blessing to the entirety of the community. So we have a model in which we've been trying to do that in Mercy Ministries for the past 16 years now, uh, that I think is, is really, really working well.

184. 1:21:43

     So we have this model that we call right here. One, it is a relationship model, and as many of you have talked about already today, we can't work as individuals. We need to be partnering with each other. There's a lot of things we need to address, and we do that through relationships. So we have three different ways in which we work through this, um, in our healthcare and hope that we're offering our community. One is our clinical framework. Uh, we'll share in that in just a second. Then we also have a ministry framework where we talk and work with the individual theirself on their spiritual care and their emotional side of things.

185. 1:22:13

     And we also have a development framework. How are we funded? As a dollar gets tagged to everything, so we're gonna talk a little bit about that. So our organization in general, we look leadership, governance, and culture. Uh, our leadership, where are we going? What are we working at? What goals we're trying to achieve, and how are we doing those things? Decision-making, stewardship, how are we managing the things that's been given us, whether it's from the state, whether it's from local donors, individuals, how do we handle and take care of that? Second part is our governance, our accountability, and our oversight.

186. 1:22:44

     It's not only just our stakeholders that are sending donations to us, but it's the community in which we live in. You know, how are we making a footprint here that's making our community better? And then ultimately culture. It is Christ-centered excellence and service. We're making sure that everyone is seen as an image-bearer because they all have important. Going back to my grandson I picked up this morning, he's important to me because, one, he's my blood. Uh, he's also a little, tiny, short little fella. Uh, just turned two last week. Uh, but he's really more important to me because he is my future.

187. 1:23:15

     You know, he is what's coming to generations after me. And to be able to pour into that little kid, you know, is what's making the future bright for us. So our clinical framework, so we take care of individuals that are uninsured, low-income adults that fall under that 200 percenter of poverty standpoint. And the way we do that is we offer primary healthcare, primary healthcare at no cost to the individual. We use an eligibility process, so we're not just a walk-in clinic. They have to be verified as our patients, and Georgia has an amazing program, Georgia Volunteer Healthcare Program, that makes that possible for us.

188. 1:23:52

     Uh, so thank you guys for making, uh, sure that's there. Again, we're primary healthcare. We're working on those chronic diseases, things that people need to get taken care of constantly and managed so that they can not only be good for their family, their community, but also be able to share that into the next generation as well. Uh, medication assistance, we're able to get medications at no cost. We work through pharmaceutical companies, also MAP International, a couple other, uh, pro- nonprofits we work with. But if we can't get it through them for the patient, then we can actually work with local pharmacists in town to be able to help, uh, get that to them.

189. 1:24:28

     Uh, for instance, this week we had an individual come in from our local hospital, needed medications, and we were able to see him that day and get him medication in his hand that day, and that's the kind of turnaround we try to make sure, uh, we have and the excellence we try to promote within our clinical care. So our care coordination and our referrals, if we can't do it in-house, we do send it out. You'll see in just a minute, uh, when you hear from the Georgia Lions Lighthouse, uh, they partner with us and we partner with them. They're actually gonna be doing a, a clinic in our Graham location, uh, this Friday.

190. 1:25:01

     So we're plugging in the resources to make sure everybody has what they need. Unfortunately, we don't have resources for everything, but we try to offer the very best that we can for the care that we got. And like I say, our ancillary, uh, services, our counseling, we have retired counselors in office. We also have pastors that come in, and a lot of time it's just sitting with a person and saying, "Listen, you matter. You know, you, you have a reason to be here. Let, let's work through this." Great example of this is I was actually in our Baxley location, which is in Graham, um, and this week we had a young man.

191. 1:25:34

     I'd met him before, talked with him. Uh, he was out of our system for a while. Uh, had a 1013, meaning he tried to commit suicide, was in the Jeff Davis Hospital. Just got out of that. I seen him that day yesterday in the clinic down there, so I was able to talk with him. I was just to telling him, "I'm glad you're back with us. I'm glad you're here with us." Again, let him have a place and a voice, uh, as he's a person that matters. Talk about our ministry framework, how are we working that emotional side, the spiritual side into, uh, our ministry.

192. 1:26:05

     Um, we have pray... we pray with our patients. At any given time, we can pray with them about anything. All of my staff members can do that. All of our volunteers have access to that. Again, letting them know you're loved by God, you have a purpose. We're glad that you're here. We're gonna walk with this thing through you. Uh, we'll give out lots of spiritual resources. Uh, Bibles are given to all patients. It's, uh, we've updated to make sure they get a large print Bible, uh, that's readable, uh, because a lot of our patients don't have eye care, so they realize pretty quick on that small print.

193. 1:26:36

     When I turned, hit 50, realized small print was no longer for me. So, uh, we try to give out some large print Bibles on that. Our staff and our volunteers are connected to the ministry. None of our staff gets paid what they could make in the for-profit world. Our volunteers are giving of their resources. Tonight we'll have a local dentist with two volunteers that come in with her and they'll see patients free of charge. They're volunteering to do that. So, uh, we have a lot of great people that love what's happening and take care of the community and they're partnering with that.

194. 1:27:06

     Uh, also our church partnerships, we have 30 churches that partner with us from a financial standpoint, but they also give us resources that we need. It could be in a sense that for Bible school they're packing dental bags for us. They put a little stamp on there, "God loves you," send it back to us. Patient can leave with that. Last week one of our dental patients come back, said, "Can I get one of those for my kid?" You know? So the work that we're doing is actually spilling into the next generation. They may have had dental care, but their grandkids were not. They're gonna brush their teeth and they're gonna floss their teeth and they're gonna know about that dental care.

195. 1:27:37

     Um, also a pastoral and an encouragement, uh, we're working with our churches now just to have a resource page. Uh, we already have it for some other surface, but it's really for our church. If a person plugs in and they need to get involved in a church somewhere, there's a whole list of churches that support us. We know who they are. They'd love to have you out. Here's our service times and such as that. So we're working through that. Development framework. This is probably what's very interesting for, uh, many of you when you hear about this thing. How are we funded? How are we taken care of? Uh, I'm a firm believer that everyone contributes to our ministry, is part of our ministry.

196. 1:28:11

     Again, it's relationship built. Uh, it's about the fact that you're not an ATM I'm trying to hit to get some money off of you. You're making it possible. You're gi- not giving to me, you're giving through us. So when you give to the Mercy Ministry, you're giving through us to take care of that need of offering healthcare and hope in our community. So, uh, individual donors, 65% of our income comes from individual donors. 50% of my work is actually touching base with those individual donors. Um, they, 70 of those that are less than $100 that are monthly. Our lowest, uh, mon- monthly is at $15 a month.

197. 1:28:44

     So everybody can be part of this. It's a really huge thing. Again, church partnerships with us. Foundation and grants, uh, we only write just a handful of grants. We try to stay away from grants because grants are typically to start something up and then the money runs out and it goes away. Uh, we're about sustainability. One grant that we do write though, and that this actually provides for our PA nurse practitioners as well, but today it's for a PA that's actually serving in the clinic today, is through the Georgia Charitable Care Network. Becky's here with that. So, uh, State of Georgia gives $1 million set aside for that, and, and that's huge for us.

198. 1:29:17

     That allows us today to have that clinic open. So it's a way that, you know, it provides an opportunity for us to have a mid-low provider in that clinic. And Georgia Charitable Care Network is a partnership with multiple, uh, clinics that work together. I was talking to some of them yesterday. We share resources amongst each other, brainstorm about new solutions to the problem we face, and it's just a huge thing, so thank you, uh, for making that possible for us and supporting the Georgia Charitable Care Networks. Uh, we do one fundraiser a year here, uh, and what that is is actually introduce new people into our program.

199. 1:29:50

     We ask you to bring a friend. Bring a friend, see what's going on. They might love it, might be a big supporter, uh, of that as well. And then community outreach, uh, some of you may have already seen it, uh, but we do a lot of community outreach. Most of that's putting T-shirt on somebody's back. Uh, we, we do that in a way that helps them carry our message. Uh, I realize the money we would spend in actually putting on billboards and such as that, we could put it on somebody's back. Patient gets a great T-shirt. They wear it for multiple years. Had a lady talk to me yesterday, "This is my sleeping shirt.

200. 1:30:22

     It's the best shirt I got in the closet." So it's just good stuff. It is just, again, loving on them, letting them know how important it is. We do believe it's a solution that can happen in multiple places. Uh, we believe it touches on healthcare, education, and all the things we've talked about today. Our Graham location, again, was started in 20, uh, 19. Today we have six employees down there in that community. The nurse practitioner there got her license as a volunteer with us, and she serves now as our, my main provider in that location. It's local people taking care of local people, being supported by local people.

201. 1:30:56

     And th- and that's a really huge thing. Um, and then finally, again, this is our breakdown of fundraising if you wanted to see that, kind of see where our money comes from. Um, again, from the ministry standpoint, uh, what we're trying to do is we're trying to bring healthcare again into a place where it offers hope and also bring it into a place of where each community literally is taking care of its own. So these are local, uh, ministries that are supporting, uh, each other. We have our Lines location here. If anybody wants to swing by afterwards, love to drop in down there. We have our Graham location, so between, uh, Baxley and Hazlehurst.

202. 1:31:30

     And then we do a, a pilot satellite clinic in Lumber City. We partner with Lumber City Baptist Church and actually go in there and see patients there. Most of them are walking distance of that, so. And then that's a super quick overview. I hope it was good in time on that, but I do want you to, if you got any questions.

203. 1:31:46

     Uh, thank you. Uh, we're not gonna do any questions right now because of our crunch for time, but I appreciate you being so flexible and, and coming in when we, we had an unexpected, uh, vacancy on our agenda and just sharing that quickly with us, and also for what you and your staff do here in our community. Appreciate it so much. And members, if you do have any questions or want to know more about this, the, the Mercy Ministries, but also just that, um, the idea of it, the what, what they're doing, it's great.

204. 1:32:18

     Especially when we have, uh, in rural Georgia, uh, issues with access to healthcare. They have been a true blessing. I can tell you personally, I know this model works, and it has been a blessing for so many people in this community. And not just for the people who are receiving care, but also the people that are providing it as well, I believe it-

205. 1:32:41

     Absolutely

206. 1:32:41

     ... it is, it's been wonderful. And it's, and it's taken a huge burden off of the ER at the hospital.

207. 1:32:47

     Absolutely.

208. 1:32:47

     True.

209. 1:32:48

     Absolutely.

210. 1:32:48

     Right?

211. 1:32:48

     Absolutely.

212. 1:32:49

     Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you.

213. 1:32:55

     We're gonna, we're gonna make a quick flip on our agenda. And, um, w- we all know that Mrs. Dale Burns and her husband have been incredible, um, giants in Georgia as far as promoting literacy for our young- our young people the past few years. And I've, we've gotten some really good stuff done, uh, the past few years. And, and we're, I think we're seeing some huge differences, and this past session was especially exciting.

214. 1:33:29

     But I really appreciate you coming. And y- if you're, you're comfortable there or at the podium, that's up to you, and really appreciate you being here this morning to share what's going on.

215. 1:33:43

     Thank you, Lisa. Good morning.

216. 1:33:45

     Good morning.

217. 1:33:46

     I'm so happy to be here with y'all. I, I wasn't sure who all would be here. Lisa, thank you for inviting me. I brought my harshest critic with me. I think it's payback time because I don't speak very often, and he speaks every day, and we have discussions about how he did, right? So he's, he's promised to be nice to me this morning.

218. 1:34:17

     I don't normally do this, but I want to start with some quotes. I, I promise I've never done this on my phone, but these are quotes about rural Georgia. That's what you're here about, right? Okay. The perc- can y'all all hear, hear me? Can you hear me good? The percentage of s- students achieving proficient learner status on our third grade milestone test in English Language Arts is dispro- disproportionately higher in urban areas, namely the Metro Atlanta area and surrounding suburbs, compared to more rural north, middle, and South Georgia.

219. 1:35:08

     I found that hard to believe, but, but what it is, there, there are s- systems and schools there that do very poorly, but it's offset by the more affluent communities, so it averages out that way. Based on an analysis of the latest educational attainment data from the American Community Survey, the 29-county Atlanta metropolitan area would, were it, were a standalone state, rank 10th nationally for educational attainment.

220. 1:35:52

     Georgia's remaining 130 counties would rank next to last nationally, ahead of West Virginia but behind Mississippi.

221. 1:36:09

     With just over 58% of the state's population, the Atlanta ar- area, metropolitan area, is home to 70% of the state's college graduates and produce 71% of its $678 billion GDP. Also, this: some 62 rural counties, those with populations below thir- thir- 35,000 in the southern half of the state, fell into the bottom national quartile for ed- educational attainment.

222. 1:36:50

     And finally, based on fall 2024 enrollment data for the University System of Georgia, nearly 80% of the in-state students attending the top four research institutions in Georgia hail from Atlanta, which is again 58% of the state's population. So nearly 80% of our USG top institutions, so that's gonna be Georgia Tech, University of Georgia, Georgia State, and Augusta Medical College.

223. 1:37:32

     So those are pretty upsetting to me, to you, because we care. I, I wanna, I'm gonna talk about House Bill 1193 and how I think it can make a difference in those scores that you just read. And I will tell you what I see is in Atlanta, in the metro area, they have had services and programs going on for years, decades, that we don't necessarily have in our rural areas.

224. 1:38:10

     I, I think this bill is gonna help us. In fact, I think, and, and there are others that think that this is called the Georgia Early Literacy Act of 2026. This bill could be as impactful as the Zell Miller scholarship, the HOPE Scholarship, has been, but it's only gonna be impactful at the level that local s- communities and local school systems adhere to the law and work under the parameters of the law, and take advantage of it.

225. 1:38:49

     So I'm gonna talk to you about three kind of parts of the bill. And, and they're all related to the bill. But I'll start first with how schools, and Barry, I'm so glad to see you here today, and you've been part of, uh, this already, this school part. This first part of the bill, which affects our school systems, we got a lot of information from Alabama.

226. 1:39:20

     We went there and studied what they had done. They took the Mississippi model and improved on it. Right? So then, we've, we've done nothing but improve on other states' models. The, the bad news is these other states have been doing this since 2013 and 2014. Why Georgia is so far behind, I don't know. At, at our state Department of Education, we would have hoped that we were looking at this sooner.

227. 1:39:56

     I would have hoped that. So there's really five parts that I wanna talk to you about, or six, up to the literacy bill for schools. There's gonna be a state literacy director, and that person, the job description's gone out now. That person'll be hired, and they will run this whole program. Underneath it is a very important committee, I guess you'd call it. It's a task force, and that's different than anything we've ever had in Georgia, because this task force is really gonna be made up of literacy and science of reading experts.

228. 1:40:41

     And I'm gonna give you one example of what they're gonna do, not meaning to step on any toes. But for years in Georgia, the school systems, we've picked the high-quality instructional materials, which simply means we've let school systems pick from a list of their curriculum. And right now, Georgia could have 16 curriculums, and they're not all based on the science of reading.

229. 1:41:12

     It's a big problem, and he- here's why it's a problem. I have three education degrees and two add-on degrees, and I don't have the capability of choosing a curriculum. That, that takes a researcher, a nationally certified person that really understands curriculum. So we're going to choose the curriculum for the state. That committee will.

230. 1:41:43

     Now, they, they might choose four different ones, or two, or one, whatever meets the criteria, but it, it'll be a very rigid criteria. We're gonna continue with the universal screeners. Every child K through three in a public school, they're being evaluated so that we know exactly how to help them. Our professional standards commission is right now developing a literacy coach endorsement for literacy coaches.

231. 1:42:18

     We are working with teacher preparation institutions. Georgia Southern got $5.5 million to establish a literacy center. They are going to be working with other university system colleges of ed on, we want our teachers better prepared so that when they go into the classroom, they're ready to start teaching reading, especially our early teachers.

232. 1:42:49

     Dyslexia is still gonna be a big part of this. There are gonna be two levels of literacy coach. You could think of them as literacy coach trainers. They're gonna be regional leadership literacy coaches that only work with school administrators, superintendents, principals, assistant principals, because if the principal doesn't understand and buy into it, it doesn't work.

233. 1:43:22

     And this is where you can go back to your communities and talk about this. Then there are also gonna be regional literacy coaches. Both of those two groups come from our RESAs, Regional Educational Service Agencies, and so they're the experts. Then the last layer are the school-based literacy coaches. And here's where you can help. Talk to your school superintendent, because we don't need to hire the principal's best friend.

234. 1:43:58

     We don't not- need to hire the teacher that is gonna retire in a year, and we just need to get her out of the classroom. We-

235. 1:44:10

     We- Sorry. We need to hire the best and brightest, because think about it. That person has to work with adults and students. It's a, it's a, a l- a literacy coach. A coach in a school is a different animal. They're not a teacher. They are, they are, but they have to work with adults too. Y'all get it. The last thing about the school part, we did not change the compulsory attendance in Georgia.

236. 1:44:48

     You still have to go at age six. What we did do is encourage you to send your child sooner, age five. And what we've done is we're allowing parents to make the decision. Do you want your child in pre-K, kindergarten, or first grade? But if you bring your child and say, "I want my child in first grade," we're gonna assess that child, and we may work with the parents for them to understand your child's not ready for first grade.

237. 1:45:21

     They need that foundation year. Every child that finishes kindergarten in one of our public schools is going to be assessed for readiness because what we've learned that other states, they've held them back in third grade. We think earlier retention is better, that the foundation that we can give them, it is not the end of the world for a child to spend two years in kindergarten or possibly two in first grade.

238. 1:45:57

     But the earlier we intervene, the better. I want to talk to you... The second thing I'm gonna tell you about the bill is part of the bill deals with vision and hearing. And I... Have you talked about this, Lisa? No. Well, y'all should know that Lisa is the state champion for this in the legislature because she carried this bill that there was a bill written so that every school system would get screening equipment for vision and hearing.

239. 1:46:32

     Oh, my gosh. What else could be easier than the child can't see, let's fix that? That might be why they can't read, right? So it's, it, it was gonna buy the latest equipment. It was $2.7 million. It passed the House. It passed the Senate. Unfortunately, it got cut out of the budget. But I feel certain that there are going to be people

240. 1:47:06

     That-

241. 1:47:06

     That's right. That's right

242. 1:47:07

     ... that are still concerned about that 'cause in the grand scheme of things, that sounds like a lot of money to me, but in the grand scheme, that's, that's really not. So we want to be able to do that, and we're, we have not let that die. And Lisa, thank you for championing that cause. Lastly...

243. 1:47:34

     Yes. She, she is on it. She- I- I'm pretty sure she won't let anybody forget about it either. The, the last thing is what I really want you to take away, and is Clint still here? The-

244. 1:47:53

     Yeah.

245. 1:47:53

     Yeah. There you are. You, you talked about the least. That, that's really the mantra for me for this last part, and it's a little-known part about the literacy bill deals with early learning, language nutrition. Do you know that a baby in the womb, the third trimester, can hear and can identify with the voice?

246. 1:48:24

     A baby at five hours old can track your eyes and communicate and respond to you, will respond to you at five hours old. I feel like this is like the last frontier. Our, our teachers are doing everything they can possibly do in the classroom, right? But what's happening is, and I was an elementary school principal, children come to school, and from 40 to 60% of the class, so maybe 40%, they come in, they're your children and our grandchildren, and they may sit down at the desk day one, and they're ready to learn.

247. 1:49:15

     They, they don't know how to read. They're not supposed to. But they've, they've got some basic social skills. They know how to sit in a chair like these young people back here in, in the audience here. They know how to follow simple directions. They've got some sounds. They've been read to, so they have a voc- rich vocabulary. From 40 to 60% of children in our kindergarten classes today do not have those basic skills.

248. 1:49:50

     In my school system, we're even getting kindergartners that are not potty-trained. They do not know how to sit in a seat. They have no idea about following directions. What happens is it, we have to socialize them to, to kindergarten, and then we try so hard to catch up. They don't understand basic rules 'cause all they've ever heard is, "Sit down, be quiet, eat your supper," or whatever.

249. 1:50:23

     So imagine being that teacher and that gap and how much bigger it gets. Well, there's something you can do about it. But I need to tell you, there's no law that these people can pass, and there's no amount of money. It's gonna have to happen in every community, and we have got to talk in rural Georgia about this. My community is, which is Effingham County, where we live, we never had anything like this.

250. 1:50:58

     We had all these random services. We've had four meetings now in our county. We have 99 people coming to the meetings. ... sheriff's office, our libraries, our daycare people. I, I don't even know how to tell you all the people. Healthcare people, health- health department, um, school system. And what they're s- what they started saying that first meeting, "I, I didn't know about all these services.

251. 1:51:31

     I didn't know that that was available. I didn't know that you would come to my daycare." We've s- I mean, just a few examples. We've started offering training to daycare providers in our s- school system. We gave them $100 stipend. Basically, it was pretty inexpensive. We fed them a good lunch. We brought them in on a Saturday morning because it has got to happen with the least of these.

252. 1:52:03

     It's got to happen. It ... And we fail if it doesn't. I've told them from day one, we fail. If we only help our grandchildren or your children, we fail. If we can't reach the least of these. There's a trailer across from our church with children in it that don't have books in their homes. There's people in your community. You know, our churches, and I'm not at all against mission work, but, but we're neglecting children in our own communities, and there's ways your communities can get together.

253. 1:52:45

     Um, imagine what it would be like if, if we had more children coming to kindergarten ready. More children with higher skills where we could take those children. Imagine if we could get every child reading on grade level. We're in our... I have a meeting Monday with our two big hospitals in Savannah.

254. 1:53:17

     There's a program called Talk With Me Baby, and it's... There are other programs like that, but where every person that comes in that room with a new mom and baby are talking to them about talking to their child, eye contact, and reading to their child, and things you can do. It's a cultural change. Five years later in research studies, those parents are saying, "I didn't know it was important to talk to my baby.

255. 1:53:52

     I didn't know, and I'm so glad..." Th- the research study happened at Grady Hospital in Atlanta. I just visited there Tuesday, I think. The, the research shows that it's made a difference. Even five years later, parents are saying, w- "We use this. We just didn't know." So Lisa, thank you so much for letting me talk to them and I appreciate it, and I hope you'll go out in your community and spread the word.

256. 1:54:29

     It's, it's very important. Thank you, Lisa.

257. 1:54:32

     Thank you for coming on over here today. I know you're so busy and so hard at work on this, and I, I really appreciate you coming in to share about it. It's so important. And, you know, when we look at adults in all of our communities, whether it's rural or otherwise in our state, who struggle, who are or have been incarcerated or who will be incarcerated, who, who are homeless, who can't put food on the table sometimes, frequently it's because they can't read.

258. 1:55:08

     And when I think about these children today who we could avoid them having that future one day, that to me is the most powerful work we could be doing as a legislature. Um, just making sure we have everything lined up to make that happen because, uh, you know... I, I look at everybody and I think, "That, that's, that's some mama's baby." She still looks at that grown person and, and, and sees her child.

259. 1:55:40

     And so I think, uh, it's compassionate work that you're doing. And, um, I thank you for what you said about the screening bill, but I remember whose idea it was, and it was hers. And you, and I appreciate you, you, uh, working on that with me and, and encouraging me to proceed with that. But, uh, members, I'm sure we have a lot of- we have questions for Miss Sale. Are, are you happy to, to answer some questions?

260. 1:56:11

     And I know you're limited.

261. 1:56:14

     Thank you. And I know-

262. 1:56:14

     Oh, no. We're actually ahead of schedule right now.

263. 1:56:18

     All right.

264. 1:56:19

     So if you have time to take a couple questions, let's do that. Let's just... I'm just gonna start over here and work my way that way. So let's start with Representative Cameron.

265. 1:56:28

     Is that me? Oh.

266. 1:56:29

     That is you.

267. 1:56:30

     Thank you. Good morning. Uh, and thank you for what you, uh, presented today. Uh, I'm, I'm up in the northwest corner of Georgia. We have little girls who don't have undergarments because they've never had undergarments when they come to school. So we have to raise awareness and also rai-

268. 1:56:46

     You know where the donations are, yeah

269. 1:56:46

     ... people have to donate things to children because they just have no idea. You're exactly correct. They have no idea what they're supposed to have or what they're supposed to do because they're never taught, because their parents were never taught. So thank you.

270. 1:57:00

     Mm-hmm.

271. 1:57:02

     That's right. Representative Stinson.

272. 1:57:04

     Okay.

273. 1:57:04

     Strawberry Queen.

274. 1:57:05

     Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, Ms. Dale. I almost want to call you Mother Dale. And Mother of Georgia. I just, uh, I, I really appreciate your words, and thank you so much for thinking of the least of these. Uh, but my question is relating to, uh, what, what you were suggesting that we can do as legislators, uh, as it relates to, uh, engaging with our local boards of education. I know right now a lot of... There's a, a conference going on in Savannah with State Board of Education members.

275. 1:57:39

     Um, has there been any, uh... Are they aware of any of this? So if I meet with, s- reach out to some of my-

276. 1:57:46

     Mm-hmm

277. 1:57:46

     ... um, superintendents, um, they will have some idea of what I'm talking about before I, I go into this? I'm just, I'm just speaking from past experience on things, and when I reach out to them, they, they have no clue of what I'm talking about. So I just wanted to... 'Cause I want to go back. I'm ready to go to work for you. I'm ready.

278. 1:58:02

     Let me tell that, Dale. Uh, so we, uh, we visited with the State Board of Education y- yesterday.

279. 1:58:10

     Okay.

280. 1:58:11

     And, um, to my dismay, I made some comments, and they really... It was really, I really knocked ball. I really did w- really good.

281. 1:58:21

     I got a couple nods. So she presented something similar to what she just presented to, to us. She got a standing ovation. So, uh- Yeah ... yes, Patty, they are, they are aware. We know. And, but they, they need to be more aware.

282. 1:58:35

     Yes.

283. 1:58:35

     Yes. But the message is getting out there. Dale is really an ambassador for us and for doing the right thing. And, um, so, so the, the message is getting out there, but we have to continue to tell the story. That's right. That's right.

284. 1:58:53

     Ms. Dale, you press that button. Yes, ma'am.

285. 1:58:56

     I think the thing you need to do is what, what I did, I went to our school superintendent and talked to him about what a great job he was doing and how much he had done, and could he just imagine a world where the kindergartners came better prepared. I acknowledged, I said, "Yancy, you've been working on this for decades. We've been working on this literacy crisis for decades.

286. 1:59:28

     Are we perhaps just putting a Band-Aid on the problem when we try to fix it after we've wasted the first five years of a child's life?"

287. 1:59:38

     Mm-hmm.

288. 1:59:38

     I said, "Yancy, will you help me? Will you, will you really help me get this started in our county?" He comes to every meeting. He's provided wi- me with resources, a place to meet, a person at the school board that's way smarter than me that can help. She helps design the meetings and the agenda and the pl- of course, we're working on a plan, writing down the plan, all that.

289. 2:00:10

     But I, I think you can convince your superintendents. Barry, doesn't that sound good to you?

290. 2:00:17

     All right.

291. 2:00:18

     Thank you. Representative Williams.

292. 2:00:20

     Thank you, Madam Chairman. First Lady, it's... When, when the gentleman before you presented and he made the statement, "The least of these," I wrote it down, because on my way to Atlanta yesterday before coming here, I couldn't get my chairperson of the Board of Education off of the phone because she told me, she didn't say one thing the Speaker said, but she told me, "You turned it out." And what she said moved her.

293. 2:00:56

     I just wanted to throw that little curve at you, Speaker. But what she said was when you talked about the least of these, an African American community, when an event, a revelation is followed by an event, and it's called confirmation. And this morning when that preacher said what he said, I considered that confirmation, and I wrote it down. Because she literally talked about you for 30 minutes, and she said she told some of her friends that the presenters could have stayed home because she ca- got what she came for.

294. 2:01:38

     And she literally left and went straight to the superintendent's office to have a talk with her. And the next thing she said is, "Is it any way possible for you to get her to Liberty County?" I knew that my friend, the Speaker, would back me up. I said, "Yes."

295. 2:01:59

     But thank you. Thank you for what you're doing. It's late, but finally we've come. It is late, and we've lost a lot of children because we're starting so late. I panicked when I found out Mississippi was ahead of us. They're supposed to be our salvation from being 50th. So thank you. We look forward to working on this and seeing some good results.

296. 2:02:31

     We've got one last question, and then Mr. Speaker, Ms. Dale, if y'all, since you're here, if you want to add anything or say anything, whatever you'd like to do, we're, we're open to that. So let's have a question from Chairman Greene.

297. 2:02:46

     God help.

298. 2:02:46

     Thank you, Madam Chairman. Mr. Speaker, to the First Lady, to the people in this audience, until we have some strong leadership at the State Department of Education, we're going to see a weakness in the state of Georgia. We've got to have a change that is, that- pushes forth a literacy program. They have said they have these things, but we have not seen the results.

299. 2:03:20

     And we need help when it comes to the federal programs. They have become babysitting, um, programs, and that, I was in several of them not long ago. There is not the type of work that needs to be done in those areas. It is just a babysitting situation, and that is a sad commentary on, on, on all of us.

300. 2:03:57

     And we need to make those changes. And thank you for stepping out. And that has, that is making a difference. But we've got to do something to make sure that we have the leadership in the state of Georgia.

301. 2:04:17

     All right.

302. 2:04:18

     Okay, I said one more, but Representative Ford has hit the button.

303. 2:04:21

     I was just gonna ask if we could get Ms. Dale's talking points that we could take back to our counties and, and use that. Because she can't come to everybody's county. But, you know, that would be great 'cause you've brought up some great talking points that, things I didn't know.

304. 2:04:35

     Mm-hmm.

305. 2:04:36

     So I would love if we could get those.

306. 2:04:38

     I don't have them.

307. 2:04:42

     That'll worry you. I could be her agent.

308. 2:04:44

     Yes.

309. 2:04:44

     I bet he's got, I bet he's got some money in his office they could look for you.

310. 2:04:48

     Those were very sobering facts that you shared.

311. 2:04:51

     That's right.

312. 2:04:51

     B- in the beginning, I had not heard those before, and I don't, I don't like to hear those.

313. 2:04:57

     I, I thought they were wrong, but they're right.

314. 2:05:01

     Well, we'll just have to fix that. Thank you. Mr. Speaker, d- did you want to add anything?

315. 2:05:08

     Yeah. Yeah, I just thank the members. Angie, thank you. Have you not on?

316. 2:05:13

     I do.

317. 2:05:13

     Okay. Just want to thank the members. And thanks to team, the staff for being here in God's country, south Georgia. Uh, Johnny, sorry.

318. 2:05:26

     You can't use that.

319. 2:05:26

     No, you're right, Al. But, um...

320. 2:05:30

     We got

321. 2:05:30

     That's it. So, you know, I appreciate you, Lisa, and your leadership in, in looking at rural issues. How do you solve issues in rural Georgia? Uh, first and foremost, you acknowledge those issues. It helps if you come from rural Georgia, and that's an important part. We certainly have our members that come from all parts of the state, certainly have embraced what we're trying to do in literacy and in funding around this issue. But, uh, we all know. Clint, thank you. Thank you for what you and your ministry is here, and thank you for being at the capital with us.

322. 2:06:01

     Uh, it's all hands on deck, I like to say. It's not just, um, it's, it's not just our school systems, Mary. It's not just what we can do in, in the General Assembly. And even so, it could be helpful, Gerald, I think you're, you're spot on when it comes to the leadership we have in, in the state, um, schools, in, in the state school superintendent's office. I'll be specific. Um, all those things that we're going to have to come together as a group and to address this issue because it is so important and so, it is so impactful.

323. 2:06:32

     And it's diverse. Healthcare, thanks to the Lions and what you're doing. Thanks for all of you supporting a, s- our first school of optometry at Georgia Southern so we can train, uh, physicians, optometrists, and with a better opportunity of keeping them in Georgia. Thanks to Becky and everything, and Anna and everything y'all do in healthcare. And Mike, what y'all have done in this community. It, it, it's all of us together pulling together. And it's no one, one silver bullet that solves this problem.

324. 2:07:03

     It's all of us continuing to work together. And the work of this committee going out all across Georgia and looking and finding solutions that are working in this community. We can, you know, we can, we can go and, and duplicate those in other communities if it really catches on. And you're right, Jaclyn, and that's what it takes to, uh, is get the message out. Uh, craft solutions, I think we do a great job of that in the House. And we lead on that part. And we're forthright. We get the facts what committees like this are doing on any number of important issues that are important to Georgia, but especially fu- especially important to Georgia's future.

325. 2:07:41

     And that's our you- young people. That's our next generation. And we're going to be there for them in so many different ways. And, uh, certainly appreciate all the colleagues that are here, have traveled down. And thanks for this community hosting this event. Thank you. And, and thanks to all of you who have attended this morning from so many backgrounds. And I'll, I'll close with this. Um, if you've driven, if you drove in here, you saw the fruits of our labor. I thank Director Sabo. Was Johnny here with earlier? Um, and who, uh, did such a great job helping trying to protect our neighbors in, in down in Brantley County and where the fires were down there and did such devastation.

326. 2:08:20

     But the impact from Hurricane Helene is still very evident here. And I will tell you, as a country boy who's lived in the, out on the farm all my life and in the woods, if you will, that the danger is not over because of all this debris. These dead trees that we see have blown over that have died as a result of Helene are a hazard, not just for those who own that property, but for their neighbors and their homes, because people live all over the place out in rural Georgia now.

327. 2:08:53

     So I hope we will keep our focus on making sure resources are devoted to, um, the continued cleanup from Hurricane Helene, because it is still a real threat to a lot of different communities around our state. Thanks for letting Dale. I mean, she's do- she's doing great. I'm turning literacy over to, to Ms. Dale and you guys. So, uh, I'm done here. But, but it's, it's an ongoing process. And, and thanks. It's like, again, it's all hands on deck. We're gonna get it. We're gonna get it right. We're gonna solve our problems.

328. 2:09:21

     Yes. Thank you both for being here this morning and for everything you do. Can we-

329. 2:09:34

     Yeah. We're gonna hear, uh, lastly from the Lions Lighthouse Foundation. Beth and Lillian, uh, y'all want to come on up and take a minute to get yourselves ready? This will be our last presentation of the day. And, um,

330. 2:09:54

     and committee, we're going to take about a 90-second res- uh, recess here while they get ready.

331. 2:25:36

     Members, if y'all could come back in and have a seat really quickly. We have got a hard stop absolutely not a minute past 11:20 because some of us are presenting across town at, um, at a meeting. So but I do, um, want to get Beth and Lillian from the Lions Lighthouse Foundation. I just told them, uh, it, they got to keep their presentation very short. But I promised them when we were back in session and have a, have a, s- a committee meeting that we're happy to have them come back and talk to us in more detail.

332. 2:26:09

     So why don't we just have you go ahead and run through these slides? This isn't, this, I like that it says transforming because this is a transformational program for a lot of people and in the whole state. And I, I think it could be particularly impactful in rural Georgia.

333. 2:26:25

     Yes.

334. 2:26:25

     Okay.

335. 2:26:25

     Absolutely.

336. 2:26:26

     Thank you.

337. 2:26:27

     Thank you for allowing me to come today so-

338. 2:26:29

     So appreciative of Lillian as my right-hand person, and so she put-- helped put together the slides for me. We'll probably skip a couple of them just to make sure we get through in time. Um, we have celebrated over 75 years. We were there at the Capitol and w-- had, uh, Mary, um, Oliver, M-Margaret Oliver read, uh, the proclamation for us, and Joe was there, and it was pretty awesome to celebrate that a couple of years ago. Um, but we are here to really transform vision for all of Georgians, not just children, but we do have a specialized children's program that we'll talk about as well.

339. 2:27:08

     Um, our whole idea is to bring Georgia into the world of sight, and we do focus on those that are at 200% of poverty or below just to make sure that, uh, those who need the care can get the care. You can see this map here from Emory which talks about the fact that there are well over 52 counties in the state that really do not have vision care providers, as was mentioned by Mercy as well. And so we're working on getting to those counties and being able to serve all of those, uh, Georgians in need.

340. 2:27:43

     Even if they had one or two providers, my thought is that they're gonna be dealing with the ones that are paying, and so we're here to take care of those that don't have insurance that need the help. We do this through a statewide partnership we have, uh, with a network of Lions. Lions help us with the screenings across the state. Optometrists, ophthalmologists who help us when s- patients need surgery. We have a surgery program. And, um, helping with exams, uh, eyeglasses, and, um, just Georgians.

341. 2:28:17

     Last year, we served, um, over, uh, nearly 70,000 Georgians. Um, who we are. Our key thing is to provide access and accessibility. So for example, if a person comes to us and they're, uh, a child, if a child comes to us between the ages of zero and 18, they're not gonna have a charge at all for the services that we provide, thanks to our donors. If they're 18 and older, the cost is just the cost of our lenses if they need, um, eyeglasses.

342. 2:28:50

     There's no charge for exams. So eyeglasses start at about $15. It's $60 for progressives. We add in a little bit extra for shipping when they're rural to get them to them. Uh, for surgery, we provide that care at no charge to them. They a-again, have no insurance. They're between 200% of poverty or below and no ability to pay for that, and they are a Georgia resident. We're called Georgia Lions Lighthouse for a reason, 'cause it's for Georgians.

343. 2:29:21

     Uh, we serve anyone who needs that, but one of the key points we find is that 73% of Georgia Lions Lighthouse Foundation patients that we serve live in urban and rural areas. Accessibility and affordability. So in 1996, we started our mobile clinics, traditional mobile clinics, where we'd have a doctor join us and provide that care. In 2011, we opened our vision clinic in Chamblee when we moved into the new building, and we recently upgraded to state-of-the-ap-art equipment, it, in-- which in fact I just used yesterday with our optometrist.

344. 2:29:59

     And the great part is you don't even have to get your eyes dilated anymore 'cause we have such great equipment. Got pictures of the back of my retina and was, was able to talk about issues that I have. In '22, we launched our statewide teleoptometry program, uh, primarily in response to the pandemic, because at that point in time, we lost a lot of doctors who had been volunteering for us. These doctors can join us remotely and be able to have a chance to, uh, serve the patients that need us most.

345. 2:30:30

     We, we provide that service in nearly 50, uh, health clinics at this point in time and working to expand that. In early 2023, we started providing school services to go, uh, take our equipment inside the school, set up a pop-up clinic. Uh, when we first started, we were giving out vouchers and found that nobody was using them. I think one family used it. And our donor, who was supporting us going into the schools, and we started with Atlanta Public Schools at their request, said, "My goodness, we wanna see glasses on faces." And we're like, "Well, that's a novel idea." So we started recruiting doctors.

346. 2:31:10

     We worked with optometrists who are under contract. Um, and I'm so excited to say that this month, we hired our first on to-- uh, full-time optometrist to work with us, which will greatly change our ability to get out into rural areas. Excited about that. Our eyeglasses are produced in our Chamblee lab. Some of the challenges we have seen, a huge increase in the number of people who are requesting services from us. We've gone from about 700 pairs a month to where we're at about 700 pairs of glasses per week that we're receiving.

347. 2:31:49

     Unfortunately, our lab can't keep up with that, so what we've been doing is actually having to ship out glasses to another finishing lab or two so that we can get them completed in a timely manner. And we also have eyeglass recycling. So I believe there's a box there at the legislators where you all can bring in your glasses. Lions Clubs collect glasses for us. We send those on mission trips around the world. Last year, we sent-- we went through approximately 155,000 pairs of glasses and sent out something like 75,000 pairs of glasses across the world.

348. 2:32:24

     Uh, our Transforming Vision program for children is such an important thing. We started, like I mentioned, in 2023 in the Atlanta Public Schools. We've expanded to cover Metro Atlanta counties and Chatham County, again, providing the services inside the school with the eye exams and the glasses and, uh, being able to serve that. Uh, I'm not gonna show the video. We don't have time. We have some research. This is all in a packet that you actually have on your, on, in the folder, where it talks about some of the research we did was to see exactly what's happening in the state, particularly around screenings.

349. 2:33:04

     We're still completing that research, but this is just some of the preliminary information that we have. Title I schools, more r- rural areas. We didn't get a lot of response from the metro area, but I'm not worried about that 'cause we're in the metro area. Uh, and this is just to show you, we talk about the fact that we have an army of Lions volunteers who are available to help us with screenings, and we have 155 Lions clubs throughout the j- State of Georgia that can help with those screenings once we get that bill passed.

350. 2:33:34

     One thing we have-

351. 2:33:35

     I need, I need to interrupt you there.

352. 2:33:37

     Out of time.

353. 2:33:37

     I'm so sorry.

354. 2:33:37

     It's okay.

355. 2:33:38

     I, I really do apologize-

356. 2:33:39

     I understand

357. 2:33:40

     ... for us running short because it, and that teleoptometry is something, committee members, that we need to definitely address, um, very soon, and we'll discuss that in the future, in a future meeting, getting some-

358. 2:33:55

     Send you that one.

359. 2:33:57

     That'd be perfect.

360. 2:33:58

     And in the-

361. 2:33:58

     Yeah. In fact-

362. 2:33:59

     Yeah

363. 2:33:59

     ... any of this presentation you'd like to send to get out to the committee-

364. 2:34:02

     Yep

365. 2:34:02

     ... if it's not in the packet.

366. 2:34:03

     Mm-hmm.

367. 2:34:03

     But when, I would, I would like for y'all to come back if you would. I know we-

368. 2:34:09

     Yes

369. 2:34:09

     ... we couldn't give you as much time as we thought we'd be able to, but we got this hard stop. But, uh, that legislation on screening that Ms. Dale referred to, committee, the, the foundation was so integral to us planning that and kind of planning a long game f- for getting those glasses on faces and-

370. 2:34:30

     Mm-hmm

371. 2:34:31

     ... and getting, uh, hearing aids where they needed to be on children, too. But thank you.

372. 2:34:36

     Yes.

373. 2:34:36

     Thank you so much for being here. Um, committee.

374. 2:34:42

     Uh, yeah. I wanna hear from you again very, very soon.

375. 2:34:45

     Sounds good. In, in your packet, just so you know, is a copy of what the legislation says about our request for the waiver for the teleoptometry program.

376. 2:34:54

     Good.

377. 2:34:54

     Too many of the clinics are-

378. 2:34:55

     Okay

379. 2:34:55

     ... too small for us to pr- provide, so that's, that's in there. You've got a whole slew of information.

380. 2:35:00

     I think it makes good sense-

381. 2:35:01

     A card and anything you need

382. 2:35:01

     ... to, to do that waiver.

383. 2:35:03

     Yes.

384. 2:35:03

     Yeah.

385. 2:35:03

     Yeah.

386. 2:35:03

     All right. Okay. Committee, if you, committee members, you are invited to lunch at the Vidalia Community Center. It's on Old Airport Road. Um, they have, they have special seating for us, and they begin serving lunch at 11:30, so we can make our way over there. I also feel like we'd be remiss if we did not offer condolences to the family of Senate President Pro Tem Larry Walker, the passing of his father, the Honorable Larry Walker. Um, he meant a lot to this state and a lot of people in this state, and, um, we're very sorry to hear of his passing and do offer those condolences.

387. 2:35:44

     Committee members, we don't have time to make any comments, so I'm gonna call this meeting adjourned.