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  • Georgia teachers and state employees will get pay raises as state budget passes
    on March 29, 2024 at 3:18 am

    ATLANTA (AP) — Pay raises for Georgia’s public school teachers and state employees were never in doubt politically from the moment Gov. Brian Kemp proposed them, but lawmakers finally clinched the deal on Thursday, passing a budget that also boosts spending on education, health care and mental health. Senators and represenatives worked out their differences on House Bill 916, with it passing the House 175-1 and the Senate 54-1. The budget spends $36.1 billion in state money and $66.8 billion overall in the year beginning July 1. “As they say, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Matt Hatchett, a Dublin Republican, explaining that not every request was satisfied, but many were. Spending would fall from this year’s budget after Gov. Brian Kemp and lawmakers supplemented that budget will billions in one-time cash, boosting state spending to $38 billion in the year ending June 30. Kemp backed the budget in remarks to lawmakers Thursday and is expected to sign it. Public school teachers would get a $2,500 raise starting July 1, boosting average teacher pay in Georgia above $65,000 annually, as the Republican governor proposed in January. That is in addition to a $1,000 bonus Kemp sent out in December. Prekindergarten teachers also would get a $2,500 raise. State and university employees also would get a 4% pay increase, up to $70,000 in salary. The typical state employee makes $50,400. Some employees would get more. State law enforcement officers would get an additional $3,000 bump, atop the $6,000 special boost they got last year. Child welfare workers also would receive extra $3,000 raises. Judges, though, won’t get the big pay raises once proposed. Instead, they only will get the 4% other state employees will receive. One big winner in the budget would be Georgia’s public prekindergarten program. Kemp on Wednesday declared lawmakers could spend an extra $48 million in lottery funds. Lawmakers put nearly all that money into the state’s Department of Early Care and Learning, a move that won plaudits from Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler, a Stone Mountain Democrat. “For most of my 30 years in the Senate, Democrats pushed for that funding,” Butler said. “Tonight my friends in the majority listened.” The state would spend hundreds of millions of dollars more to increase what it pays to nursing homes, home health care providers, dialysis providers, physical and occupational therapists and some physicians, but lawmakers cut back some of those rate increases in their final document. Lawmakers agreed on spending nearly $19 million more on domestic violence shelters and sexual assault response to offset big cuts in federal funding that some agencies face. The budget also would raise the amount that local school boards have to pay for health insurance for non-certified employees such as custodians, cafeteria workers and secretaries. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery, a Vidalia Republican, argued it was fair to speed up the phase-in of higher premiums because of other money the state is pumping into education, including boosting by $205 million the state’s share of buying and operating school buses and $104 million for school security. The Senate would add another $5 million for school security for developing school safety plans. Lawmakers shifted another $60 million into new construction projects. Tillery said that was at Kemp’s behest, seeking not to commit so much money to new ongoing spending, in case revenues fall. The state already plans to pay cash for new buildings and equipment in the upcoming budget, instead of borrowing as normal, reflecting billions in surplus cash Georgia has built up in recent years. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

  • KEYWORD NOTICE – A mostly male board will decide whether a Nebraska lawmaker faces censure for sexual harassment
    on March 29, 2024 at 3:18 am

    LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A Nebraska lawmaker implored the Legislature’s Executive Board on Thursday to hold a colleague accountable for invoking her name in a graphic reading on the legislative floor, which some say constitutes sexual harassment. The decision of whether Republican state Sen. Steve Halloran will face a censure vote of the full Legislature now rests with a group of their colleagues who are mostly men. “If we don’t move this forward, we are in fact condoning this kind of speech,” Democratic state Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh said at a hearing on her resolution. “This has traumatized the public. It has traumatized my family.” The Executive Board consists of eight men and one woman. All but one are Republican in the officially nonpartisan Nebraska Legislature. The hearing was held 10 days after Halloran took to the mic on the floor and repeatedly called out the name “Sen. Cavanaugh” while reading a graphic account of rape from a best-selling memoir, making it appear as if that lawmaker was the subject of the assault. His embellished reading from the memoir “Lucky” by Alice Sebold came during debate of a bill that would have held school librarians and teachers criminally responsible for providing what it considers to be “obscene material” to students in grades K-12. Most people in the chamber at the time — including Cavanaugh — understood the graphic comments to be directed at her, and she was visibly shaken immediately after Halloran’s remarks. Halloran insisted later that he was invoking the name of her brother and fellow Democratic Nebraska lawmaker, state Sen. John Cavanaugh, as a way to get him to pay attention to the remarks. On Thursday, Machaela Cavanaugh tearfully begged the board not to wait any longer to make a decision about whether Halloran will face censure, noting it made no difference whether Halloran was targeting a woman or a man in his graphic reading — either constitutes sexual harassment. The board must vote on whether to advance Machaela Cavanaugh’s censure resolution to the full Legislature for a vote. A vote to censure Halloran would only repudiate his remarks and have no effect on his ability to legislate, speak during debate or serve on legislative committees. In the hearing, Machaela Cavanaugh also cast doubt on Halloran’s explanation that he was seeking her brother’s attention, noting that Halloran had approached her privately before making the public remarks to recite the scene about sexual violence, which had been read by a supporter of the obscenity bill during a public hearing. “I said something to the effect of, ‘OK, Steve. I’m going to walk away now,’” she recounted. This week, Halloran was accused of joking privately with other lawmakers inside the legislative chamber that Machaela Cavanaugh likes to view pornography. Speaker of the Legislature Sen. John Arch — who is a member of the Executive Board — confirmed to The Associated Press on Thursday that he confronted Halloran about those remarks and that Halloran acknowledged he had made them. Machaela Cavanaugh was the only person to testify at Thursday’s hearing, although her brother and another Democratic lawmaker, state Sen. George Dungan, whom Halloran addressed after his graphic reading, were invited to speak. Halloran declined to appear for the hearing, but submitted written testimony in which he railed against it as a violation of legislative rules that protect lawmakers from being censured for words spoken in debate. He also blasted the decision to make the hearing public, saying the complaints against him are “a legislative internal matter.” “An accusation of sexual harassment is one of the most significant accusations that can be made in our modern world,” he wrote. “Look at the last decade for evidence of this. Even a false accusation — even if made just once — can be the death knell to somebody’s career and livelihood.” The only woman on the Executive Board, Republican state Sen. Julie Slama, reiterated her support for the Cavanaugh siblings and brought up her own struggle years earlier when then-Sen. Ernie Chambers, a Democrat, implied she was appointed to her seat in exchange for sexual favors. Chambers, the Nebraska Legislature’s longest serving lawmaker and the state’s first Black legislator, also invoked Slama’s name on the mic in 2020 while denouncing U.S. President Andrew Jackson for being a slaveholder. “Suppose I enslaved Sen. Slama and used her the way I wanted to?” Chambers said. Slama was 23 at the time. Slama said at the hearing Thursday that she wished she had done more at the time to try to hold Chambers accountable for his remarks. “The same people that are trying to silence you now are the ones who pressured me not to act in 2020,” Slama said to Cavanaugh. “You’ve had so much courage in this that I didn’t have.” Cavanaugh apologized to Slama for not doing more to come to her defense four years earlier. “You had the courage,” Cavanaugh said. “You just didn’t have the support.” Republican Sen. Ray Aguilar, chair of the Executive Board, praised Cavanaugh for her testimony, but said the board would not make a decision until after the Easter holiday weekend. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

  • Fort Wayne Mayor Tom Henry dies after medical emergency amid cancer battle
    on March 29, 2024 at 2:18 am

    FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) — Fort Wayne Mayor Tom Henry died Thursday, a day after after experiencing a medical emergency related to his stomach cancer. He was 72. The announcement from his office that the Democratic mayor had “passed away peacefully” came just hours after Henry’s family issued a statement saying he had entered hospice care after suffering a medical emergency. “Mayor Henry was a man of the highest character – a true servant leader who devoted his entire adult life to the betterment of Fort Wayne and its residents. He was also the best dad a son or daughter could ask for,” the announcement from his spokesperson John Perlich said. The earlier announcement from Henry’s family said he was privately transported to a hospital where the mayor and his family consulted at length with his medical team, including his oncologist. “After careful consideration of the risks associated with surgical intervention, Mayor Henry has opted for comfort measures at this time. He is resting comfortably under the care of extremely skilled hospice nurses,” the statement said. Henry announced his diagnosis of late-stage stomach cancer on Feb. 26 during a news conference. He began chemotherapy at the beginning of March. “My initial scans have shown that the cancer is currently spreading through my lymph nodes and other organs,” Henry said at the time. “Therefore, my prognosis is not exactly encouraging.” Henry was elected in November to his fifth term as mayor of Indiana’s second most populous city with about 270,000 residents. Henry’s wife, Cindy, died at age 67 on Jan. 20 after battling pancreatic cancer for more than a year. Henry pleaded guilty in November 2022 to operating a vehicle while intoxicated endangering a person, had his license suspended for 90 days and received a suspended one-year jail sentence. He was arrested the month before with a blood-alcohol nearly twice Indiana’s legal limit. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

  • California man convicted of killing his mother is captured in Mexico after ditching halfway house
    on March 29, 2024 at 1:18 am

    SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — A Southern California man convicted of killing his mother as a teenager was captured in Mexico a week after he walked away from a halfway house, violating the conditions of his probation, authorities said. Ike Nicholas Souzer, 20, was arrested Wednesday in the coastal city of Rosarito by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Mexican officials, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office said. He was returned to California. During the weeklong manhunt, the district attorney’s office described Souzer as dangerous and violent. Souzer had already served his sentence for stabbing his mother to death in 2017, when he was 13. He was subsequently convicted on a vandalism charge and served a short sentence, then released from custody March 20, prosecutors said. The judge in that case also sentenced Souzer to two years of probation. This was the second time Souzer disappeared from a halfway house. In 2022, he was let out of jail and moved to a halfway house in Santa Ana where he removed his electronic monitor and left. He was later captured by police. Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said Souzer deserved harsher sentences and blamed judges who have handled his cases. “My prosecutors have spent years and years trying to do everything they can to keep this violent criminal behind bars, and at every turn, the very judges who are elected to protect public safety have done little to do so and instead have given him break after break after break,” Spitzer said in a statement. Souzer was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the death of his mother. His defense attorney argued that the killing was in self-defense and said the teen had experienced years of abuse, the Los Angeles Times reported. Souzer has also been charged with three attacks on correctional officers, possessing a shank in jail, and most recently, drawing graffiti on a freeway underpass, prosecutors said. He also escaped a juvenile detention facility in 2019. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

  • Haiti now needs up to 5,000 police to help tackle `catastrophic’ gang violence , UN expert says
    on March 29, 2024 at 12:18 am

    UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Haiti now needs between 4,000 and 5,000 international police to help tackle “catastrophic” gang violence which is targeting key individuals and hospitals, schools, banks and other critical institutions, the U.N. rights expert for the conflict-wracked Caribbean nation said Thursday. Last July, William O’Neill said Haiti needed between 1,000 and 2,000 international police trained to deal with gangs. Today, he said the situation is so much worse that double that number and more are needed to help the Haitian National Police regain control of security and curb human rights abuses. O’Neill spoke at a news conference launching a U.N. Human Rights Office report he helped produce which called for immediate action to tackle the “cataclysmic” situation in Haiti where corruption, impunity and poor governance compounded by increasing gang violence have eroded the rule of law and brought state institutions “close to collapse.” The report, covering the five-month period ending in February, said gangs continue to recruit and abuse boys and girls, with some children being killed for trying to escape. Gangs also continue to use sexual violence “to brutalize, punish and control people,” the report said, citing women raped during gang attacks in neighborhoods, “in many cases after seeing their husbands killed in front of them.” In 2023, the number of people killed and injured as a result of gang violence increased significantly – with 4,451 killed and 1,668 injured, the report said. And up to March 22 this year, the numbers skyrocketed to 1,554 killed and 826 injured. As a result of the escalating gang violence, so-called “self-defense brigades” have taken justice into their own hands, the report said, and “at least 528 cases of lynching were reported in 2023 and a further 59 in 2024.” The human rights report reiterated the need for urgent deployment of a multinational security mission to help Haiti’s police stop the violence and restore the rule of law. And it urged tighter national and international controls to stem the trafficking of weapons and ammunition to gangs and others – much of it from the United States. O’Neill, who was appointed by the Geneva-based U.N. human rights chief, said the “alarming” targeting of key institutions and individuals began in the last four or five weeks – with 18 attacks on hospitals documented, attacks on schools including one set on fire three days ago, and one of Haiti’s elite academic institutions set ablaze on Wednesday night. Gangs have also stormed Haiti’s two biggest prisons. In addition, he said, gangs have made two attempts to take control of the National Palace, and they are targeting human rights defenders, journalists and people they see as threats to their continuing control of territory. Another new element documented by the U.N. human rights team in Haiti, O’Neill said, is the use of children not only as messengers, lookouts, sex slaves and cooks, but young teenagers are now involved in frontline activities and attacks in numbers not seen before. The closure of the airport and roads has also left about 1.4 million Haitians on the verge of famine. And the number of people fleeing their homes has increased from 50,000 last July according to the U.N. International Organization for Migration to at least 362,000, “and I would say given the last three to four weeks, we’re probably close to 400,000 if not over that,” the U.N. envoy said. O’Neill said re-establishing security is key, and getting the international security force on the ground in Haiti is critical and urgent. Getting the transitional presidential council officially installed and active is also “crucial” and “absolutely vital,” O’Neill said, expressing hope this could happen possibly next week. For one thing, Kenya’s President William Ruto has said he won’t deploy police to lead the multinational security operation until he has a Haitian counterpart, the U.N. expert said. O’Neill said the trust fund to finance the international police operation also desperately needs funds. Haiti asked for an international force to combat gangs in October 2022, and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed for a force last July, he said. “We’re still waiting and every day lost means more people die, and more women and girls get raped, and more people flee their homes,” O’Neill said. “So the sooner the better.” Brought to you by www.srnnews.com