This is also very much an education budget.

The House version of HB 68 includes an additional half $1 billion in education spending for the FY 20.

Over the FY 215 original budget.

I'll let that wash over you for a minute.

Half $1 billion more in education.

The House passed HB 68.

The fiscal year 2026 budget.

In their version, education and the state's prison system are the big winners.

Now it's the Senate's turn to insert their budget priorities.

Good evening and welcome to Lawmakers.

On day 30 of the legislative session.

I.

The legislature chooses and crosses a major hurdle the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities is one of the agencies getting a boost in the House funding.

I sat down with DD Commissioner Kevin Tanner to discuss the needs of his agency, including what keeps him up at.

Night, how.

He's able to see his staff create miracles.

Also in studio two, legislators dedicated to helping those in need will talk about legislation and more.

One of them had staff in Barrow County near Apalachee High School during the shootings last September, and will tell us how they helped before, during and after the tragedy.

We begin with a report on what took place at the Capitol today with correspondent Sarah Kallis Donna.

It was a late start for the House today, but by early afternoon they had fulfilled their most important duty.

The House took up the only bill they are constitutionally required to pass each session.

The budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

The budget is smaller than the.

For the current fiscal year, because it does not include as many one time surplus investments.

Things are tight.

Many of you have asked for funding for your communities or asked us to support programs and initiatives within state agencies.

I wish we could address them all or go further than we did, but we can't.

The needs are great and there are many worthy causes competing for the same limited resources.

The budget, or HB 68, applies to the fiscal year that starts in July and includes $250 million more funding for the state's prison system from last year.

Much of the funding in the corrections FY 26 budget is an annual ization of the needs we recognized in the amended budget, including funding to hire more than 700 correctional officers to lower staffing ratios and improve bed capacity so that the department can implement life safety and security projects.

This budget also recognizes that salary enhancements are working to attract and retain staff in the prison system, and it includes additional salary increases to keep our foot on the gas.

And adds more money to the governor's recommendation for education.

This is also very much an education budget.

The House version of HB 68 includes an additional half $1 billion in education spending for the FY 20.

Over the FY 25 original budget.

Do you all let that wash over you for a minute?

Half $1 billion more in education.

Including a new program to address student mental health.

The addition comes after a deadly shooting at Apalachee High School last fall.

It has become abundantly clear that school safety and student mental health go hand in hand.

That's why I'm excited to announce a new program created in the House budget in the Department of Education called Student Support Services.

This $62 million program is an umbrella of services, if you will, that's designed to cover the needs of the whole child.

It's a collection of ideas and long time requests.

Many of you are likely familiar with that.

Support our students in ways that the Qbi formula can't.

This new program provides $20 million in mental health grant funding for middle schools and high schools.

The budget passed 100 71-4 and was immediately transmitted to the Senate.

Also today, the House celebrated an important milestone for one member.

Today is the day that the Lord has made, and I will rejoice and be glad in it, because I'm getting ready to ring the bell.

Ring the bell.

Ring the bell.

My last radiation day.

My last radiation.

Thank you.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I could not have done it without all of you.

Thank you so very much.

Mr. Speaker, all of you, I love you from the depth of my heart.

Thank you.

And recognize the Shepherd Center's 50th anniversary.

The Shepherd center treats brain and spinal cord injuries.

The cause is personal to house members.

As speaker of the House Chief of Staff Terry England is recovering from a spinal cord injury.

With the help of the Shepherd center.

The Senate started their session with a resolution recognizing today as Georgia Lineman Day at the Capitol.

As the state continues to recover from damage done by Hurricane Helene, the men who string and repair power lines received the special recognition.

These guys and ladies really are the backbone of our energy infrastructure.

They braved the storms, the flooding, dangerous temperature, long nights to ensure that our homes are lit, that we're kept safe and warm in those most darkest of hours.

They also remembered slain Roswell police officer Jeremy Labonte, who was killed last month while responding to a suspicious person call at a shopping center.

An interchange at State Route 400 and Holcomb Bridge Road in Roswell was named after Labonte.

In memoriam in the family was presented with a flag today that was flown over the Capitol.

For everyone who has ever served as a first responder or in the military.

Please join me in saluting this family.

God bless you.

Thank you.

The Senate then got down to business as they quickly passed two House resolutions and a bill, HB 287 dealt with updating DNR fishing and hunting license regulations.

DNR has purchased right at 20.

Wheelchairs.

That's on tracks.

So any person that's paralyzed in the state of Georgia does not have to have does not have to buy a hunting or fishing license and also anyone that's outside of the state can also get a hunting and fishing license for free.

House resolution 97-98 regulate the sale and leasing of state property in nonexclusive easements in dozens of counties throughout the state.

All the legislation was passed unanimously.

They then stood in recess until the House sent over the budget, assigned it to the Appropriations Committee, and gaveled out for the day.

No floor activities are planned for tomorrow, as committee work will be the top priority.

Both chambers will be back in session on Thursday.

That's my Capitol report, Donna.

Thanks, Sarah.

We're going to spend the show focusing on some of Georgia's most vulnerable citizens and the state agency working to make a difference in their lives.

The Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities.

DBD I sat down with the man who heads DBD Commissioner Kevin Tanner.

We talked about a range of topics, from ways to boost a workforce that shrank during the pandemic, to how the agency is looking to add more beds for people in crisis.

But we began with the agency's role in forensic services.

DBD receives court orders to determine if a person is competent to stand trial, or can accept criminal responsibility under an insanity defense.

Under the code, we're responsible for the restoration work, and what that means is if someone's been charged with a crime and their defense attorney or their family, or the prosecutor brings to the judge and says, you know, I think that my client may have not be competent, they may not be able to help me participate in their criminal defense because of a mental illness.

Then the judge can sign an order that would require our agency to have a licensed clinical psychologist, a PhD level psychologist, do an evaluation.

If, after doing that evaluation, it's determined that the person is indeed not competent, then the psychologist will make a determination on whether they believe the person's restorable if they believe the person is restorable, they're saying in their professional medical opinion that that the person could be with treatment restored to competency.

And then typically what happens?

That report is given to the judge to the court, and then the judge will typically issue another order that says you're ordered to go to the state to DBD, to our agency for to be restored to competency.

And once that happens, they go on a wait list and we bring them to one of our hospitals.

And when that happens, you also don't have enough beds for all of that.

For everybody who may need that help.

Talk about that a little bit.

Yeah.

That's what people often ask me.

What keeps me up at night in this role.

And that's definitely it.

And it's because we have almost 800 individuals in jail today waiting on a state hospital bed.

And it takes on average over a year now for a male to come into the state hospital system.

Once we receive the order.

Now, they could have been in jail for some time waiting on the evaluation and then sometime waiting on the order.

But once we receive it, it's taking a year or more.

We only have in the entire state of Georgia.

We only have 641 forensic beds now, 60% roughly of those beds have people who have been ordered to us not guilty by reason of insanity.

And what that is, that's different than not being competent.

That's someone who's been charged with a crime.

It's often a serious crime.

And the court has made the determination this person is not guilty because they have such a severe illness, such as severe mental illness.

They don't know the difference between right and wrong, and they're ordered by the court to come to us.

The average length of stay for that population is six years.

We have people who've been with us for 20 plus years at the state hospital, so I only have about 300 beds in the entire state for restoration services, and I have 800 people waiting on one of those beds.

I want to talk a little bit about your your making crisis stabilization and Diagnostic Center.

That's a project that I'm extremely excited about.

It's really getting a lot of national attention.

So we are also responsible for the intellectual, intellectual, developmental disability population.

And we run the now comp waiver services through the Medicaid Waiver program.

But we have certain individuals who are what we call hard to place.

They end up being stuck in an emergency room.

They may have co-occurring IDD behavioral health illness.

They may have a behavioral issue.

They may have a physical ailment.

But for whatever reason, they end up finding themselves in an emergency room.

And we have a challenging time sometimes finding a provider that will take the individual.

So we have I've challenged our team and our staff, and with the support of the General Assembly and the governor, we've identified some long term solutions.

One of those is the facility that you just mentioned, and it will be a 16 bed inpatient crisis stabilization facility for the I.D.

Population.

It will have physical health, mental health doctors who are experts in treating an individual with I.D.

It will also have things like ob gyn, dermatology, whatever services the individual may need, they'll come there so they're stuck in an emergency room.

We'll bring them to this facility, they'll be stabilized, and then they'll be able to step down into a a community based service.

The other thing I'm really excited about at this facility, though, is going to have a very robust outpatient component.

And we we're contracting with Mercer Medical School and Mercer Medical School is going to run the outpatient component.

And why that's exciting is they're going to bring their docs who are in training through this outpatient center, and they're going to train those doctors.

So as they go out and rule parts of the state, they're going to know how to take care of.

Sometimes this challenging population to care for medically.

So it's a game changer for our system.

And that's fully funded in the budget.

And that should open toward the end of May of this year.

It's under construction.

Now.

The other thing that we identified is we're going to have to have good places to step those individuals down into community settings.

So we've opened two pilot homes over in the Augusta area.

There are four beds each.

And we we have reduced the number of people in the hospital by over 33% in the last year.

We're also in the process of doing two additional homes in Macon.

And the other thing that is exciting is we sent up a proposal to CMS, which is the Federal Medicaid Agency, and they've approved three types of placements that we haven't had before.

That's more intense for the hard to place individual.

And we're in the process of building out that network.

So my prediction is in the next two years, by the end of the next two years, we'll have no one stuck in an emergency room waiting on a bed.

We're going to have a system in place to take care of that population.

Quite a large workforce, but I know that there are some vacancies you'd like to see filled by qualified people.

We operate five state hospitals, and during COVID we lost over 1,200 employees.

To that left the workforce and went somewhere else for higher pay.

Again, thanks to the governor and the General Assembly and some some targeted pay increases and some across the board, state employee pay increases, we've been able to start to turn the tide on that.

We've brought back a lot of individuals and started.

We also have a department within our agency that's laser focused on recruitment and retention.

Theo Carter does a tremendous job leading that effort for us, and it's making a difference.

We also have a large number of partnerships that we have forged with universities and technical schools to help turn out folks.

I'm going to be having dinner with one of our university presidents here in a couple of weeks, and we're working closely with them to try to create a PhD level.

Psychology program for someone who's actually working in the field today.

The only way I have 50 people that work for me who's interested in getting a PhD that have a master level psychology degree, their master level psychologist.

But in order for them to be able to do the evaluations we talked about, to be able to testify as an expert in court, they have to be a PhD level licensed psychologist.

I have a 35% vacancy rate in that area.

I have 50 people who would love to fill those roles.

But in order to get that education in Georgia, they would have to quit their job and go to school full time.

So it's been done in some other areas around the state.

It's been done in law enforcement space with the Georgia Law Enforcement Command College.

It's been done with public administration and some other areas.

So we're in we're having some serious conversations as an agency about how can we partner with the university system to create cohorts and a pathway to help with the workforce?

I'm going to be going to one of the medical schools soon to talk to their medical students about, number one, consider a field as a psychiatrist.

Consider going into that.

Number two, consider the public sector.

Consider coming to work for us.

Consider the state.

I tell young people all the time that, you know, I've got a staff of over 4,500 employees and a large budget and a lot of stress, and sometimes it can be challenging and frustrating.

And because some of the problems are frustrating.

But all I have to do is pick a day and go to one of our hospitals, spend time with our staff, our nurses, our doctors and our patients, and to see the miracles that are being performed within the walls of our hospital every day, where they take an individual who is extremely sick, that has a severe illness, that may be in a place where they're very difficult to even just handle, but get them to a place where they're.

And I'm thinking about one in particular, where the lady had been in that case, had been on a unit by herself because of how challenging she was.

And when I was there, she was out in the courtyard reading a poem she wrote about her recovery and her journey, and she had hope because she was had found the right medication regimen.

She had found the right people to help her, to be with her, to walk with her.

And for the first time, probably in a long time, she had hope restored to her.

So if I can get young people to be able to see that side of what we do every day, they get up and go to work every day having miracles, I think we'll be able to turn the tide on our staffing.

Yeah, my my final question was going to be what?

You know, you you came in in 2022.

So in this period of time you look back on all you've accomplished.

It sounds like you just told me that answer.

Like the things that make you feel really good about what has happened since you've been commissioner of this department.

Yeah.

You know, when Governor Kemp reached out to me and asked me about taking this role, I wasn't seeking the job.

I wasn't looking for a job.

But, you know, I called a person that I have great respect for and asked them what they thought.

And they said, you know, Kevin, only a few opportunities will ever come along in your life where you can truly make a difference.

And when they come along, you have to take them.

And so I took this role because I felt like that we needed to make a difference.

And what I have found is we have a dedicated group of men and women across Georgia who are DBD, who, who are now feeling empowered to be creative and to be and to create change in the system.

And they're performing miracles every day.

And.

The budget passed by the House today calls for more money for DBD, including to extend forensic services and to add a jail diversion program and outreach services for those with severe mental illness.

I want to thank Commissioner Tanner for talking to me.

Well, coming up, more on behavioral and mental health legislation from two House members who are passionate about those issues.

They've dedicated their lives to helping others through life's challenges.

This is Lawmakers on GPB.

Georgia Farm Bureau, a grassroots organization dedicated to preserving Georgia agriculture.

Farm Bureau advocates for all Georgia farmers at the state Capitol during the session and year round.

Georgia Farm Bureau, the Voice of Georgia Farmers.

I'm a queen.

I don't fear anyone.

This is a woman people wanted to follow.

You are an important part of our work.

You're stronger than you know.

Saddle my horse immediately.

She's a female trailblazer.

We did it by acknowledging our own worth.

So please do continue.

I got my head out the sunroof.

Whoa whoa oh la la la la da da da da.

Understanding the past gives a sense of the future.

Heart like a lion.

This is the first time that anyone has seen this in 2000 years.

Oh oh oh oh.

Stop.

The big is happening.

So hurry up.

We're diving in..

This is amazing.

Well, I'm excited now.

Pompeii is a battle against time.

Eyes wide open.

I'll open.

You think I'm joking?

But look at this.

It did really happen.

Don't let anybody tell you who you are.

Yeah, I love this life.

History teaches us to honor the past.

Which in with our eyes wide open.

When you look back, you're like, wow, that was pretty special.

This is something that's actually altering the course of history.

You're charged with keeping these stories alive.

Eyes wide open.

You.

Welcome back to Lawmakers.

I'm Donna Lowry.

We're going to continue the conversation about the needs of Georgians.

Under DBD.

Joining me is Republican Representative Katie Dempsey of Rome.

She chairs the human Resources subcommittee of appropriations.

She also serves on the Georgia Behavioral Health Coordinating Council.

Also here is Democratic Representative Shelley Hutchinson of Snellville.

Her committees include Public and Community health and Judiciary.

Juvenile.

She is a social worker and owns the Social Empowerment Center, which, among other things, provides mental health services for adults, children and families.

Welcome to both of you.

To lawmakers.

So I want to start with your reactions to some of the things that the Commissioner Tanner talked about.

Anything that you want to bring out a little bit more about that he talked about?

You know, I think the I.D.

Work is so important that's happening in Macon.

I was there for the groundbreaking breaking, but I was also a part of the appropriations effort to add that it is the one and only in our nation that will be exactly like that.

And people with developmental disabilities and who have complex mental health issues, too.

It's a very hard population to care for.

They need very special care.

Yeah.

He said that it's getting a lot of national attention, so I'm glad to hear that.

What about for you?

Well, I think.

The thing that I thought of most is the workforce.

Mental health is not an industry that the money the state is going to make money off of.

So we don't have the type of money we can pour into, like a private entity like Hyundai or Rivian or something like that.

So we have to find the money to pay highly skilled people for a highly skilled population.

And it's just it's not always there as much as we want it to be.

But it's so important because by not treating some of these illnesses, we see crime rates go up, we see divorce rates go up, we see children in foster care more often.

So it's something we have to do and we have to find the resources to do it.

And fortunately, we did do some good work in in the budget.

And making it the job attractive in terms of paying them what they need.

He said he lost a lot.

To the private sector sector.

That's true.

That is true.

I know the other thing is the budget did there was money in the budget for that.

For DBD.

That's very much needed.

There is, but it's also this is the first budget that I can remember where so much money was spread throughout.

Previously, you've seen a lot of money in the DBD budget, but actually now it's in education to deal with many of the factors that are going on there in our K through 12 schools.

It's in our jails and corrections.

It's in law enforcement as well as DBD and health, full time, regular health that we don't always think of as mental health, because that integration of services, that's parity.

And that's what we're all working toward.

We're going to talk about your parity bill in a minute.

So we're going to talk a little bit about that.

But Representative Hutchinson I want to I want you to tell us about the social empowerment center that you have.

And then I want you to tell how your staff helped with at Appalachia High School during the crisis.

So I started the Social Empowerment Center 23 years ago.

It was just for me and a friend to do the work that we loved in the community.

But 23 years later, we have a little over 100 employees.

We work in mostly Northeast Georgia.

We start in Gwinnett County, and we kind of spread out from Athens to banks to all the way back through Barrow and Hall and back to Gwinnett County.

That's kind of our region, and we've been integrated in that community for over 20 years.

So one of the things we do in Barrow County is we staff the schools there for mental health services.

And that's where Appalachia is.

Yes, that's where Appalachia is.

The day of the shooting, we had staff, our staff travels to all the high schools in Barrow County.

We were addressing another emergency at Barrow Winder High School, which is close by when the shooting happened.

Our employees were locked in all of the schools in Barrow County because there was a threat throughout.

They were barricaded in their offices all day and, you know, really in, you know, the kids mental health is paramount.

But as the owner of the business, I have to think about my employees who are barricaded in their offices all day.

They needed triage themselves.

And of course I will.

We do everything we can for our employees and for our clients, but we we saw 80 families that day.

The first day, the first day that was a Thursday.

And by the end of the weekend, we saw almost 300.

Wow.

And I think we've had by in one week.

We probably had three 500 new referrals for cases for kids that witnessed some of the most horrific things that I've heard as as a supervisor or as a therapist.

And those numbers have gone up because what we're finding is we have kids that maybe weren't in Barrow County, maybe in Hiram, Georgia.

They have a genuine I'm.

All the years I've worked with teenagers, I've heard every excuse why a child doesn't want to go to school.

But this was a really genuine fear from a lot of children around the state and in the world, really, that they are.

They're fear of going to school is getting more severe and more real to them, because now you have neighbors who've experienced these things.

So we've been busy.

I'm glad you were there.

And I hear that people are recognizing your work, so I appreciate that.

So yes, we thank Barrow County Schools for recognizing the work that we did there.

That's good.

I want to get to the bill we talked about a little bit earlier, and that's HB 612.

And that's adding the Behavioral Health Coordinating Council, adding to it.

You're already on it.

What would you like added?

I am, and I think I've been on it for quite some time since its inception, but we have incrementally added different voices to that, to that group.

And it is a great I would say it's a great sounding board for the commissioner as well, to have agency heads as well as advocates and consumers on there.

We added the insurance commissioner, and that is going to be a step toward really ensuring the parity that we are challenged with.

Back in 22, we did pass the Parity Act and understand that mental health is treated equally with physical health, that there are no different deductibles or co-pays or time limits to when you can seek services.

That is so important.

So there will also be a parity compliance panel added through this measure.

And that's going to be a great way for us to continue to monitor that, to collect data and to make sure that Georgians are actually receiving the best care.

Yeah, I know that bill passed.

You had another one that passed out of the House, and that's 677.

It is.

And that involves placement procedures for children discharged from a hospital or a psychiatric residential facility.

Tell us about that.

We're having a growing problem not only in Georgia but across the nation of particularly young young people that are not in care necessarily, but they are in crisis.

And after 3-5 days of crisis care, when it's time to leave the hospital, when they are not medically needing services, someone has to be there to pick them up, to take them home, to take them to where they should be, and to go into the next steps of care.

Well, at that discharge, often a parent or the guardian or the custodian is not willing to do it anymore.

These are some of our hardest children.

They are at the end of their rope.

The parent has not given up on the child necessarily, but cannot take them back into a home environment where perhaps it would be dangerous for the rest of the family members.

So we're trying to find a better way to deal with that.

Well, you're feeling good about both of those in the Senate.

I do.

Okay, then we'll we'll keep up with them.

We'll hold hope.

Yeah.

Thank you both for being here today.

I know we've run out of time.

There's so much to talk with you both about, but that does it today for Lawmakers.

We'll return on Thursday when the chamber's gavel in for day 31.

Tomorrow is a committee day for the General Assembly.

And on Thursday, among our topics, the Ajc's best dressed lawmakers of 2025.

Have a good night.