On Friday, Georgia’s top public defender encouraged government officials and the community to continue supporting programs that transform lives during the state’s 40th anniversary celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.

Federal and Georgia governments will be closed on Monday in observance of the King’s birthday holiday, celebrated every third Monday in January. In 1968, King was slain at the age of 39 after becoming the leading face of the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement fighting systemic racism Black people faced across the deep South and other parts of America. Omotayo Alli executive director of the Georgia Public Defender Council was the keynote speaker as more than 150 people attended the celebration held at the state Capitol.

During the ceremony, the Georgia Martin Luther King Jr. Advisory Council recognized this year’s winners of awards named after five former longtime Georgia residents who worked closely with King during the Civil Rights Era. King family members were presented a proclamation from the state honoring the civil rights icon’s holiday.

The event is organized by the Georgia Black Legislative Caucus and the state Department of Community Affairs.

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp emphasized King’s commitment to non-violence while confronting the injustices of racial prejudice and segregation.

He called for continued efforts to promote unity and opportunity for all Georgians, urging personal actions aligned with King’s principles.

“From his early life, growing up in Atlanta throughout his travels across the country fighting injustice, was never content to look the other way when he came to confronting the problems of his days,” Kemp said.

The keynote address was delivered by Omotayo Alli, the first Black woman to serve as executive director of the Georgia Public Defender Council, overseeing several dozen offices across Georgia.

Alli discussed her four decade journey as a public defender, emphasizing her efforts to improve juvenile justice by creating educational opportunities for children in the system.

Alli spoke about establishing a public defender program that provides opportunities for people who have gone through the criminal justice system to help them reintegrate into the community.

She describes her transition to working with juvenile cases, which led to her realize the high number of children in the justice system.

Alli said she took a personal interest in bettering the lives of young people in the justice system, by providing educational opportunities and other resources that are critical  in their rehabilitation. Young people obtaining their GED and learning job skills at a technical school opens opportunities to end a cycle of poverty, she said.

A number of events celebrating the legacy of King will continue on Monday across Georgia. The annual holiday event at the Atlanta church where King preached will be led by a different religious leader than in recent years. Ebenezer Baptist Church church pastor and U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock will not attend Monday’s celebration of King since the Atlanta Democrat will be in Washington D.C.for the inauguration of Republican President Donald Trump.

The Ebenezer church’s keynote sermon will be delivered by North Carolina’s Bishop William J. Barber II,  who serves as president and senior  lecturer of Repairers of the Breach. Barber will reflect upon a critical moment for people of faith and to the injustices plaguing the nation, according to a news release.

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) – Bird flu cases were confirmed in a commercial poultry flock in northeast Georgia.

The state’s department of agriculture has suspended all poultry exhibitions, shows and sales until further notice.

This is the first confirmed case in a poultry operation in Georgia and the fifth overall case in the state. According to the Georgia Department of Agriculture, the operation had approximately 45,000 broiler breeders onsite.

Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Tyler Harper said, “This is a serious threat to Georgia’s #1 industry and the livelihoods of thousands of Georgians who make their living in our state’s poultry industry. We are working around the clock to mitigate any further spread of the disease and ensure that normal poultry activities in Georgia can resume as quickly as possible.”

All commercial operations within a 6-mile radius have been placed under quarantine for at least two weeks.

Copyright 2025 WANF. All rights reserved.

In July 2023, Georgia launched the Pathways to Coverage program, which offers health care coverage to adults with lower incomes who do not have access to affordable health insurance. To be eligible they must work, attend school, volunteer or complete another qualifying activity for at least 80 hours per month. The program covers the cost of many of the same medical services as traditional Medicaid, including doctor visits, hospital stays and prescriptions. This fact sheet provides policymakers and advocates with an overview of the program’s first year and offers recommendations for improving upon the existing program design.

Here are some key takeaways based on the program’s first year:

Enrollment in the Pathways to Coverage program fell far short of expectations and need. More than 40% of Georgia’s counties still had fewer than 10 enrollees despite the state having one of the highest percentages of uninsured populations in the nation. If the state continues to enroll about 4,231 enrollees per year as it did in the first year and assuming no one is disenrolled, it will take more than 12 years to achieve the original five-year enrollment goal (52,509).

A cumbersome enrollment process and restrictive eligibility criteria appeared to contribute to the program’s low enrollment in the first year. Potentially eligible Georgians face a steep “paperwork” burden – from completing a lengthy online or paper application to compiling documents to verify qualifying activities and hours. Only about half of individuals who showed initial interest in applying to the program submitted a complete application. Preliminary data also indicate that at least one in every five denials for those who do submit a complete application is due to failure to meet the qualifying hours and activities requirement.

Pathways to Coverage is a costly program for Georgia taxpayers, and most spending through the end of the first year covered administrative expenses rather than health care benefits. Since the program was approved through the end of the first year of implementation, a total of almost $58 million in combined state and federal funds was spent on the program. That amounts to an average of $13,000 per enrollee. Spending on upgrades to Georgia’s online eligibility and enrollment system represents the largest proportion of total program costs and was almost five times higher than spending on healthcare benefits for enrollees.

For current enrollment and program cost data, please visit the Data Tracker page at GeorgiaPathways.org

Beyond Year One: Recommendations and Next Steps

With Pathways to Coverage up for renewal in September 2025, the state has an opportunity to leverage lessons learned from the first year to make the program more effective and less costly and to streamline the bureaucratic red tape that burdens both enrollees and state agency staff.

Programmatic recommendations:

1. Eliminate monthly reporting and premium collection
2. Expand automated verification of qualifying hours and activities at initial application and yearly renewal using electronic data sources
3. Expand work requirement exemptions (in alignment with SNAP exemptions) to enable eligible veterans, full-time parents of young children, former foster youth and others to access the program
4. Make Pathways to Coverage an ‘opt-out’ versus an ‘opt-in’ program
5. Improve education and outreach for potentially eligible Georgians
6. Improve communication with applicants and enrollees

System-level recommendations:

1. Modernize Georgia’s public benefits eligibility and enrollment infrastructure
2. Increase transparency and public data reporting and open up opportunities for stakeholder engagement

For more context on each recommendation and for an additional list of transformational recommendations like full Medicaid expansion, please download the full report “Georgia’s Pathways to Coverage Program – The First Year in Review” from the Resources page at GeorgiaPathways.org.