Georgia Trend Daily – Aug. 1, 2019
Aug. 1, 2019 Augusta Chronicle
Vogtle plant work raises concerns from regulatory staff
Tom Corwin reports that work on completing two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle is following an “aggressive” timeline toward completion in coming years but staff at the Georgia Public Service Commission say that plan comes with risks. Work continues on two new reactors at Plant Vogtle but staff at the Georgia Public Service Commission have concerns about how Southern Nuclear Co. and Georgia Power propose to complete the work to meet production deadlines in coming years.
Aug. 1, 2019 Georgia Trend – Exclusive!
FinTech Mecca
Mary Ann DeMuth reports that most of us never think about the technology – called FinTech – that enables us to conduct everyday financial transactions. We insert a credit card at the grocery store and later check our cash-back balance, buy a prepaid gift card for a birthday, have tolls automatically deducted from our Peach Pass account when we drive in Metro Atlanta’s express lanes, order products or services and pay our bills online.
Aug. 1, 2019 Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Verizon launches limited 5G mobile in Atlanta
Matt Kempner reports, as fast and revolutionary as 5G mobile data service is supposed to be, its early rollout by wireless carriers in Atlanta is spotty. Mobile giant Verizon announced Wednesday that it has launched its first 5G service in Georgia.
Aug. 1, 2019 Atlanta Business Chronicle
Atlanta’s Worldpay office has new parent company after $43B deal
Steve Watkins and Eric Mandel report that Worldpay’s Atlanta office has a new new parent company after Fidelity National Information Services Inc. completed its $43 billion acquisition deal of the payment processor. Jacksonville, Fla.-based FIS (NYSE: FIS) bought Worldpay Inc. (NYSE: WP) in the biggest of a series of mergers of large payment processing companies this year that also ranks as the fifth-largest acquisition of the year overall.
Aug. 1, 2019 Savannah Morning News
Savannah Music Festival contributes millions to economy in FY19
Katie Nussbaum reports that the Savannah Music Festival’s 30th season, which wrapped up in April, brought world-class acts to the city, including Ricky Skaggs, Katy Mattea and Sebastian Knauer, but it also brought thousands of visitors and millions of dollars in economic impact. According to the festival’s Year in Review report, paid attendance for the festival was 29,065, with 39 percent of those attendees coming from out of town, which resulted in 1.763 flights through the Savannah-Hilton Head International Airport and 8,916 room nights for out-of-town visitors.
Aug. 1, 2019 11 Alive
Report: Chick-fil-A could gain more than $1 billion in additional sales by opening on Sunday
Staff reports that Chick-fil-A could be foregoing more than $1 billion in sales when it closes on Sundays, according to one analysis. Using McDonald’s as a proxy, where he says the restaurant does about 15 percent of its sales on Sunday, USA Today’s Douglas A. McIntyre estimates that Chick-fil-A could gain as much as $1.2 billion annually in sales if it stayed open the extra day.
Aug. 1, 2019 Rome News-Tribune
Southeastern Mills opens up new research and development facility
Doug Walker reports that community leaders in Rome huddled under the shade of a tent off East Third Street on Wednesday for ceremonies to open the new Southeastern Mills Innovation Center. Tom Reynolds, vice president for technical services at SEM, told a large crowd that the new Innovation Center includes a culinary kitchen, a large food service laboratory, and houses the SEM quality assurance and regulatory assurance units as well as the basic product development team.
Aug. 1, 2019 Brunswick News
Oyster farming regs still in development
Wes Wolfe reports that there’s been progress on developing the process for legal oyster farming in Georgia, but it still has some ways to go. NOAA Sea Grant and the National Sea Grant Law Center — with Georgia Sea Grant and the UGA Carl Vinson Institute of Government — conducted a seminar Wednesday going over new shellfish law.
Aug. 1, 2019 Daily Report
State Claims No ‘Relevant’ Evidence Was Destroyed in Paper Ballot Case
Robin McDonald reports that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office denies it destroyed evidence in a legal fight seeking to force the state to conduct future elections with paper ballots. Lawyers defending Raffensperger and the state Board of Elections called last week’s allegations that state personnel destroyed evidence “a desperate attempt to distract the court and the public” from what they claim is “a complete lack of evidence of any actual compromise of Georgia’s election system.”
Aug. 1, 2019 GPB
Georgia Touts Federal Election Data On Voter Registration
Rickey Bevington and Stephen Fowler report, there’s a new report from the federal government that has some surprising data about last fall’s election. According to the latest Election Administration and Voting Survey, Georgia led the nation in automated voter registration and accepted a higher percentage of absentee and provisional ballots than previous years.
Aug. 1, 2019 Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia gets bad news on Medicaid waiver funding
Arielle Hart reports that Georgia leaders’ hopes to get the federal government to pay almost all the costs of providing Medicaid coverage to more people appear to be dashed. And if the state budget is forced to shoulder more of the financial burden of its new Medicaid plan, that raises the question whether the plan will be forced to do less and cover fewer people.
