Georgia Today: Gwinnett ICE detentions; Pushback against health care cuts; Forsyth Park fountain

Orlando Montoya: Hello and welcome to the Georgia Today podcast. Here we bring you the latest reports from the GPB newsroom. On today's episode, Gwinnett County leads the state in ICE detentions, despite no formal agreement with federal law enforcement. State Democrats push back against health care cuts that could jeopardize nursing home funds, and Savannah's iconic Forsyth Park Fountain gets a deep clean after decades.

Luke Robinson: I think when this comes back, people will be a little astounded at how much more detail there is to this.

Orlando Montoya: Today is Thursday, July 31. I'm Orlando Montoya, and this is Georgia Today.

Story 1:

Orlando Montoya: When it comes to the national crackdown on immigration, metro Atlanta's Gwinnett County is Georgia's biggest player. This year through June, over 600 people were arrested and detained at the Gwinnett County jail for a transfer to immigration and customs enforcement. GPB's Sofi Gratas has more.

Sofi Gratas: Gwinnett County has honored more detainer requests from ICE than any other county in the state. That's despite not having a formal agreement to do so under the federal 287(g) program. In a closed-door meeting this week, the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Department told a group of activists who want their enforcement explained that the department is complying with Georgia's own immigration law, HB 1105. Kyle Gomez-Lineweber with the political nonprofit Common Cause was there. He says the sheriff has an obligation to be transparent.

Kyle Gomez-Lineweber: The fact of the matter is that, yes, people are still getting picked up, and that is a cause for concern in a county that is as diverse as Gwinnett.

Sofi Gratas: Over a fourth of Gwinnett residents are foreign-born. For GPB News, I'm Sophie Gratas.

Story 2:

Orlando Montoya: Georgia's election board says ride-sharing company Lyft might have broken state election law by offering discounted rides to the polls. At a meeting on Tuesday, the board voted 3-1 to send the company a letter accusing it of giving something of value in exchange for voting, which is a felony under Georgia law. A state investigator had recommended the complaint be dismissed. Janiece Johnston, the board's Republican appointee, urged the board to pursue the complaint.

Janiece  Johnston: I like the idea of rides to the polls, but it must be offered to every voter in Georgia to be a fair offer. Otherwise, it's a — it's a gift or a payment to vote.

Orlando Montoya: Lyft has offered voter transportation to programs nationwide for years, as have many churches and other groups, but some board members argued that Lyft's discounts could amount to illegal vote-hauling.

Story 3:

Orlando Montoya: Georgia Democrats are pushing back against federal cuts to health care in President Trump's recently signed budget bill. This comes in the wake of a study that says dozens of nursing homes in Georgia are at risk of closure as a result. GPB's Sarah Kallis reports.

Sarah Kallis: The Brown University study singled out 600 nursing homes at the risk of closure, including 37 in Georgia. Lawmakers are calling for more state funding to deal with the potential impacts of the funding cuts. State representative and Democrat Bryce Barry says the legislature needs to establish a state stabilization fund for nursing homes to prevent closures.

Bryce Barry: To even allow one nursing home to close is unacceptable, but 37? 37 is a moral failure.

Sarah Kallis: About 70% of Georgia nursing home residents are on Medicaid. Nursing homes worry that if seniors lose coverage, they will not be able to pay for services. For GPB News, I'm Sarah Kalis at the state Capitol.

Story 4:

Orlando Montoya: The Atlanta police officer involved in the 2020 fatal shooting of Rayshard Brooks has been charged with simple assault following a bar fight in Midtown Atlanta last month. The Atlanta Police Department's preliminary investigation found Officer Garrett Rolfe was involved in a verbal altercation that escalated to a physical dispute. Rolfe was placed on administrative leave. APD said yesterday all information and evidence gathered will be turned over to the Fulton County Solicitor General's office for further review. In 2020, Rolfe was fired and charged with murder in the fatal shooting of Brooks during an arrest at a Wendy's in Southwest Atlanta. Charges against Rolfe were dropped and he was reinstated with the department.

Story 5:

Orlando Montoya: Georgia prosecutors are charging a superior court clerk in metro Atlanta with felonies connected to the destruction of documents. The state attorney general's office said today Cobb County Court Clerk Connie Taylor was indicted for allegedly telling an employee to delete government files in response to an open records request. The file's subject matter wasn't disclosed. Taylor, a countywide elected official, could not be reached immediately for comment.

Story 6:

Orlando Montoya: As schools across Georgia return to class for the new school year, many students, parents and teachers are dealing with a new reality — no cellphones in class. State lawmakers passed a law earlier this year implementing the ban for K-8th graders. Rome City Schools return to classes tomorrow. The district's technology and safety chief, John Fricks, is framing it not as something students are losing, but something they're gaining.

John Fricks: We're gaining that ability to say, hey, you're going to be able to gain more friends. You're going be able the gain the engagement outside of the classroom. You're gonna get to play and enjoy and learn. Like, that's all the things that's coming back to us.

Orlando Montoya: Students will have to lock up their phones from the first bell in the morning to the last one in the afternoon. A handful of districts already had implemented local bans. The new law makes it statewide.

Story 7:

Orlando Montoya: There is perhaps no landmark more synonymous with Savannah than the Forsyth Park Fountain. It's been prominently featured in films like Forrest Gump and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. But right now, it's nowhere to be seen in the Hostess City of the South, or anywhere else in Georgia for that matter. Instead, the fountain is tucked away in the small town of Alexander City, Ala., where it's getting some much-needed tender love and care. GPB's Benjamin Payne reports.

Benjamin Payne: Having lived in Savannah for a few years now, I can confidently say that the Forsyth Park Fountain is the unofficial selfie capital of Georgia. Around 10 million tourists come every year and take in the Antebellum cast iron masterpiece. It's the go-to site for prom photos and graduation pictures, and many couples even get married next to it. But in June, the fountain stopped flowing, and in came the cranes. Within just two days, crews carefully dismantled the fountain and loaded it into a tractor trailer bound for Alabama.

Luke Robinson: It's hard to tell exactly where some of these pieces come apart. Do you get them clean?

Benjamin Payne: Luke Robinson is co-owner of Robinson Iron. He walks me through the metal repair shop at his family business where the Forsyth Park Fountain is getting dissected piece by piece.

Luke Robinson: This was built in the mid-1800s, so nobody was welding. Everybody was bolting things together, so you had to cast them in smaller pieces.

Benjamin Payne: How many pieces? Robinson doesn't have an exact number, but he says it's easily in the hundreds. Among the most recognizable pieces? The four mermen who sit in the fountain's basin, blowing water through seashells.

Luke Robinson: We've already detached all of them, cleaned them all, and put a zinc primer coating on them. And you want to do that quickly because the cast iron will oxidize practically immediately, you know, just with the moisture in the air.

Benjamin Payne: Not all of the Forsyth Park Fountain is cast iron, though. Over the years since its construction in 1858, some parts were recast in bronze and aluminum. So it's a bit of a Frankenstein fountain, but you'd never know that because of its trademark gloss white paint. And there was a lot of paint to sandblast off. There's about 40 coats from routine maintenance by the city since 1988 when Robinson Iron conducted the fountain's last major restoration.

Luke Robinson: There is a lot of detail, and a lot of it you probably couldn't see because of the years and years — decades of paint that have been applied. So I think when this comes back, people will be a little astounded at how much more detail there is to this.

Benjamin Payne: Like the tall grass behind the herons in the center. While Robinson was showing me that feature, we made an unexpected discovery.

Luke Robinson: That's funny, just as we're looking, you find somebody had thrown a penny in there.

Benjamin Payne: He says in every ornamental fountain his company restores, they typically find between $100 and $150 worth of change.

Luke Robinson: Now, a lot of it is really no good anymore because it has been so chlorinated or it's been just in the muck and in the mire. So you're just left with a little round chalky cylinder, almost. I mean, I've been able to break pennies in half.

Benjamin Payne: Robinson Iron is coordinating on the $650,000 project with historic preservationists at the Savannah-based firm Landmark Preservation. John Ecker is a partner there. He says returning the fountain to its former glory isn't just about tending to the artistry but also the plumbing.

John Ecker: The spray pattern. A lot of the swans haven't worked correctly over the years, so our goal is to make sure that everything is plumbed correctly and originally, and I think you'll see a more vibrant spray pattern and everything will be working again.

Benjamin Payne: Back in Alabama, Luke Robinson reflects on the weight of what's in his care, not just cast iron, but a piece of Savannah's soul.

Luke Robinson: I think the Forsyth Fountain is the most iconic fountain in the country. Now, the Buckingham Fountain in Chicago is a big deal. There's the Bartoldi Fountain, which we restored, too, which is in Washington, D.C. It's a big deal. But, you know, to me, the Forsyth Park Fountain is so important. I mean, it's just such a beautiful area. The old trees, the history, the Spanish moss everywhere, just the beauty of it all.

Benjamin Payne: The fountain is scheduled to be returned to Forsyth Park by the end of the year. For GPB News, I'm Benjamin Payne in Alexander City, Ala.

Story 8:

Orlando Montoya: Imagine a lightning strike that's more than 500 miles long. That's the new world record for longest lightning strike as certified yesterday by the World Meteorological Organization. The so-called mega flash stretched across several states from Texas to Kansas during a major thunderstorm complex in October 2017. Meteorologist and senior researcher Michael Peterson, of the Georgia Tech Research Institute, led the study that confirmed the massive strike.

Michael Peterson: It was certainly not a flash like any other. This flash actually lasted for about 7.39 seconds from the beginning of the flash to the end of the flash, an appreciable amount of time. And the thing is, for any person in one part of the flash, you wouldn't see the entire flash for that entire time. Because the flash is so large and so long, it actually takes a while for the flash, to essentially move over those extreme distances.

Orlando Montoya: Peterson says such long-distance lightning strikes don't occur during a storm's most violent outbreak, but rather afterwards, when rain, wind and lightning have calmed down. That makes them more dangerous because people aren't expecting them.

Michael Peterson: Some storms — not all of them, we're talking about one in 1,000 storms — you can have essentially in those cloud layers above you, you know, overcast skies, those low-hanging clouds, you actually have charge. You have electricity up there that is just waiting to be interacted with by a lightning flash that might start in that more distant now convective line, But then once it hits that trailing cloud, it can actually go for a very long ways because the charge structure is in that type of cloud because of the lack of the vertical motion. It allows the layers to be more persistent and to be widespread.

Orlando Montoya: The lightning strike touched the ground more than a hundred times. Peterson says it took years to confirm the record-breaking strike because new weather technology has provided years of data for software to sort through. The Severe Storm Research Center at Georgia Tech studies lightning, not only to learn more about it, but also to develop new approaches for predicting the risk of severe storms. It's a good reminder that lightning bolts may occur unexpectedly long after a storm front has passed.

Outro:

Orlando Montoya: And that's it for today's edition of Georgia Today. If you'd like to learn more about these stories, visit gpb.org/news. If you haven't yet hit subscribe on this podcast, take a moment right now and keep us current in your podcast feed, hit subscribe. If you have feedback, send that our way. We love feedback at GeorgiaToday@gpd.org. I'm Orlando Montoya. I'll talk to you again tomorrow.

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