Posted: June 13, 2013 – 3:15am
By Walter C. Jones

ATLANTA | U.S. Rep. Doug Collins and Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens are pushing legislation in hopes of stopping “sue and settle,” a tactic environmental groups have used to get stricter regulations.

Collins, R-Ga., is the sponsor of H.R. 1493, the Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act of 2013, which would put limits on regulatory agencies’ ability to impose new regulations as a settlement of a lawsuit.

Critics of the process say the agencies encourage these “friendly lawsuits” as a way to toughen regulations without the public hearings and comment period normally required of rule changes. Then when they ask the court to accept the settlement with the enhanced regulations, they can say the agency has no choice but to enforce it.

Collins told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law last week that on top of the onerous regulations the groups filing suit are awarded attorney’s fees.

“American families across the nation are tightening their belt,” he said.

“It is absolutely unacceptable that their hard-earned, taxpayer dollars go to fund back-room deals that subvert the rule-making process.”

Olens submitted written testimony to the hearing in which he complained that ordinary citizens aren’t the only ones who lose out. The federal government also winds up with more control over state and local government.

“Sue and settle is just the latest example of a dangerous power grab by our ever-expanding federal government,” he said.

However, former state legislator Stephanie Benfield, executive director of the GreenLaw firm that often sues over government environmental regulations, says she doesn’t understand why anyone would want to hinder settlements.

“This is a long-established way to avoid costly protracted litigation,” she said, noting that a hallmark of American democracy is the ability of citizens to challenge their government in court.

Besides, she said, these suits are for the benefit of public health by requiring the enforcement of existing federal law.

Collins expects his bill to win committee approval before Congress goes on its August recess with full House passage afterward. Its fate in the Senate is less certain.

A similar bill passed the House last year but languished in the Senate where Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sponsored a companion bill then and again this year.

Many business groups see Collins’ bill as a way to prevent environmental regulations from outlawing the controversial process known as fracking used to extract gas from shale deposits.

Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/news/georgia/2013-06-13/story/us-house-member-and-georgia-attorney-general-pushing-legislation-stop#.Ubmp94wSK1w.twitter#ixzz2W9amJUKG

ATLANTA — Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens has partnered with Facebook to launch a national consumer education campaign focused on online privacy.

Olens announced his participation in the campaign, titled “What You Can Do to Control Your Information,” Thursday. The campaign is a partnership with Facebook and the National Association of Attorneys General aimed at educating teens and their parents on how to protect themselves while online.

The state Attorney General is among 20 attorneys general participating in the campaign. The team collaborated to create a series of videos and a tip sheet on Internet privacy. The campaign’s June launch was timed to coincide with national internet safety month.

Online: http://www.facebook.com/fbsafety

By TIMOTHY W. MARTIN, Wall Street Journal
Georgia will soon start requiring pain clinics to be licensed by its medical board and owned by physicians, moves aimed at slowing the flow of illicit prescription-drug sales in the state.

A law signed by Gov. Nathan Deal on Thursday will go into effect July 1. Pain clinics will be required to register every two years. If they don’t, their owners could face felony indictments. The state’s medical board also could deny licensing to a pain clinic for a variety of reasons, such as an owner’s prior criminal conviction related to controlled substances.

In 2010, there were just 10 pain clinics in the state. By 2011, that number jumped to 140 following a crackdown on “pill mills” in Florida, which had been the epicenter of the black market for drugs such as oxycodone or hydrocodone. “This was drug dealing. This wasn’t the practice of medicine,” said Sam Olens, Georgia’s attorney general. In recent years, the state’s annual oxycodone sales rose every year in the “triple digits,” he added.

Painkiller overdose deaths in the U.S. topped 16,500 in 2010, easily surpassing deaths from heroin and cocaine combined, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Georgia becomes the ninth state to require that pain clinics be owned by a physician, according to the National Alliance for Model State Drug Laws. This year, Indiana and Alabama are also considering similar pain-clinic legislation.

Aggressive action at the state level has netted some positive results. Florida’s efforts since 2010 included enacting a monitoring database that tracked painkiller prescriptions, dispensing and purchasing. It also tightened pain-clinic ownership regulations. In recent years, the number of pain clinics dropped. Oxycodone sales to doctor’s offices sank. Overdose deaths due to oxycodone and hydrocodone also fell.

“I hope to see similar results in Georgia,” Mr. Deal said in a statement.

It’s unclear which state rogue operators could flee to next. Other states throughout the South with pill-mill problems, such as Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia, have also passed pain-clinic ownership laws.

“This is a situation where we’re all trying to catch up in a real quick time frame,” Mr. Olens said.

Shady pain clinics, commonly housed in strip malls, are often called pill mills because of how easily addicts can obtain pain-drug prescriptions from doctors. Georgia was an easy home base for these pill mills because, unlike most states, it lacked a prescription-drug monitoring program. Also, Georgia only required facilities to employ a state-licensed physician.

In the past 18 months, there have been at least four major pill-mill raids in Georgia, with coordinated efforts at the local, state and federal level. The number of pain clinics in the state is now around 85, state officials said.

Georgia’s prescription-drug problems won’t be reversed overnight. The state’s prescription-drug monitoring program won’t launch until mid-June, and funding for its operations isn’t secured past this fall. Cracking down on in-state pain clinics could have the negative effect of patients falsifying their medical records to obtain pills or trigger an increase in pharmacy break-ins, said Rick Allen, director of the state’s Drugs and Narcotics Agency. “It’s not like these addicts will are going away,” Mr. Allen said.

The new law doesn’t require that current pain clinics be owned by a physician. But even so, the law does corral the problem, since the number of pill mills won’t grow any higher, Mr. Allen said.

Write to Timothy W. Martin at timothy.martin@wsj.com

… Olens was born in Florida, grew up the northeast, moved slowly southward, earning his undergraduate degree at American University in D.C., and settled in Georgia as a student at Emory University’s highly ranked law school.

Olens became a Cobb County Commissioner in 1998 ushering in what many in Cobb believed was the start of a sweep towards a less volatile and more business like commission. In 2002 he was elected County Commission Chairman, a post which he held until 2010, when he was elected Attorney General of the State of Georgia.

The position of Attorney General usually does not merit a position as one of James’ “Georgians of the Year.” While the job is important, others are significant as well. But Olens is not your typical AG. Having chaired the Atlanta Regional Commission, Olens brought a unique business and civic background to a position that often comes more from the legislative or government legal community. Olens has never served a day in the state legislature and maintained a private legal practice for many years.

“Sam is extremely cool under pressure” says James publisher and InsiderAdvantage CEO Matt Towery. “Cobb was a hotbed and breeding crowd for controversial actions at the county level during the 1990s and when Sam was elected, everyone began to breathe a sigh of relief.”

As Attorney General Olens has applied the same quiet but efficient management style he brought to Cobb County to the AG’s office. And Olens has not hesitated to take strong stands on issues such as the constitutionality of “Obamacare” or in vigorously pushing to revamp Georgia’s Sunshine laws.

And Olens has taken his place on the national political scene. As a prominent supporter of Mitt Romney for president in 2012, Olens earned a spot as a speaker at the Republican National Convention. And he is a well-respected, relatively new member of the association that is comprised of all of his national colleagues. That leads many to believe that Sam Olens might be destined for even higher office in the future.

“Sam is the type of leader who just grows on people the more they see his calm manner. He’s not full of himself but yet he exudes confidence and in the worlds of politics and law that’s a rare thing indeed,” says Towery. “I think there is really no limit to where Sam could end up, but I think he would be the first to tell you that he never lets his ambition get ahead of his sense of duty and that means whatever the job at hand might be, Sam Olens is going to take it seriously,” he adds.

Georgia has been blessed with some amazing Attorneys General. The late Arthur Bolton set the modern day pace for the office. Mike Bowers turned the AG’s office into not only a power but often a combined bully pulpit and policy bulldog, and Thurbert Baker proved that legislative and legal prowess could bring a touch of political aplomb along with a steady approach to the law to the position. Olens now joins such formidable names serving as the state’s top attorney. James has rarely named two political leaders as our Georgians of the year and an AG is a rarity. In this case Olens has earned the honor and deserves this recognition.

“I applaud the passage of the much-needed legislation to combat the surge of pill mills and prescription drug abuse in communities across Georgia,” said Attorney General Sam Olens. “I commend the Georgia General Assembly for taking action to curtail the rapid growth of pill mills in Georgia. Pill mill operators are nothing more than narcotic traffickers, and we will not tolerate them in our State.

“H.B. 178 strikes a balance that will allow us to identify and curb bad actors without getting in the way of the many excellent doctors who offer legitimate pain management to patients,” said Olens. “When other states, including Florida, passed legislation to combat the spread of pill mills, illegitimate operators began relocating to Georgia. This bill will give Georgia law enforcement the necessary tools to tackle the growing problem.”

“Georgia’s Not Buying It” is a campaign focused on addressing the demand side of sex trafficking. The market for the sex trade of children is fueled by buyers. The only way to truly eradicate sex trafficking is to end demand. As Olens pointed out at today’s press conference, “When we think of the perpetrators of this horrendous crime, traffickers and pimps immediately come to mind. But, they are not the only ones responsible for the commercial sexual exploitation of children. Purchasers are to blame as well.”

The “Georgia’s Not Buying It” campaign is a public-private partnership of the Attorney General’s Office, law enforcement, non-profit advocates Street Grace and youthSpark, and the Governor’s Office of Children and Families. The campaign will feature a PSA starring local pro-athletes Harry Douglas from the Falcons, Devin Harris from the Hawks, and Tim Hudson from the Braves, along with sportscaster Ernie Johnson, Jr. The campaign will be publicized throughout the State, including on billboards, local public transit systems, and state parks.

“I appreciate the broad federal, state, local, and non-profit support for this important initiative,” said Olens.

“We have made great progress in the fight against sex trafficking in Georgia. I was proud to work with Senator Renee Unterman and Representative Ed Lindsey in 2011 on a law to strengthen the penalties for sex trafficking in Georgia. But, our work is far from over, and that is why I continue to make this issue a priority. Through the ‘Georgia’s Not Buying It’ campaign, we are drawing a line in the sand and telling purchasers of children for sex that their secret is out, and we will not tolerate it in Georgia.”

“The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is fully committed to identifying victims of child exploitation, and, in collaboration with our law enforcement partners, bringing to justice those who prey on the children in Georgia,” said GBI Director Vernon Keenan.

As part of the campaign, the Attorney General’s Office has also collaborated with partners to conduct trainings and increase awareness, including:

• A day and a half prosecution training for 42 federal, state, and local law enforcement led by the National Attorneys General Training and Research Institute;
• Multiple trainings for the convention and hotel industry;
  and
• 2000 flyers from the Governor’s Office of Children and Families describing red flag behaviors for child sex trafficking victims
  distributed to taxi drivers in cooperation with the Atlanta Police Department.

More information on the “Georgia’s Not Buying It” campaign can be found at www.notbuyingit.org.

A Cobb County Grand Jury indicted Arthur Alexander, Derek Holman, Nathaniel Johnson, Tina Johnson, Daniel Lawson, Shelton Ray, Latasha Rose, and Shontana Tellis, charging each with one count of racketeering.

The indictment alleges the group ran the racketeering activities at emission stations in Cobb and Fulton counties between Jan. 27, 2009, and March 7, 2012.

The stations were run by Nathaniel Johnson, but licensed in the names of other individuals.

According to the indictment, the defendants would enter vehicle identifying information for one vehicle into the emission analyzer while actually connecting the analyzer to and testing another vehicle that could pass the inspection. They typically charged more for a fraudulent inspection than the amount they could legally charge for a legitimate inspection.

Racketeering is punishable by five to 20 years imprisonment and/or a fine of up to $100,000, or three times the amount of any value gained by the defendants from the racketeering.

http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2013/03/11/eight-indicted-in-emissions-testing.html

http://www.macon.com/2013/03/12/2392783/georgia-lawyers-collecting-for.html

“Dodd-Frank was sold to the American people as a silver bullet to prevent another financial crisis and safeguard consumers,” said Olens. “In reality, it is a bureaucratic nightmare that puts Georgia taxpayers at risk and introduces more uncertainty into the economy. This is just another example of a power grab by the federal government attempting to dictate the operations of an entire industry.”

The passage of Dodd-Frank created government agencies with virtually unlimited bureaucratic power that can be imposed on the American people without any checks and balances. These agencies will, literally, be able to decide who can get a home loan, who can get a credit card, and who can get loan for college.

One of these agencies, the Consumer Financial Protection Board (CFPB) is run by one director alone, who is unaccountable both to the President and Congress. The CFPB’s budget is completely out of Congress’s control and power of the purse. Instead, the agency’s budget comes from the Federal Reserve and amounts to 10 to 12% of the Fed’s operating expenses. That is $400 million controlled, essentially, by one person with minimal oversight. The President cannot veto actions by the CFPB and can only remove the director for specific cause.

The state attorneys general are challenging Title II of Dodd-Frank, which gives the Treasury Secretary the ability to liquidate financial companies with only 24 hours’ notice. There isno meaningful legal recourse for the company, there is an immediate gag order placed on all parties and it carries criminal penalties if violated; in short, this creates death panels for American companies. The private plaintiffs also are challenging the Financial Stability Oversight Council (Title I), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Title X), and the validity of the Bureau Director’sappointment.

“Dodd-Frank violates basic principles of separation of powers and government that isaccountable to the people. It also gives the federal government the power to pick winners and losers, putting the State of Georgia’s financial assets at risk,” added Olens. “By joining this lawsuit, we are standing up for the Constitution, standing up for our local communities, and protecting our State’s finances.”