THE MADISON COUNTY (GA) JOURNAL, WEDNESDAY, JULY 9, 2025 - PAGE 7A
State News
State audit of Georgia Family
Connection produces mixed results
By Ty Tagami
Capitol Beat News Service
A program that was intended
to improve Georgia’s ranking on
indicators of child “well-being”
has produced mixed results, ac
cording to a state audit.
Georgia lawmakers asked for
an examination of the Georgia
Family Connection Partnership,
which received $30 million in
funding in fiscal year 2024,
more than a quarter of it from
the state.
The special examination by
the Georgia Department of Au
dits and Accounts found evi
dence of positive impact on the
high school graduation and teen
birth rate measures. But the
agency found no evidence of a
positive impact on three others:
child abuse and neglect, low
birthweight babies and children
in poverty.
The partnership told auditors
that the results should be char
acterized as “promising” instead
of “mixed,” but the auditors dis
agreed, saying it would be “mis
leading” to do so.
“We also considered that there
is limited support in the aca
demic literature to demonstrate
collaborative-type entities lead
to improved outcomes,” the au
ditors wrote.
The review was requested by
the Georgia House Appropria
tions Committee, which has a
leading role in writing the annu
al state budget.
Georgia Family Connection
(GFC) is a statewide initiative
that was established in 1991 af
ter Georgia ranked 48th out of
50 states on the child well-being
indicators created by an organi
zation called Kids Count.
The GFC grew as state law
makers allocated funding. Then,
in 2001, a new state-level orga
nization called Georgia Family
Connection Partnership was cre
ated. By the next year, all 159
Georgia counties had joined the
partnership.
In addition to state funding —
$8.3 million in fiscal 2024 — the
program gets federal, local and
private money.
“Although the Partnership and
collaboratives receive a state ap
propriation, there is no statute
outlining their responsibilities,’
the auditors noted. They fount
that the partnership’s strength is
also a weakness: it operates or
a unique, decentralized model
This allows for local decisioi
making but “creates challenges
for ensuring impact,” the audi
tors wrote.
Their report makes no rec
ommendations to state lawmak
ers. It notes that the progran
is unique in the United States
but three states have programs
with similar elements: Alabama
Florida and Tennessee.
Courts deliberate over how to
incorporate AI into the justice system
By Ty Tagami
Capitol Beat News Service
It started harmlessly enough, with kids
using artificial intelligence to cheat on their
writing assignments, but the technology has
become a palpable threat to society as law
yers and others in the justice system have
conducted novel experiments with it and
even clearly misused it.
In the five years since OpenAI unleashed
Chat GPT-3 on the public, people have
found creative and sometimes unwise uses
for the technology, including attorneys who
harnessed it to write briefs with fake cita
tions.
Recognizing the risk, the Georgia Su
preme Court undertook a 10-month review
in August and released new recommenda
tions on Thursday.
The state’s high court proposes a three-
year process to adapt to AI.
It will start with establishing leadership
and governance and conclude with new
policies and processes for all the courts in
Georgia’s judicial system.
There will be community engagement,
process reviews, education and training,
and the establishment of business and tech
nology architectures along the way.
The committee behind the new report,
“Artificial Intelligence and Georgia’s
Courts,” was led by Justice Andrew A. Pin
son.
It incorporates observations by the State
Bar of Georgia’s Board of Governors, who
produced their own report on the risks of AI
in early June.
The bar’s report said revisions to a rule of
conduct for lawyers was “particularly criti
cal” because it was about their competence
and proficiency with technology.
“It is the committee’s assessment GenAI
tools will in short order become ubiqui
tous,” the bar report’s authors wrote.
Pinson’s committee cited numerous ex
amples of AI uses that occurred just during
the 10 months of their review process, such
as the Indiana Supreme Court’s introduc
tion of AI for voice-to-text transcriptions,
the Arizona Supreme Court’s use of AI av
atars to deliver news about rulings by their
justices, and a family’s use of AI to create a
victim impact statement by their dead rela
tive during the sentencing phase of the trial
over his road rage death.
“A key challenge the committee faced
during its work is the rapidly evolving
nature of a technology new to courts and
organizations across the country,” Pinson’s
committee concluded.
The panel noted acceptable uses for AI
such as for research and scheduling, unac
ceptable uses such as for jury selection and
“black box” sentencing algorithms, and po
tential uses that need more study and testing
such as language translation and sentencing
and risk assessments.
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