Allstate rate hike spurs ‘consumer alert’

Georgia Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens on Monday issued a “consumer alert” after Allstate filed for a 25 percent auto insurance rate hike that will take effect May 22.

Hudgens said the 25 percent increase is the average rate change, but “many policyholders should be prepared to see a rate change as high as 58.3 percent.”

At the end of the 2015, Allstate had 11 percent of the auto insurance market in Georgia.

Read entire story: on-ajc.com/ GA_Allstate

The Chattahoochee River basin is the nation’s “most endangered” waterway, a national environmental group claimed Tuesday.

American Rivers cited a generation’s worth of water-sharing fights between Georgia, Alabama and Florida; outmoded river management by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; and the ever-looming chance of drought as evidence of the basin’s precariousness.

The basin stretches 550 miles from North Georgia to the Gulf of Mexico and includes the Flint and Apalachicola rivers. With so many masters — metro Atlantans, dam operators, Georgia Power engineers, cotton farmers, West Point kayakers, Florida oystermen — the Chattahoochee can’t satisfy them all.

Read entire story: on-ajc.com/endangered_ Chattahoochee

Thousands did not receive precinct cards

Thousands of Fulton County voters didn’t get the precinct cards when they were supposed to, or at all, said Richard Barron, the county’s director of Elections and Registration.

On election day, that led to complaints from residents who went to vote at one precinct only to find that their precinct had moved.

In addition to those cards that arrived late, about 850 precinct cards were delivered to polling locations instead of residents. And Barron said the county had between 30,000 and 40,000 precinct cards that were returned, with addresses that appeared to be good.

Read entire story: on-ajc.com/ Fulton_voting_cards