ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp said Monday he will ask Georgia lawmakers to provide additional tax relief during the upcoming legislative session by accelerating a state income tax cut lawmakers adopted last year.
House Bill 1437 set in place a reduction in the state’s income tax rate from 5.75% to 4.99%, to be phased in over several years.
Kemp said he will propose amending the 2022 legislation by moving up the timetable for the reductions, which would set the tax rate in tax year 2024 at 5.39% rather the 5.49% set by the current version of the bill. The Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget estimates accelerating the tax cuts would save taxpayers $1.1 billion during the tax year starting Jan. 1.
The governor touted his proposal as the latest in a series of tax cuts in Georgia, including $2 billion in income tax rebates during the last two years, more than $1 billion in property tax relief, and two temporary suspensions of the state sales tax on gasoline that saved motorists more than $2.2 billion.
“While big government and big spenders in Washington and states like California and New York further their tax-and-spending policies … we’re choosing a different path in the Peach State,” Kemp said.
“We believe in the principle that tax dollars belong to those who earned them in the first place,” added Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington.
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones welcomed the new proposal as moving Georgia toward his eventual goal of eliminating the state income tax altogether. Jones, who presides over the state Senate, praised the gradual approach the governor is taking.
“We need to do it in a fiscally responsible manner,” he said.
Georgia can easily afford the tax cuts. The state has built up a surplus of $16 billion during the last few years, including $11 billion in undesignated funds.
ATLANTA – The Georgia Senate’s Republican majority released a new congressional map for the Peach State Friday aimed at creating an additional Black majority district as ordered by a federal judge.
The proposed map, which the General Assembly will begin considering next week, would radically alter the 6th Congressional District the GOP-controlled legislature drew two years ago, part of a map U.S. District Judge Steve Jones ruled in October violates the Voting Rights Act.
The current 6th District, represented by Republican U.S. Rep. Rich McCormick, is a white-majority district stretching from East Cobb County and North Fulton County north through all of Forsyth and Dawson counties and part of Cherokee County.
The redrawn 6th District would have a Black-majority voting-age population. It would include portions of Cobb and Fulton counties that are predominantly Black as well as eastern Douglas and northern Fayette counties, areas with fast-growing Black populations.
The proposed map also makes huge changes to Georgia’s 7th Congressional District, which currently includes most of Gwinnett County and northeastern Fulton County, areas with large concentrations of people of color, including Hispanics and Asian Americans. The district currently is represented by Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath.
Under the new map, the 7th District would be taken completely out of Gwinnett County. Instead, it would include North Fulton County; all of Forsyth, Dawson, and Lumpkin counties; and western Hall County, all heavily white areas.
McBath campaign manager Jake Orvis released a statement shortly after the map was released criticizing the proposal.
“Georgia Republicans have yet again attempted to subvert voters by changing the rules,” Orvis said. “We will look to the ruling from Judge Jones in the coming weeks before announcing further plans.”
The redrawn 6th District, which McBath represented until legislative Republicans drew the current congressional map two years ago, would again appear to be friendly turf for the Democrat. After the 2021 redistricting, McBath decided to run in the 7th District instead and defeated fellow Democratic Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux in last year’s Democratic primary before winning the seat.
On the other hand, the proposed 7th Congressional District would appear to suit McCormick. He ran in the old 7th District in 2020 but lost to Bourdeaux. McCormick then shifted to the 6th District following the 2021 redistricting and won the seat.
Members of the U.S. House are not required to live in the districts they represent.
The remainder of Georgia’s 14 congressional districts would be left largely unchanged under the Senate’s proposed map, with some exceptions.
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s 14th district in Northwest Georgia would lose southwestern Cobb and move instead into northwestern Cobb. Residents of predominantly Black southwestern Cobb objected when they were placed in conservative firebrand Greene’s district two years ago.
Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, embraced the Senate’s congressional map on Friday.
“This map meets the promise we made when this process began: it fully complies with the judge’s order, while also following Georgia’s traditional redistricting principles,” Burns said. “We look forward to passing this fair redistricting plan.”
ATLANTA – The Republican-controlled General Assembly passed new legislative district lines Friday over Democrats’ objections that they don’t comply with a federal court order that found maps lawmakers drew in 2021 violate the Voting Rights Act.
House lawmakers passed a new House map 101-77, voting along party lines. The state Senate followed suit, adopting a new Senate map 32-23 in a nearly party-line vote. The only Republican who voted against the Senate map, Sen. Mike Dugan, R-Carrollton, said he didn’t like either the GOP map or an alternative presented by Democrats.
In an October ruling, U.S. District Judge Steve Jones ordered the legislature to draw five additional Black-majority districts in the House and two additional Black-majority districts in the Senate to accommodate increases in Georgia’s Black population in the last decade.
On Friday, Republicans said their new maps honor Jones’ ruling.
“My primary goal is simply to comply with the judge’s order,” said Sen. Shelly Echols, R-Gainesville, who chairs the Senate Reapportionment and Redistricting Committee.
“It does not tell Judge Jones we know better than he does,” added Rep. Rob Leverette, R-Elberton, Echols’ House counterpart, referring to the House map. “It follows his order.”
But Democrats said Republicans failed to create the seven additional Black-majority districts the judge ordered.
House Minority Whip Sam Park, D-Lawrenceville, said the House map actually creates a net of three Black-majority districts rather than five because it took away two of those districts in DeKalb and Gwinnett counties. In both cases, the changes were made for partisan gain, he said.
“This map is an undemocratic exercise of gerrymandering that harms the people’s ability to elect candidates of their choice,” Park said.
Democrats also objected to the House map pairing four sets of incumbents in the same districts, including three sets of Democrats and only one Republican pair.
Leverette said the court order left Republicans no choice but to pair incumbents in order to create five additional Black-majority House districts.
“I wish we didn’t have to do this,” Leverette told his House colleagues. “I would not propose something I thought would harm any of you unless I had to to comply with the court order.”
On the Senate side, Sen. Sally Harrell, D-Atlanta, said Republicans strayed beyond the areas in the southern end of metro Atlanta that Jones ruled violate the Voting Rights Act in order to protect GOP incumbents.
“This map works harder at protecting Republicans than fixing the problem,” she said.
Democrats also warned the new legislative maps will end up in court because – like the 2021 maps – they still violate the Voting Rights Act.
“Passing the (Senate) Republican map will only lead to more litigation and waste taxpayer money,” said Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler, D-Stone Mountain.
The two legislative maps now move across the Capitol for the Senate to consider the House map and vice versa. The General Assembly’s special redistricting session will continue next week with lawmakers facing a Dec. 8 deadline set by the court to finish their work.
