by Dave Williams | Aug 20, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
COLUMBUS – U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff and two of the Republicans vying for the GOP nomination to challenge the incumbent Democrat next year highlighted Wednesday’s annual Georgia Chamber Congressional Luncheon.
It wasn’t a campaign stop for Ossoff and U.S. Reps. Buddy Carter of Savannah and Mike Collins of Jackson. Instead, the three politicians gave leading Georgia political and business leaders at the Columbus Trade and Convention Center their takes on issues facing Congress and their respective roles on Capitol Hill.
Ossoff, who is seeking a second six-year term in the Senate, criticized the tariffs President Donald Trump has imposed on America’s allies and adversaries alike since taking office this year.
“The tit-for-tat tariff war is alienating key international parties while paralyzing much of the business community with the uncertainty,” he said.
Ossoff said Trump’s massive budget bill the Republican-controlled Congress passed last month will hurt Georgia businesses by repealing clean-energy tax credits at a time Georgia has become a leader in electric vehicle manufacturing.
When Congress goes back into session next month following the annual August recess, Ossoff said he plans to introduce legislation providing tax credits to businesses that contribute to technical colleges.
Carter praised Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” for leaving federal tax credits for the nuclear industry intact even while repealing the clean-energy credits.
Carter said the most important step Congress could take to help businesses in Georgia and elsewhere would be to rein in federal red tape that is hampering business activity. He noted that the deepening of Savannah Harbor from 42 to 47 feet took 24 years to complete.
“We’ve got to do better than that,” he said. “We’ve got to have permitting reform.”
Collins, fresh off formally launching his Senate campaign Tuesday during a rally in his hometown, has been pushing to reform the federal Clean Act. He is sponsoring legislation aimed at streamlining permit requirements for water infrastructure projects.
Collins said he plans to introduce tort reform legislation when Congress returns to Washington next month to address skyrocketing insurance premiums. The General Assembly’s Republican majorities passed a bill this year overhauling Georgia’s civil litigation process.
“Until we’ve got tort reform on the federal level, we’re not going to fix this problem,” Collins said.
As part of Wednesday’s program, the chamber awarded its first annual Coolest Things Made in Georgia Award to Marietta-based Lockheed Martin for its new C-130J Super Hercules Aircraft.
by Dave Williams | Aug 19, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia could eliminate its income tax without raising sales taxes to make up the lost revenue, one of the nation’s leading tax reform advocates said Tuesday.
The nine states that have done away with their income taxes are experiencing enough population growth to offset that loss of tax revenue, Grover Norquist, president of Washington, D-C.-based Americans for Tax Reform, told members of an ad hoc state Senate committee formed to consider getting rid of Georgia’s income tax.
“When you attract more people and add more businesses and investment, you end up with more tax revenue at lower rates,” he said.
While Georgia has been honored for more than a decade as the best state in the nation to do business, the Peach State has the second-highest income tax rate in the Southeast, added Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, the Senate’s presiding officer. That puts Georgia at a disadvantage in the competition for jobs with surrounding states with lower tax rates or no income tax at all, he said.
“If we want to continue to stay competitive … we’ve got to be looking for ways to give Georgia a competitive advantage,” Jones told members of the committee at Tuesday’s kickoff session.
Norquist said states that are reducing or eliminating their income taxes are doing so by limiting spending rather than raising their sales taxes. They target bringing in a certain amount of revenue, and any taxes they take in above that amount are dedicated to tax relief, he said.
“As a percentage of GDP (Gross Domestic Product), government should be smaller,” said Norquist, famously quoted back in 2001 as saying government should be small enough that he could drag it into a bathtub and drown it.
But Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, a member of the committee, said abolishing the state income tax would make it harder to meet the demands of a growing population, particularly in a climate of uncertainty prompted by the Trump administration’s slashing of federal spending on programs including food stamps and disaster relief.
“We have massive needs in this state,” she said. “That would argue for having robust revenue.”
Norquist recommended that states looking to abolish their income taxes do so gradually. Georgia already has adopted that approach, with the General Assembly voting to reduce the income tax rate from 6% to 5.75% in 2022, then lowering it further to 5.49%, 5.39% and – this year – to 5.19%.
Norquist said reducing the income tax rate encourages business investment even before the tax rate actually gets to zero.
“It sends a signal to the investment world,” he said. “Being in route to zero is almost as good as being at zero.”
Norquist told senators reducing taxes also is smart politically.
“It’s been a popular position,” he said. “Nobody’s lost an election for (lowering) the income tax to zero.”
Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, the committee’s chairman, said one way to offset the revenue that would be lost by abolishing Georgia’s income tax would be to crack down on the generous tax incentives the state offers to attract business investment.
“If you don’t owe income taxes, you don’t need a tax credit,” he said.
The committee has until Dec. 15 to make recommendations to the full Senate.
by Ty Tagami | Aug 18, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Centers that offer services to people experiencing addiction could face more regulation in Georgia, as lawmakers investigate how they operate and whether they are effective enough.
“There are rehab centers all over the state of Georgia that are not meeting the standard that we feel should be there,” state Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, chairman of the Senate Study Committee on Recovery Residences, said Monday during the panel’s first meeting at the state Capitol.
Robertson and a handful of his Senate colleagues from both sides of the aisle concurred that there is work to be done.
They heard from Dr. James Craig, a medical doctor and addiction specialist, during a three-hour meeting that explored the genetic and environmental links to substance abuse.
Craig said society treats addiction like an ethical or moral failing, yet it is a medical condition, marked by physical changes in the brain that stem from exposure to the stress hormone cortisol and other causes beyond a person’s control. A war on drugs would reduce the scope of addiction about as well as a war on candy bar sales would reduce the prevalence of diabetes, he said.
“The vast majority of people that are entering the penal system right now, the vast majority, meet diagnostic criterion for the disease of addiction, which is something that, at least as an addictionologist, I see as a massive human rights violation,” he said. “We’re putting people with a mental illness in a cage.”
Craig said treatment facilities too often return patients to their communities well before they have control over their addiction, whether to alcohol, a drug or something else. It can take a year or more to return the brain’s chemistry to a normal baseline, yet these programs typically last a month, he said.
Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, R-Marietta, said residential treatment facilities are not regulated by the state. That is a concern for the retired orthopedic surgeon.
“The problem right now is we don’t even know where all these things are,” she said. “We don’t even know who’s running them.”
Sen. Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain, said the General Assembly has the power to require “fair labeling” of treatment facilities.
“It shouldn’t just be based on Yelp reviews,” said Jackson, the Senate’s minority whip.
Robertson, the Senate’s majority whip, said the General Assembly regulates too much but that this is “life and death” and too many of these facilities “have been run terribly,” so the issue merits a closer look.
Representatives of the facilities were not present to defend themselves, but Robertson said their leaders will be invited to the next hearing, which has not been scheduled. The hearings will eventually include the insurance industry and affected families, he said.
by Dave Williams | Aug 18, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A commemorative Forever stamp honoring former President Jimmy Carter will be released on Oct. 1 in Atlanta, the U.S. Postal Service announced Monday.
Representatives of the nonprofit group Friends of Jimmy Carter and the National Park Service joined the Postal Service in unveiling the new stamp at the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park in Carter’s hometown of Plains.
“It is difficult to consider a more fitting honoree than former President Jimmy Carter,” said Peter Pastre, the Postal Service’s government relations and public policy vice president. “He lent his quiet, thoughtful and deliberate energy around causes he believed in. … In his conduct and accomplishments as a former president, Jimmy Carter truly personified the best in America.”
“We’ve had the privilege of a front-row seat to his life and legacy,” added Kim Carter Fuller, Carter’s niece and executive director of the Friends of Jimmy Carter. “Today’s reveal gives the world an opportunity to share his legacy with others on a daily basis.”
After serving in the Georgia Senate and as governor, Carter – a Democrat – became the nation’s 39th president in January 1977. He served one term before losing his reelection bid in 1980 to Republican Ronald Reagan.
During Carter’s post-presidential years, he emerged as an activist for peace, human rights, and social and economic progress around the world. In 1982, he partnered with Emory University to establish the Carter Center, which advances democracy, monitors elections, mediates disputes, and works to prevent tropical diseases in the poorest nations.
In recognition of those efforts, Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
Carter died in December 2024 at the age of 100, a year after the death of his wife of 77 years, former First Lady Rosalynn Carter.
The new stamp depicts a 1982 oil-on-linen painting created in preparation for Carter’s official White House portrait.
The stamp’s Oct. 1 release date coincides with what would have been Carter’s 101st birthday.
by Dave Williams | Aug 18, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A former district attorney in the state court system was sworn in Monday as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Georgia.
Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed Margaret “Meg” Heap to the post effective Monday. The swearing-in ceremony took place at the federal courthouse in Augusta
“I am incredibly honored to serve as the United States attorney for the Southern District of Georgia,” Heap said in a prepared statement. “I look forward to working with our partners in law enforcement to make this a safer place to live and raise our children.”
Heap began her legal career in 1986 as a volunteer coordinator and victim advocate with the Chatham County District Attorney’s Victim-Witness Assistance Program. After earning a doctorate in law from Mercer University in 1992, she served as an assistant district attorney in the Blue Ridge Judicial Circuit.
From 1995 through 2010, Heap worked first as an assistant district attorney in the Eastern Judicial Circuit, then served two terms as the circuit’s district attorney.
Most recently, Heap was appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp to the State Board of Pardons and Paroles in 2021, where she served as both the board’s chair and vice chair.
The Southern District of Georgia covers 43 of the state’s 159 counties with a population of more than 1.6 million, including the cities of Savannah, Augusta, and Brunswick.
