ATLANTA — Former state Rep. Karen Bennett, D-Stone Mountain, became the second Georgia lawmaker to be indicted in federal court in the past month over alleged fraud concerning COVID-19 federal assistance.
Bennett, who resigned her seat effective Dec. 31, pleaded not guilty Monday to allegations by federal prosecutors that she made false statements in writing to obtain $13,940 in Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefits in 2020.
Bennett allegedly claimed she could not operate her physical therapy business while quarantined at home, but prosecutors allege her role was administrative and that she could work from home.
The U.S. District Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, Theodore S. Hertzberg, filed a false statements charge against Bennett Monday.
A judge released her on a $10,000 bond after she pleaded not guilty.
Rep. Sharon Henderson, D-Covington, pleaded not guilty Dec. 8 to theft of government funds in connection with COVID-19 relief, and was also released on a $10,000 bond.
Henderson was still listed as a state representative on the Georgia General Assembly website as of Tuesday.
ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp on Tuesday scheduled March 10 for the special election to select a successor to former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The Rome Republican resigned a year early after disagreeing with former ally President Donald Trump over numerous issues. Their differences included her support for preserving states’ rights to impose a moratorium on artificial intelligence and her opposition to military engagement overseas.
The main wedge between them was her insistence on the release of the investigative files concerning deceased sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, which Trump opposed. She was a key vote in forcing release of the documents.
Greene said Trump’s public criticism of her had led to a death threat against her son and a bomb threat against her home. She cited safety as one reason for her decision to step down, plus a growing divide between herself and Trump’s voting base. Her last day in Congress was Monday.
ATLANTA — When lawmakers return to the Georgia Capitol next week, they will likely be eyeing cutbacks to tax credits and exemptions to pay for a priority of Senate leader Burt Jones.
The Republican lieutenant governor, who is campaigning for the governor’s office, has said he wants to abolish the state income tax.
The 5.19% tax generates $16 billion for state government, so deleting it would open a sizable hole in the $37.7 billion budget.
That is why one of his top lieutenants, Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, has been talking about cutbacks to some of the $30 billion in state tax breaks.
Tillery, who is campaigning to succeed Jones, will have significant say over the next state budget as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He was tapped by Jones to lead a Senate study committee on eliminating the state income tax, which will convene again Wednesday.
“It is not a question of if we go to zero, it’s when and how we take our income tax to zero,” Tillery said at a hearing in November.
In the intervening weeks, the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts has released analyses of at least a dozen of the state’s credits and exemptions. Perhaps some of them could be clipped or eliminated to pay for lower income taxes.
Here is a summary of what they do and how much they deduct from state revenues.
The credit for employer provided child care was enacted in 1994 to help employers help parents enter the workforce. Only about a thousand entities tap it, around a quarter of a percent of all businesses in the state. It is expected to divert $18.2 million from state coffers for the fiscal year that started in July while adding $21.6 million to the economy. Yet the analysis determined that parents who benefit would have worked and accessed child care anyway, resulting in zero return on investment. But the review notes that early child care improves outcomes for children.
The sales tax exemption for personal and laundry services cost the state $176.6 million in the fiscal year that ended in July while adding $249 million to the economy and 7,095 jobs. The average cost per job was $23,481.
The PEACH Education tax credit dates to 2017. It credits taxpayers who donate to public education. The credit increased donations to public education nonprofits by 23% in the fiscal year that ended in July, at a $5 million cost to the state.
The foster care tax credit was enacted in 2022 to increase donations to organizations that support aging foster children and “justice-involved” youth. It is expected to cost $11.1 million in the fiscal year that started in July.
The Qualified Education Expense Tax Credit, enacted in 2018, cost $88.8 million in the fiscal year that ended in July. It gives taxpayers a dollar-for dollar income tax credit for contributions to private school scholarship funds. “The credit merely shifted education expenditures from public to private schools, with no impact on the state economy,” auditors reported.
The law enforcement donation tax credit, enacted in 2022, credits donations to qualified foundations. It cost $12.2 million in the fiscal year that ended in July, increasing such donations 48%.
The rural hospital tax credit, enacted in 2017, credits donations that help increasingly vulnerable, small rural health care facilities stay afloat. It cost the state $79.5 million in the fiscal year that ended in July, increasing donations 28%.
The vehicle trade-in tax exemption cost $129 million in the fiscal year that ended in July and reduced local revenue by nearly $240 million. It saved consumers an average $1,193 per vehicle.
The manufacturing investment tax credit was enacted in 1994 to stimulate investment in the manufacturing and telecommunications sectors. It cost $144.2 million in the fiscal year that ended in July 2024, costing an average of $816,477 for each of the 176 jobs it created.
The sales tax exemption for administrative and support services was by far the largest in this group, costing the state $1.2 billion in the fiscal year that ended in July. It resulted in 22,687 jobs at an average cost of $50,196 for each. It added $1.64 billion to the economy.
The tax exemption for waste management and remediation services cost $79.7 million in the fiscal year that ended in July, resulting in 405 jobs at an average cost of $193,086 for each.
The data center sales tax exemption, enacted in 2018 to encourage companies to build them in Georgia, exempts a portion of construction materials and purchases of computers and servers from state and local sales and use taxes. At a cost of $474.2 million in state tax revenue for the fiscal year that ended in July, it was the second largest in this group. (The study did not quantify the cost of exemptions from local sales and use taxes.) The audit said only 30% of data centers chose to locate in the state because of the exemption, which resulted in 28,350 construction jobs and 5,471 data center operations jobs. The cost worked out to an average of $15,506 per construction job and $85,414 per operations job.
ATLANTA — Hospitalizations for flu spiked in the last full week of December, resulting in several deaths in Georgia and an urgent call by state health officials.
The Department of Public Health on Monday urged people to get vaccinated amid projections of more infections.
“Flu activity is widespread and severe in Georgia, and cases are likely to increase following the holidays and as Georgians return to work and school,” the agency said in a statement, adding this for people who have no medical conditions preventing vaccination: “the Department of Public Health strongly urges you to take advantage of the health benefits the flu vaccine provides as soon as possible.”
The agency reported more than 500 hospitalizations during the week ending Dec. 27, a more than six-fold increase from the week that ended Dec. 6.
It reported seven deaths in that last full week of December.
The state warnings came as the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday reported influenza cases had increased by a third nationally for the week ending Dec. 27, with deaths up nearly 1% and one pediatric influenza-associated death during the 2025-26 season.
The CDC’s acting director, Jim O’Neill, on Monday, also revised recommendations for pediatric vaccinations, including for flu. The federal government previously recommended annual vaccination for children over six months old, but O’Neill changed that blanket advice slightly, advising medical consultation first.
His memo to other federal agencies Monday said the flu vaccine “should not be recommended for all children,” but it should be available through insurance to those over six months old “through shared-clinical decision making.”
Randy Beall, a building trades advocate, urges the Georgia Public Service Commission to approve an expansion of capacity for Georgia Power at a Dec. 19, 2025 hearing, arguing that the added electrical power would allow more data centers to produce jobs for skilled labor. (Ty Tagami/Capitol Beat)
ATLANTA — Data centers promise to enrich Georgia even as the state is giving them nearly half a billion dollars a year in tax breaks, according to a recent state analysis.
The analysis for the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts said the state effectively gave away $474 million in the fiscal year that ended in July by exempting data centers from some taxes.
Since 2018, Georgia has waived state and local sales taxes on some construction materials and on computers, servers and related equipment for larger data centers.
The review, released in late December, estimated 63 active data centers in the state, with 35 under construction and another 249 announced, most in greater metro Atlanta.
It said that 70% of the data center construction would have occurred without the tax breaks, meaning the state could have collected most of that half billion and still reaped most of the economic development benefits.
Despite the giveaway, the influx of data centers still produced a net economic gain for the state economy, said the report, produced by the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia.
Data centers created 28,350 construction-related jobs in 2025, adding $3.4 billion to the state economy, it said. And they created another 5,471 data center operations jobs, for an additional $823 million injection into the state economy.
The centers enhance the value of the land they occupy, swelling local property tax collections. The report illustrated this with observations of four new data centers in metro Atlanta.
The land, on average, was valued at $26 million per complex, but the new servers and electrical equipment added $1.8 billion to the average property’s worth, with the new buildings that housed them adding at least $450 million more.
The total average value for each project approached $2.3 billion, leading to an average of nearly $28 million in annual property tax proceeds per project, the report said.
Tricia Pridemore, an elected member of the Georgia Public Service Commission, extolled the benefit of such local revenue at a hearing last month before she voted in favor of a controversial expansion of electricity generation capacity for Georgia Power.
The monopoly electric utility asked for, and got, approval for a nearly 10-gigawatt expansion, equal to the output of nearly five Hoover Dams. Eighty percent of that output is slated for current and future data centers, according to the report for state auditors.
“We have counties in the South Metro Atlanta area that are planning new school builds with this local revenue,” Pridemore said. “I know of another county that resides along the Chattahoochee River that is going to rebuild aged water infrastructure that they don’t have the tax base to pay for,” she added.
Cheap electricity is a far stronger draw than tax exemptions, the report said.
Companies that are deciding where to build a data center only consider exemptions after short-listing locations based on more important qualities, such as corporate tax rates, commercial real estate prices, the risk of natural disasters, the talent pool, utility and water lines, and proximity to highways, airports and ports, the report said.
But it said low-cost electricity, which accounts for three quarters of a typical data center’s operating costs, is the most important factor: “Electricity is such an essential consideration in the design of a data center that, unlike most commercial projects that are measured in cost per square foot, data center projects are designed and measured in cost per megawatt.”
The Georgia Power expansion faced public opposition in part due to the environmental consequences of burning more fossil fuels, since a significant portion will be new gas-burning plants.
“Methane gas plants release nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter that settle into the air children breathe on playgrounds,” said Rebecca Lesser, an Emory University student who took time from cramming for finals to speak against the proposed Georgia Power expansion at a Public Service Commission hearing last month.
“Methane traps heat 80 times more effectively than carbon dioxide, intensifying heatwaves, storms, and air quality emergencies,” she said. “I’m here because my generation is being asked to inherit the long-term consequences of decisions we didn’t make.”
Georgia Power representatives argued that the company had to expand quickly to meet spiking demand from data centers, which are powering a race for artificial intelligence.
The annual economic forecast by a think tank at UGA’s Terry College of Business predicted last month that data centers will be an economic boon for the state, citing nearly $50 billion in recently announced projects.
Amazon Web Services is investing more than $11 billion for data center facilities in Butts and Douglas counties, with at least 550 new, high-skilled roles projected plus thousands of construction and supply chain jobs, said the 2026 economic outlook by the Selig Center for Economic Growth. Microsoft is planning a $1.8 billion campus in Union City and a $1 billion campus near Rome. A company called T5 Data Centers is planning a $16 billion project in Georgia while another, Atlas Development, has proposed a $17 billion data center campus in Coweta County, which would be one of the largest on the planet.
Still, the Selig Center forecast cautioned that the effect may prove underwhelming.
“Though the economic impact of billions of dollars in capital investment by data centers is undeniable, their long-term employment and induced economic impact may be much smaller than imagined,” it said. “Data centers do create high-paying jobs, but employment numbers are low compared to the vast size of the facilities.”
The primary economic benefit is from the thousands of construction jobs created during the multi-year buildout phase, it said, though it noted that proponents argue those jobs can effectively become long-term as workers move from one project to the next.
Randy Beall, an advocate for building trades workers, said at a Public Service Commission hearing last month that approval of Georgia Power’s expansion would create good jobs.
“Data centers provide necessary jobs to help train the next generation of skilled workers, especially electricians and HVAC technicians,” Beall said. “Data centers operate around the clock and after that build out, they require full-time electrical and HVAC workers on-site to ensure they stay operational. That creates steady high-skilled jobs and helps to build a workforce Georgia will rely on as our economy continues to grow.”
Georgia’s tax incentives are designed to steer data centers to rural areas with more need for economic development, but the auditors’ report said that policy priority has met with mixed success elsewhere because workers in less developed areas typically lack the desired skills.
“Unfortunately,” the auditors’ report said, “research shows that, in most states, only a portion of newly created jobs go to target residents.”
