by Ty Tagami | Feb 12, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — The Republican-led state Senate adopted an historic income tax cut plan Thursday that Democrats decried as an election year ploy that would undermine the state budget.
There was no official estimate of the cost of Senate Bill 476, which calls for no income tax on the first $50,000 in annual earnings by an individual and $100,000 for a married couple.
The absence of an official analysis of the impact to the more than $40 billion budget led Democrats to assert the plan would cost $9 billion while Republicans touted it as a boon for working people.
“It would represent the largest tax cut in state history,” Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Republican, said after the measure passed 32-18, with all Republicans in favor and nearly all Democrats opposed.
Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, the lead co-sponsor of the legislation, said it would help firefighters, teachers, restaurant employees and middle-class workers in general, ridiculing Democrats’ arguments against it.
“The mental gymnastics you have to jump through to vote against this bill are astounding,” he said.
Democrats said the wealthy would benefit more, since the bill would also reduce the base income tax rate to 4.99% from the current 5.19%. They said it would result in budget shortfalls in the long run, forcing budget cuts and sales tax increases that would drive up prices for groceries, child care and other expenses that are making life difficult for many Georgians.
They called the measure a trick to mislead voters.
Several Senate Republicans are running for higher office, including Jones, who wants to succeed Brian Kemp in the governor’s office, and Tillery, who hopes to follow Jones as lieutenant governor.
Sen. Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain, called the bill “a scam.” Sen. Derek Mallow, D-Savannah, said it was “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
Sen. Nikki Merritt, D-Grayson, said it would “devastate” the economy. “It’s not a plan for working families,” she said. “It’s a plan working families will pay for.”
Kemp’s own budget proposal would reduce the income tax rate to 4.99%, but it does not include increases in the standard deduction for income.
That led Sen. Josh McLaurin, D-Sandy Springs, also running for lieutenant governor, to say SB 476 was a “senseless tax cut that Brian Kemp’s going to veto on sight … this is election year stuff.”
McLaurin said reducing the base rate to 4.99% would cost $3 billion a year while deducting the first $50,000 thousand in income per tax filer (and $100,000 per couple) would cost $6 billion.
Tillery had a much lower estimate, less than $3 billion for the package, which he said would be balanced by cuts to tax credits and exemptions that collectively cost the state treasury about $30 billion.
SB 476 would eliminate them initially for a variety of recipients, including business headquarters, banks, medical manufacturers, telecommunications facilities, boat repairers, crab fishermen and for low- and zero-emission vehicles and electric vehicle chargers.
It would end new exemptions for the manufacture of machinery to reduce or eliminate air or water pollution and for high-technology companies. There would also be no new exemptions for data centers.
Then, all tax credits and exemptions would end in 2032.
The plan had Republicans gloating that they had seized the issue of affordability from Democrats.
“There’s a reason, y’all, why the Republican Party is becoming the party of the working class,” said Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, who is running for lieutenant governor. Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, who wants to be Georgia’s next attorney general, said Democrats used to be the party of the working class while Republicans represented the wealthy.
“That narrative is completely flipped now,” he said.
The Republican-led Senate also passed a backup plan in Senate Bill 477, which Tillery acknowledged was not as beneficial for the middle class. It would also reduce the base income tax rate to 4.99%, then continue dropping it until it reached 3.99% in 2028. It would increase tax deductions by a much smaller amount, raising the untaxed portion of income by a third, to $16,000 for individuals and to $32,000 for married couples. The state tax on corporate income would drop to 4.99% but no further.
Both bills would need consent from the House to become law. So, the Senate extended what Tillery described as an “olive branch” to that chamber by gutting two House bills and replacing them with the language in the two Senate bills, so the House could claim credit.
Meanwhile, House Republicans have their own tax priority. They are targeting local property tax relief as their answer to affordability.
by Mark Niesse | Feb 12, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Get out of the way, slow drivers. The minimum speed limit on Georgia highways might increase to 50 mph.
Georgia lawmakers are considering raising the speedy minimum speed limit from 40 mph as a safety measure to reduce crashes caused by disparities in speed. The maximum speed limit on some highways is 70 mph.
“I want to limit the number of rear-end collisions,” said state Rep. John Carson, R-Marietta, the sponsor of House Bill 809. “I’ve received fatality reports … It’s horrific.”
The max speed limit in Georgia has steadily increased over the last few decades from 55 mph to 70 mph, but the minimum speed limit has remained at 40 mph, Carson said.
Col. William Hitchens, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Safety, said Georgia State Patrol officers have seen significant damage and injuries involving slow-moving vehicles.
“Driving below the speed limit can, in some cases, be as dangerous as traveling above the posted speed limit,” Hitchens wrote in a letter last month to Carson about his proposal. “Vehicles that are traveling below the minimum speed can cause traffic issues such as long backups and cause motorists to take evasive actions due to approaching the vehicle faster than expected.”
Senior citizens and student drivers might struggle with a higher minimum speed limit, said state Rep. Rhonda Taylor, D-Conyers.
“It would be a better solution … (to) move to the right,” Taylor said. “It almost feel like I’m being penalized because I can’t drive 50 miles an hour.”
Violations of Georgia’s minimum speed law are punishable by fines up to $1,000, but local jurisdictions across the state generally set penalties much lower, in the $100 to $200 range. Fines wouldn’t change under HB 809.
The bill calls for the 50 mph minimum speed limit on any part of a highway in Georgia with a speed limit 65 mph or greater.
The House Motor Vehicles Committee didn’t vote on the bill after a hearing Tuesday while lawmakers gather more information about crashes and research the cost of replacing speed limit signs. The bill could be brought up for a vote afterward.
by Ty Tagami | Feb 11, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A verbal skirmish over Fulton County’s elections management unfolded at the Georgia Capitol Wednesday, as a Republican Senator said the state should take over the county elections office and the county’s Democratic leader ridiculed the notion as “laughable.”
Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, pointed to a recently unsealed FBI affidavit for the search warrant that led to the raid on a Fulton election facility last month. The document showed that the Fulton election in 2020 was a “mess,” he said.
“It’s past time for the state to take over Fulton County elections,” said Dolezal, who is running for lieutenant governor.
Fulton Commission Chairman Robb Pitts then came to the Gold Dome to hold his own news conference, telling reporters that numerous reviews and audits had given the county’s election operation “a clean bill of health.” He said the warrant affidavit was a “very weak, weak, weak” document.
“There’s no such thing as a perfect election,” Pitts said. “There’s always a possibility of human error. There’s always a possibility of mechanical failure. But there has not been any organized effort in Fulton County, Georgia to manipulate the outcome of any election.”
Pitts called the raid a “sinister plot” by the administration of President Donald Trump to disrupt upcoming elections. And he said the county was prepared to fight against it in court, adding that he had contacted other local leaders across the country to warn them.
“Fulton County is the poster child here,” Pitts said. “If they’re successful here in Fulton County, Georgia, they’re going to take this show on the road.”
Dolezal had pointed to statements in the affidavit that some ballots had been scanned twice while other ballot images were missing.
State election investigations have never found intentional fraud over the last five years, but Fulton has been cited for poor ballot management, disorganized processes and counting errors.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican running for governor, has repeatedly said Georgia’s elections are safe and secure.
by Ty Tagami | Feb 11, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Student athletes who sign sponsorship contracts in high school would not be stuck with those contract terms after graduation, under legislation approved unanimously Wednesday by the Georgia House of Representatives.
House Bill 383 would nullify contracts to use a student’s name, image or likeness soon after the student either earns a diploma or leaves their high school for some other reason. It is an attempt to address a perceived power imbalance between the families of teenagers and the sports industry.
A contract termination law is needed to avoid exploitation, said Rep. Brent Cox, R-Dawsonville, the chief co-sponsor of the bill. Too many students have found themselves locked into exploitative contracts in perpetuity, he said.
“It protects these student athletes from having these unending contracts at the collegiate and the NFL level,” Cox said, adding that he’d heard of agents collecting as much as a tenth of a former student athlete’s earnings after the student went pro.
The bill had bipartisan backing, with former Atlanta Falcons player Rep. Dewey McClain, D-Lawrenceville, signing on.
Rep. Chris Erwin, R-Homer, a retired school superintendent who now chairs the House Education Committee, sponsored the measure too.
HB 383, which now heads to the Senate, also would not allow schools to prevent students from obtaining agents or other legal representation, and it would impose restrictions on contract terms.
It would prohibit student athletes endorsing or promoting weapons or vice products, including alcohol, tobacco, drugs, gambling and pornography.
by Mark Niesse | Feb 11, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Breweries are asking Georgia lawmakers to loosen restrictions on selling to retailers and on the amount individuals can buy to drink at home.
Craft brewers said their businesses are suffering because state law prohibits direct sales to bars, restaurants and stores. Georgia also limits to-go orders to individuals at 24 cans of beer per day.
The bill considered by a state Senate committee Tuesday is one of several pro-alcohol proposals pending at the Georgia General Assembly this year, along with measures that would allow more discounts on beer, Sunday sales in museums, and at-home liquor production.
“We need a more flexible system that allows small businesses to build their brand up locally, get their own product that they’ve made and invested in to local retailers,” said Joseph Cortes, executive director for the Georgia Craft Brewers Guild. “Then they can be more viable to one day, if they choose, get into traditional retail channels.”
Similar efforts to ease Georgia’s craft brewery laws have fallen short in recent years, and this year’s proposals also face opposition. Large alcohol companies and their distributors want to preserve the state’s system that separates alcohol makers, distributors and retailers.
“Alcohol is the No. 1 drug problem in America,” said Mike Griffin, a lobbyist for the Georgia Baptist Mission Board. “We don’t want to go back to a pre-Prohibition era where we had a Wild West of alcohol. It seems that the alcohol industry is not going to be satisfied until it is sold 24/7, including at lemonade stands.”
After Tuesday’s public hearing, the Senate Regulated Industries Committee didn’t vote on Senate Bill 456, which would permit breweries to sell up to 1,000 barrels of beer annually to retailers located within the same county and allow individuals to buy any amount for consumption outside the brewery. A vote could be scheduled as soon as next week.
Senate Majority Leader Jason Anavitarte, R-Dallas, said Georgians want more alcohol options. He sponsored Senate Bill 86, which would let retailers offer coupons and discounts on alcoholic beverages as long as the discount isn’t specific to a brand.
“For too long, the distributors have had innovation on lockdown,” Anavitarte said. “It’s big business not really wanting to see some of this growth. That’s why you’re seeing so many craft breweries struggling or closing or consolidating.”
