by Dave Williams | Mar 13, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia’s unemployment rate held steady in January at 3.6%, despite declines in jobs, the size of the state’s labor force, and the number of employed.
The jobless rate in the Peach State in February was four-tenths of a point lower than the national unemployment rate.
“Georgia’s economy is built for the future, but to maintain our competitive edge, we must remain committed to making Georgia the top choice for businesses and talent,” said Louis DeBroux, interim commissioner of the state Department of Labor. “By continuing to invest in our people, expand opportunities, and drive innovation, we are ensuring Georgia remains the national leader in economic opportunity for all.”
Jobs were down by 28,200 in January, although some job sectors posted over-the-month gains. The durable goods manufacturing sector led the way by adding 1,800 jobs, while state government gained 1,400 jobs.
The transportation and warehousing sector lost the most jobs in January – 11,200 – while the accommodation and food services sector saw a loss 6,100 jobs, and the administrative and support services sector declined by 4,000 jobs.
Georgia’s labor force fell to 5.4 million, and the number of employed declined to 5.2 million.
However, fewer Georgians were unemployed in January as well. The state’s jobless ranks fell by 3,441 to 193,062.
Initial unemployment claims were up 3,448 to 34,494.
by Dave Williams | Mar 11, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The Georgia House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed Gov. Brian Kemp’s $37.7 billion fiscal 2026 state budget Tuesday, a spending plan that prioritizes prisons and education.
The budget, which cleared the House 171-4, is smaller than the record $40.5 billion fiscal 2025 mid-year budget lawmakers passed last week, which used $2.7 billion of the state’s $16 billion surplus. The 2026 spending plan, which takes effect July 1, does not count on surplus funding, a recognition that economic headwinds likely lie ahead.
“Things are tight,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin, told his legislative colleagues before Tuesday’s vote. “The needs are great, and many worthy causes are competing for the same limited resources.”
The 2026 budget includes $250 million in new spending on Georgia prisons, the subject of a federal audit last fall that criticized the prison system for failing to protect inmates from violence. To reduce the ratio of inmates to correctional officers, the spending plan authorizes hiring more than 700 guards, while providing pay raises to the current correctional staff.
The House version of the budget added $98 million in education spending above the spending recommendations Kemp presented to the General Assembly in January. Most of that increase would go toward student safety and mental health in the wake of last September’s mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Barrow County.
“School safety and mental health go hand in hand,” Hatchett said.
The budget provides $62 million for a new program called “Student Support Services.” Of that total, $19.6 million would go to hire mental health counselors for middle schools and high schools, and $28 million would go to school districts to help low-income students.
The spending plan also includes $10.8 million to hire 116 literacy coaches. Georgia students’ poor reading scores have prompted the legislature in recent years to emphasize improving literacy.
With such a large budget surplus, Kemp and the General Assembly were able to authorize a series of building projects in the current budget to be financed with cash rather than the usual practice of borrowing the money. The fiscal ’26 budget continues that practice for $545 million in projects, but the House spending plans calls for funding an additional $321 million in building projects through bonds.
The budget now moves to the state Senate.
by Dave Williams | Mar 10, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia House budget writers approved Gov. Brian Kemp’s $37.7 billion fiscal 2026 budget Monday, a spending plan that emphasizes the needs of the state prison system.
The budget, which takes effect July 1, builds on the mid-year budget the General Assembly adopted last week, which added $345 million in new spending on prisons. The fiscal ’26 spending plan antes up another $250 million for a prison system that was blasted in a federal audit last fall for failing to protect inmates from widespread violence.
“It (is) a historic infusion of cash, highlighting the sense of urgency,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin, told committee members before Monday’s vote.
The $250 million increase for prisons includes $125 million Kemp recommended to the legislature in January and $125 million added by the House. The money would go to hire more correctional officers to lower the ratio of inmates to staff, give those officers a pay raise, and provide temporary space for inmates inside new modular units to make way for repairs and renovations at existing prisons.
Education is another main driver in the fiscal ’26 budget, with the House adding $98 million to the governor’s spending recommendations. Of that total, $60 million would go toward student support services, including $20 million in grants to hire mental-health counselors for Georgia middle schools and $28 million to support students from low-income families.
Another $25 million would go toward school safety initiatives, which already received a major boost in the $40.5 billion mid-year budget. The House also earmarked $10 million to hire more literacy coaches.
Other big-ticket items include $32 million in increased reimbursement fees for health-care providers serving Medicaid patients and $8.3 million to bolster the state’s graduate medical education program.
The full House is expected to take up the budget later this week.
by Dave Williams | Mar 7, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Sports betting struck out again this year in the General Assembly.
The state House of Representatives passed 75 bills Thursday in the daylong flurry of activity known as Crossover Day, the annual deadline for legislation to clear either the House or Senate to remain alive for the year. But sports betting wasn’t among them.
Also left by the wayside when lawmakers gaveled out Crossover Day shortly before 11 p.m. was a Senate bid to deny state funding to Georgia K-12 public schools, colleges and universities that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), legislation in the House overhauling the process the state uses to compensate the wrongfully convicted, and a Senate bill exposing banking institutions to lawsuits if they deny services to customers because of the way they exercised their rights under the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Legislation to ban mining adjacent to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and require Georgia Power to pass along the costs of power-hungry data centers to operators of those facilities rather than residential and small business customers never made it out of House committees to reach the floor of the chamber.
This year’s push for online sports betting came in the form of a proposed constitutional amendment placing the issue on the statewide ballot next year and a separate “enabling” bill containing details on how the industry would operate in Georgia. Both made it through the House Rules Committee Thursday night, but Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, did not put them on the floor for a vote before Crossover Day came to an end.
“I’m disappointed,” Rep. Marcus Wiedower, R-Watkinsville, chief sponsor of both measures, said after the gavel fell. “A lot of work went into this. I thought it was a good measure.”
Supporters of legalizing sports betting have tried to get a statewide referendum through the General Assembly every year since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2018 legalized gambling on sports in states other than New Jersey and Nevada. Opponents – spearheaded by religious groups – have argued sports betting would lead to an increase in crime and problem gambling.
The Senate spent much of the winter focused on controversial topics, including guns and race. DEI policies — a hot button for President Donald Trump — were also a vehicle for Republican outrage in Georgia, where the Senate’s Republican leadership had been pushing for a ban in schools and colleges.
Senate Bill 120, which was the subject of bitter hearings and press conferences in recent weeks, would have punished public educational institutions that had implemented DEI policies by withholding state funding.
The bill’s chief sponsor, Sen. Marty Harbin, R- Tyrone, called such policies an “erosion of meritocracy.” But the measure’s critics said DEI helps Black students and other historically marginalized people integrate and succeed.
“People died, people were lynched, all kinds of things happened in this country that caused people that were descendants of slaves to not have an equal opportunity,” said Roger Bruce, a former Democratic state representative who came to the Capitol for a protest.
SB 120 was scheduled as the final bill for debate in the Senate Thursday night, but the leadership ended the legislative day just before calling it up.
Another controversial culture war bill also failed to pass the Senate, although it did get a hearing and a vote on the floor.
Senate Bill 57 would have punished banks that decide not to do business with companies due to disagreement about social issues, a custom that critics call “debanking.”
An example offered in a legislative hearing last month was Daniel Defense. The Georgia-based firearms manufacturer became a target of criticism after one of its rifles was used in the 2022 mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The founder and chairman, Marty Daniel, testified that two banks dropped his company in quick succession, costing him $1 million each on lawyers and fees.
The bill triggered a heated debate on the Senate floor Thursday. Democrats were opposed and so were a critical mass of Republicans who worried about the potential impact on local banks. The bill got just 13 votes in favor, all Republicans, with a bipartisan opposition of 43 votes.
The House passed resolutions Thursday night to compensate five Georgians who spent years behind bars after being wrongfully convicted of crimes. However, the House did not take up a separate bill to remove the General Assembly from the process of compensating wrongfully convicted Georgians. Instead, claims for compensation would be heard by administrative law judges, who would make a recommendation to the chief justice of the state Supreme Court.
Sports betting wasn’t the only cause supporters have pushed for years in the General Assembly that fizzled again in 2025. Two bills that called for either placing a five-year moratorium on mining near the Okefenokee Swamp or banning mining altogether didn’t get out of the House Natural Resources & Environment Committee.
Alabama-based Twin Pines Minerals is seeking state permits to open a titanium dioxide mine along Trail Ridge on the southeastern edge of the Okefenokee. Supporters say mining would draw down water levels in the swamp, threatening the largest blackwater swamp in North America and the tourist dollars it brings to the region.
“When you lose the peat from the dried-up ground, we’re going to have terrible fires like they did in Southern California,” Rep. Darlene Taylor, R-Thomasville, the bills’ chief sponsor, said during a hearing last week.
Opponents said the mine would bring much-needed jobs and boost the local tax digest in an economically distressed part of the state.
Like sports betting and protecting the Okefenokee, the fight over the data centers bill also was left over from last year.
While the rapid growth of data centers in Georgia unquestionably represents a boost to the state’s economy, environmental and consumer advocacy groups have warned the vast amounts of electricity they consume threaten to further drive up electric rates. They cited a series of Georgia Power rate increases during the last couple of years to cover rising fuel costs and the completion of two additional nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle.
Gov. Brian Kemp vetoed a bill the General Assembly passed last year that would have temporarily suspended a state sales tax exemption aimed at attracting data centers to Georgia after business interests objected to the measure. Opponents to this year’s version of the bill in the Senate Regulated Industries Committee argued that the state Public Service Commission (PSC) should oversee data centers rather than the legislature.
The PSC voted in January to prohibit the Atlanta-based utility from passing on the costs of serving new large-load customers including data centers to residential customers. But supporters of the data center bill called the commission’s new rule worthless because it’s full of loopholes.
While the data centers bill never got out of the committee, the Regulated Industries Committee did approve a second energy measure bringing back the Georgia Consumer Utility Counsel, a watchdog agency that was disbanded in 2008 amid budget cuts brought on by the Great Recession. However, the full Senate didn’t take up the measure on Crossover Day.
by Dave Williams | Mar 6, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The Georgia House of Representatives passed two tax relief bills Thursday, one unanimously and another that proved controversial.
House Bill 112, which cleared the chamber 175-0, would provide $1 billion in one-time income tax rebates to Georgia taxpayers.
Single filers would get a rebate of $250, while heads of households would receive $375 and married couples filing jointly would get $500.
House Bill 111, on the other hand, drew substantial opposition from Democrats before passing 110-60. The legislation calls for reducing Georgia’s income tax rate from 5.39% to 5.19% retroactive to the beginning of the current tax year.
Rep. Saira Draper, D-Atlanta, said she supported a similar tax cut the General Assembly passed last year because it was tied to certain financial benchmarks that would only allow it to take effect if the state’s finances were strong.
“I was good with that approach because it was thoughtful and conservative,” she said.
Draper said she opposed HB111 because Gov. Brian Kemp and legislative Republicans are going ahead with additional tax cuts even though the state’s revenue estimate for this year is lower than last year.
Other House Democrats complained the tax cut would benefit primarily the wealthy while the state is failing to adequately essential services including health care and education adequately.
But House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Shaw Blackmon, R-Bonaire, said reducing taxes would help all Georgia taxpayers. Under the bill, a family of four wouldn’t pay any taxes on its first $32,000 of income, he said.
“This measure allows Georgians to keep more of their money – not the government’s – and reduces the tax burden for every family that pays taxes,” Blackmon said.
Both bills now head to the state Senate.
