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 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.
by Dave Williams | Aug 15, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The state’s lottery-funded HOPE Scholarship program has been highly successful, covering most or all of college tuition for more than 2.2 million Georgians since its inception in 1993.
But Georgia lawmakers are considering expanding state aid to public college and university students beyond the merit-based HOPE program to a need-based scholarship initiative. The newly formed state Senate Study Committee on Higher Education Affordability will hold its first meeting on Monday at the state Capitol.
“In my conversations on both sides of the aisle, there’s been a recognition that getting more students into college is a must,” said Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, who will chair the committee. “[But] we have not turned our attention to need-based support.”
“I’m very concerned about the level of debt students come out of college with,” added Sen. Max Burns, R-Sylvania, chairman of the Senate Higher Education Committee and a member of the new study panel. “The study committee is designed to explore as many avenues as we can to expand our graduation rates.”
The University System of Georgia’s six-year graduation rate has increased significantly during the last decade, surpassing 80% for the system as a whole and surging beyond 90% at the system’s research universities including the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech.
The university system has taken various steps to boost graduation rates. The system has participated in the Complete College America program since 2011.
In 2022, the system launched the website Georgia Degrees Pay to show the value of a degree. The following year saw the start of GEORGIA MATCH, a direct admission program that involves sending letters to high school seniors listing the public universities, colleges and technical colleges they are academically eligible to attend and explaining how to claim a spot being held for them at the institution of their choice.
But Orrock said there remains room for improvement.
“Our workforce shortages are well documented,” she said. “More college graduates are a way for our state to attract businesses looking for the skill sets of college graduates.”
Georgia and New Hampshire are currently the only states that don’t offer a need-based scholarship program in their four-year public colleges and universities. But bringing need-based scholarships to Georgia will have to overcome an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality.
University System of Georgia Chancellor Sonny Perdue noted that the system’s Board of Regents has held the line on tuition for seven of the last 10 years.
Decisions by the General Assembly eliminating the special institutional fees the system began charging students during the Great Recession and restoring the funding cuts to HOPE made during the same economic downturn have helped keep tuition in check, he said.
“We welcome the discussion,” Perdue said of the upcoming study committee. “We’ve got a great story to tell.”
“We have some of the highest quality education at the lowest cost in the nation,” Burns added. “That’s a positive for Georgia.”
A key issue shaping the upcoming debate over higher education affordability will be whether the state should focus more on helping deserving high school students who can’t afford college gain access to postsecondary education or on students who are nearing a degree but struggling to pay for the final credits they need to graduate.
Orrock said high school counselors have told lawmakers that some high-achieving high school students are not enrolling in college because their families can’t afford it. While the GEORGIA MATCH program has helped, she said many students receiving letters informing them of university system institutions they are qualified to attend don’t end up enrolling.
Orrock said the late Hank Huckaby, who as a senior staff member helped then-Gov. Zell Miller launch HOPE and later served as university system chancellor, was a proponent of need-based scholarships.
“He said, ‘If you want the biggest game changer to make your workforce, economy, and families thrive, it’s need-based,’ ” she said.
But state Rep. Chuck Martin, R-Alpharetta, chairman of the House Higher Education Committee, said giving a financial boost to college students nearing a degree is more important. Martin was the lead sponsor of legislation the General Assembly passed in 2022 offering students who have earned at least 80% of the credits required for their college degree grants of up to $2,500 to help pay their tuition.
“If you want to start a need-based scholarship, you start at the end,” he said. “At that point, students have proven they can do the work.”
Another factor lawmakers will have to consider is the cost to Georgia taxpayers of launching a need-based scholarship program.
The HOPE program is currently running a surplus of $1.6 billion, according to the resolution that created the study committee. But Martin said the legislature shouldn’t put those funds toward need-based scholarships without careful consideration.
“Just because there’s money doesn’t mean you spend it,” he said. “We shouldn’t put any new program in because we happen to have a surplus in the lottery or otherwise.”
While Martin and other conservative Republicans are wary of the potential fiscal impact of offering need-based scholarships, Orrock said there’s been GOP buy-in to at least giving the idea serious consideration.
Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who presides over the state Senate, got behind Orrock’s resolution to form the study committee and appointed the Democrat to chair the effort, a rare opportunity in the legislature for a member of the minority party.
“There’s interest in it by leadership,” Orrock said. “If we can put together a good-faith grant program, it will be win-win for Georgia and a win-win for bipartisanship.”
