ATLANTA — Anger and opposition to the rapid rise of data centers across Georgia has led to a surge of bills that would clamp down on the resource-consuming industry.
Georgia legislators have proposed seven bills regulating data centers by eliminating tax breaks, prohibiting costs from being passed on to residential electricity customers, or temporarily barring their construction entirely.
Data centers — hulking industrial buildings that power artificial intelligence and technology companies — have emerged as one of the hottest topics at the Georgia Capitol this year as they’ve proliferated across the state’s landscape in recent years. There are over 200 data centers in Georgia, according to Baxtel, a data center industry research firm.
DC BLOX Atlanta East Hyperscale Data Center Campus in Conyers, Georgia, on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026. Georgia lawmakers have recently introduced bills to end the tax exemptions on future data centers in response to controversies surrounding power infrastructure and economic impact. (Ashtin Barker/Capitol Beat)
State Sen. Matt Brass, the chairman of the powerful Senate Rules Committee, said residents are worried about the impact of large data centers being built in their communities.
Brass proposed Senate Bill 410, which would end Georgia’s sales tax exemption for new data centers but preserve it for existing facilities. Gov. Brian Kemp vetoed a bill in 2024 that would have eliminated the tax break entirely, citing concerns it would undermine business investment in the state.
“It started with concerns from folks back home. There’s a lot of angst over it,” said Brass, R-Newnan.
Data centers will still invest in Georgia even if they don’t get a tax break, Brass said, citing the state’s energy rates, business climate, weather and property values.
“There’s all these reasons they want to come here, and the tax incentive I don’t believe is one of them,” Brass said.
Georgia taxpayers effectively gave away $474 million to data centers during the fiscal year that ended in July, according to a recent report by the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts.
Data centers produced 8,505 construction jobs and 1,641 operations jobs with a combined $1.2 billion added to the state’s economy, according to the department’s summary of the report.
DC BLOX Atlanta East Hyperscale Data Center Campus in Conyers, Georgia, on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026. Georgia lawmakers have recently introduced bills to end the tax exemptions on future data centers in response to controversies surrounding power infrastructure and economic impact. (Ashtin Barker/Capitol Beat)
The Data Center Coalition, a trade association that includes Amazon, Google and Meta, said Georgia has become the fastest-growing data center market in the country.
“Data centers are committed to being responsible neighbors that pay their full cost of service for the energy they use,” said Khara Boender, director of state policy for the Data Center Coalition. “We will continue to work with stakeholders at the state, local and industry level to strike the right balance that maximizes the benefit to Georgia taxpayers, protects against rate increases, and ensures data centers are a net positive for the state.”
Rising energy costs and data centers have become a major campaign issue this year after two Democrats unseated Republican incumbents last fall in elections for the Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities.
State Rep. Ruwa Romman, D-Duluth, proposed a moratorium on new data center construction until March 1, 2027 in House Bill 1012.
“Before we permanently alter the landscape of our state, we have an obligation to properly regulate and assess both the benefits and impacts of these data centers on our communities,” said Romman, a Democratic candidate for governor. “They come to the table with all these promises, and when those promises don’t come true, it’s too late.”
Another bill that would protect residential customers from electricity costs of data centers is already advancing through the legislative process this year. Senate Bill 34, sponsored by Senate Finance Chairman Chuck Hufstetler, R-Rome, was debated last year but is being revived in committee hearings this week.
Other legislation calls for local governments to make public data centers’ water and electricity usage.
Data center bills pending in Georgia
SB 34: Prohibits costs associated with data center fuel generation and transmission from being included in residential electricity rates.
SB 408: Sunsets Georgia’s sales tax break for data centers on Jan. 1, 2027.
SB 410: Eliminates sales tax exemptions for new data centers.
SB 421: Requires local governments to disclose data centers’ water and electricity usage.
HB 528: Requires data centers to report their water consumption, electricity usage and community impacts.
HB 559: Sunsets Georgia’s sales tax break for data centers on Dec. 31, 2026.
HB 1012: Bans new data center construction until March 1, 2027.
A federal appeals court has upheld parts of Georgia’s 2021 voting law that allow state takeovers of county election management and prohibit ballot photography.
The ruling by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals is the latest decision that supports the election law passed in the wake of the 2020 election, when Democrat Joe Biden narrowly defeated Republican Donald Trump in Georgia.
A unanimous three-judge panel found that the plaintiffs, which include election security advocates, lacked standing to sue because they couldn’t show they suffered an injury or that the defendants, including the State Election Board and Gov. Brian Kemp, were responsible for potential harms. The court didn’t rule on the merits of the lawsuit.
“Thanks to the Georgia Election Integrity Act, our state remains the best, most secure state for voting. This ruling is another win in our battle to protect the integrity of our elections,” said Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, one of the defendants. “Rest assured, we will stand firm no matter what group tries to interfere.”
The decision leaves in place the ability for the State Election Board to take over underperforming county election boards. The board declined to take over Fulton County’s election board in 2023, finding it had made significant improvements.
The court also sustained a ban on photographing ballots in polling places while voting was underway.
The law limited drop boxes, required additional forms of ID for absentee voting, prevented mass mailings of absentee ballot application forms and banned handing out food and water to voters waiting in line.
ATLANTA — From school cellphone bans to tax cuts, some of this year’s most consequential proposals for new Georgia laws have been in the works for months.
State legislators laid the groundwork last year for bills that will be considered during the General Assembly’s session that began this month. About 20 study committees held public meetings across Georgia to set an initial agenda of the state’s top issues.
Now that lawmakers reviewed Gov. Brian Kemp’s budget proposals last week, bills will soon be lined up for debates and votes.
Both Republicans and Democrats support limiting student cellphone use in public high schools.
A Senate study committee recommended a “bell-to-bell” personal communication device ban in high schools, along with stronger parental consent laws, AI restrictions and limits on targeted advertising.
“We are putting this report forward knowing that the giant technology companies don’t want this. The Senate will be going into battle together to pass bipartisan legislation,” said state Sen. Shawn Still, R-Suwanee. “There has to be a balance between profit and responsibility to protect our children.”
Lawmakers are also focused on lowering tax burdens on Georgians, highlighted by a Senate committee that sought to eliminate income taxes on the first $50,000 of income for individuals and $100,000 for couples starting in 2027.
“For the average family, eliminating the income tax is the equivalent of a little more than a 5% raise. That’s real money that helps cover necessities today and creates a little breathing room tomorrow,” said state Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia.
Here’s a look at recommendations of several study committees:
Provide funding to college students based on financial need. The Senate Study Committee on Higher Education Affordability said need-based financial aid is essential for students who meet the academic requirements to attend college but lack enough money to pay for it. Kemp subsequently proposed $325 million for a scholarship program for students with limited means.
Upgrade 911 services to accommodate the rise of cellphones and decline of landlines. The House Study Committee on Funding for Next Generation 911 recommended creating a statewide fee for 911 services, replacing local fees, to help fund technology that would allow Georgians to contact emergency services using voice, text and data.
Make students ineligible for sports if they miss too many days of school. The Senate Study Committee on Combatting Chronic Absenteeism in Schools also proposed suspending driver’s licenses of students who were chronically absent, meaning they had missed at least 10% of the school year. And the committee recommended less punitive interventions to help students, such as hearing and vision screenings.
Improve the process for biological fathers with limited financial resources to establish a legal relationship with their children. The House Study Committee on Affordability and Accessibility of Georgia’s Legitimation Process suggested several ways to improve the court system by publishing standardized legitimized forms on court websites and clearing backlogs.
These proposals could be introduced as bills that would then be considered by the state House and Senate.
For a bill to become a law, it must be passed by both chambers by the end of this year’s legislative session April 2 and then approved by Kemp.
ATLANTA — A Georgia Senate panel approved a resolution Thursday calling on Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to turn over the state’s unredacted voter list to the U.S. Department of Justice — including voters’ Social Security and driver’s license numbers.
The Senate Ethics Committee voted along party lines, with Republicans in support and Democrats opposed, to advance the resolution to a vote by the full Senate.
The resolution doesn’t carry the force of law, but it’s a symbolic effort to support the Trump administration’s nationwide effort to collect voters’ data — and to take aim at Raffensperger, a fellow Republican who is running for governor against Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and Attorney General Chris Carr.
Democrats objected to Senate Resolution 563, saying it could result in identity theft if the federal government shares voters’ private information with outside organizations in an effort to find noncitizens or double-voters.
“I’m deeply concerned that we are going to spend taxpayer dollars, a lot of them, millions of dollars, if we were to send this data information over and then also compromise the privacy data of our Georgia citizens,” said state Sen. Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain.
Republicans on the committee criticized Raffensperger for failing to show up at the hearing and for only providing a public version of Georgia’s voter list to the DOJ.
Senate Majority Whip Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, said Raffensperger is the one wasting taxpayer money by fighting with the federal government.
The DOJ recently sued Georgia for the full voter list, and a hearing is scheduled in federal court later this month.
“While we like to talk about this information being the most hyper-sensitive information in the world, it’s really not, which is why most credit card companies and others use different information now to prevent ID theft,” Robertson said.
Raffensperger’s office has said in court documents that state law prevents disclosure of voters’ Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, full birth dates and email addresses.
Besides Georgia, the DOJ has sued several Democrat-led states that have refused to comply with the request for voter records. Republican-run states such as Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee have agreed to provide full voter registration lists.
ATLANTA — Georgia legislators and the state’s elections chief lacked a plan Wednesday to stop using computer QR codes for counting ballots before a July 1 deadline.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told a budget committee that the General Assembly hasn’t provided any money to upgrade Georgia’s voting system, which displays candidates on touchscreens and then prints paper ballots with QR codes containing voters’ choices.
But a state law passed two years ago mandates that QR codes can’t be used to count ballots in elections after July 1, 2026.
Critics of Georgia’s election system say voters can’t verify their votes from unreadable QR codes, which are used for the official vote count.
Lawmakers haven’t yet introduced a bill that would spend money or outline an alternative to the state’s current election technology.
Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, suggested that every vote could be counted by hand this November — usually over 4 million ballots in midterm elections.
“If we were able to count all of them, would you not just be able to certify the hand count there and that suffice to meet the Senate bill’s request of not counting the QR code?” Tillery asked Raffensperger.
Raffensperger responded that each ballot can include 16 or 20 races, making it expensive and time-consuming to count each of them by hand. He said he would look into the taxpayer cost of that kind of hand count.
Gov. Brian Kemp’s proposed budget includes $5 million for a statewide hand recount of two races in November, but his spending plan didn’t include money to remove QR codes.
“The General Assembly has not funded a single dollar to upgrade the system. If you do fund that system, we could talk about alternatives,” Raffensperger said.
Raffensperger supported verifying ballots by using text-recognition software to check the results read from QR codes, a method first used after the 2024 election. The text-recognition audit found a nearly identical match to the election night count that relied on QR codes.
Kemp’s budget proposal also includes $1.8 million for a similar kind of vote check after the general election in November.
Hand-counts usually have more discrepancies than machine counts because they rely on humans, but they are another method of verifying results without depending on technology that could be manipulated or misprogrammed.
State representatives studied options for removing QR codes during meetings across the state last year, but they haven’t issued any recommendations. They’re still evaluating how to move forward, said House Governmental Affairs Chair Victor Anderson, R-Cornelia.
“The study committee and the House Governmental Affairs Committee are diligently evaluating legislative options to ensure compliance with the Legislature’s will and to guarantee that Georgia has the most accurate, trustworthy and secure elections possible,” Anderson said.
Lawmakers have until the end of this year’s legislative session in early April to pass a bill to stop using QR codes. Without a new law, voters can’t use Georgia’s current touchscreen voting system for elections later this year.
Several election security organizations are asking legislators to switch to paper ballots filled out by hand. But Raffensperger and election officials say Georgia’s current voting system is safe and accurate.
