ATLANTA — Georgia lawmakers reached a compromise on the mid-year budget Wednesday, fulfilling priorities of the three main players with a little help from extra money.
To overcome an impasse after the state House and state Senate took money from each other’s priorities — and from Gov. Brian Kemp’s — to pay for their own projects, Kemp dug up an extra $1.4 billion in surplus funds.
So, the amended fiscal year budget for 2026 that was a $42.3 billion is now nearly $43.7 billion.
A chunk of that is for one-time givebacks to taxpayers.
The House put $850 million into the budget for property tax rebates to homeowners.
Kemp had put $250 income tax rebates ($500 for couples filing jointly) into his budget request. The House and Senate liked the idea and set aside over $1 billion to pay for it.
“Between the two relief initiatives, this body is returning $2 billion dollars back to the citizens of our state,” said Rep. Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin.
Hatchett, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, said lawmakers will approve the income tax rebates later.
“The winners in this budget are the taxpayers of Georgia,” said Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee who was, with Hatchett, a member of the conference committee that negotiated the final line items in House Bill 973.
Several of Kemp’s big-ticket items that were raided earlier in the budgeting process were fully restored.
The Senate had cut his $2,000 bonus to state employees nearly in half, but the conference committee restored the more than $600 million needed to pay for the full one-time supplement.
The $325 million Kemp wanted for a need-based scholarship program called Georgia DREAMS got back into the budget after it was trimmed by the House and nearly eliminated by the Senate.
It returned with the help of $145 million in surplus funds from the state lottery, which also funds the HOPE and Zell Miller scholarships and pre-kindergarten.
Lawmakers also restored Kemp’s $50 million in community grants to address homelessness, although the budget now earmarks $5 million of that for homeless veterans.
The Senate got the big item it had added: $409 million to build a regional hospital for the mentally ill, who often wind up housed in local jails. The House got $150 million to expand prison bed capacity.
One of Kemp’s big-ticket projects remained but got trimmed a bit. He asked for $1.8 billion for new dedicated express lanes on I-75 south of Atlanta and got $1.68 billion. He wanted $200 million to add interchanges to state Route 316 connecting Athens to metro Atlanta, and the General Assembly gave him $185 million.
Cities and counties will get another $250 million in grants for road maintenance and improvement, and the state will invest $100 million to repair and replace rural bridges, prioritizing those most vital to agribusiness and timber projects.
HB 973 passed the House 169-2, and it passed the Senate unanimously.
Next, lawmakers must craft the full budget for fiscal year 2027, which will dictate spending starting July 1.
ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp is halfway to getting his income tax rate cut approved by the Legislature after the state House passed it in a mostly party-line vote Wednesday.
“It’s not the government’s money. It’s the peoples’ money,” said Rep. Will Wade, R-Dawsonville, who carried House Bill 1001 for the governor.
The measure would cut the income tax rate to 4.99% retroactive to the start of this year. It is currently 5.19%.
The bill accelerates a series of rate reductions set in place by lawmakers years ago, with the goal of reaching 4.99% as long as annual state tax revenues remained healthy.
The measure would delete the required revenue thresholds. It passed 106-66, mostly along party lines, after triggering an ideological debate.
Democrats said the tax reduction would cut $778 million from the budget, leaving less money to fill potholes, pay teachers and fund public safety. And they said it would benefit the wealthy the most.
Low-income Georgians would get an average of $60 back while millionaires would each gain an average of at least $2,000, said Rep. Sam Park, D-Lawrenceville, the House minority whip.
“Can you help me better understand why it is the governor’s priority to continue to exacerbate income and wealth inequality?” he asked Wade.
Wade, a floor leader for Kemp, responded that the state has been fully funding education, while supporting law enforcement and helping communities recover from the devastation of Hurricane Helene.
“What you’re discussing is more of a partisan talking point,” he said, adding that all Georgians would benefit from an income tax cut “that’s going to put that much more money back into our state’s economy.”
The measure now goes to the Senate, which adopted two income tax cuts earlier this month, both reducing the rate to 4.99% and one of them pushing it further, to 3.99%, by 2028.
ATLANTA — Lawmakers in the Georgia House embraced a plan to send literacy coaches to elementary schools while also sending a high school cell phone ban to the Senate, as part of a package of eight educational bills approved Tuesday.
Georgia lawmakers’ years-long focus on literacy instruction started with mandates for use of the “science of reading,” a method based in phonics. Initially, they focused on teacher training and tests to identify children with dyslexia. House Bill 1193 seeks to expand on that strategy by sending state funding to school districts to hire an estimated 1,300 literacy experts in schools with K-3 classrooms.
The legislation, which Senate leaders have praised, also would bring new requirements for curriculum, teacher training and testing. And it would establish a more rigorous process for promoting students to the next grade.
“It’s something that I think will be game-changing for this state,” said Rep. Chris Erwin, R-Homer, chairman of the House Education committee and the main author of the bill. It passed the House by an enthusiastic 170-2 vote, moving to the Senate.
State representatives had more mixed opinions about House Bill 1009, which seeks to expand the state’s already-approved ban on cell phones and other personal devices in elementary in middle schools. That lower-grades mandate was signed into law last year, but it does not take effect until next fall. Even so, many schools have implemented it ahead of schedule, and it has proven popular among teachers, parents and even students.
That emboldened the author of last year’s law, Rep. Scott Hilton, R-Peachtree Corners, to expand the ban to high schools starting in the fall of 2027.
He said Tuesday that Georgia was an outlier among states that have banned phones in schools while excluding high schools.
Some lawmakers said a high school ban would reduce fights and other disruptions, while others were concerned about communication between parents and their children during a crisis. Both views reflect the opinions reported in surveys by academics and education organizations last year.
But Rep. Jason Ridley, R-Chatsworth, said during Tuesday’s debate that he thought it was too soon to include high schools in a “big government” ban.
“We ought to let it play out longer than a year,” he said.
Hilton responded with the same arguments he has been using for months.
“I want to let teachers do what they do best and that’s teach,” he said. “By getting cell phones out of the classroom, they no longer have to manage all that.”
Most House members saw it Hilton’s way, voting 145-20 to pass the phone ban.
The House also took up safety, passing a bill that would mandate weapons detection systems at every entry in every school building, emergency exits excluded.
Democrats criticized House Bill 1023 as a bandage rather than a cure because it does not restrict access to guns.
“We’ve allowed guns and weapons of war to become more available than a pack of gum,” said Rep. Bryce Berry, D-Atlanta. “We are installing metal detectors in our schools because guns keep ending up in our schools, because we have normalized the unthinkable.”
Other Democrats agreed with him but said they had no choice but to vote for the measure, with one referring to the mass shooting that killed four at Apalachee High School in fall of 2024.
HB 1023 passed by a vote of 151-11.
Two measures addressed college affordability.
House Bill 310 focused on future teachers, establishing a program running from next July through 2028 that would give 500 student teachers who qualify for federal need-based aid up to $5,000 to pay their bills.
Rep. Phil Olaleye, D-Atlanta, said he brought the legislation because the state is short at least 5,000 teachers, and this ready supply of future teachers is hamstrung by cost. Many must work two or more jobs while attending college and lack the time to teach as students, he said. HB 310 would also give former student teachers a $2,500 signing bonus if they work at least 30 days under a state public school contract.
HB 310 passed 151-6.
The other college affordability measure, by Rep. Scott Holcomb, D-Atlanta, would extend HOPE scholarships to high-achieving students if they attend an eligible Georgia graduate school within 18 months of earning a degree. His measure, House Bill 385, passed 160-2.
Three bills passed unanimously.
House Bill 971, by Rep. Rick Townsend, R-Brunswick, would let school systems enroll homeschool and private school students in their college and career academies even if the students do not live in the same district. They would have to live in the same region though.
House Bill 372, by Rep. Bethany Ballard, R-Warner Robins, another teacher workforce measure, would add four years to a program expiring in June that allows retired teaches to return to the classroom full time while collecting their pension.
Finally, House Bill 1123, by Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones, R-Milton, would require more elementary schools to offer after-school programs to their pre-kindergarten students. Most already do, she said, but the measure would give parents in nearly two dozen more school districts the option.
ATLANTA — Bills to restrain public protests have advanced in Georgia’s House and Senate in the wake of shooting deaths in Minneapolis that shocked the nation.
One would expose people charged with blocking roads to stiffer financial penalties. Another would make it a felony to use a vehicle, whether moving or stationary, to block local, state or federal officers.
During a hearing Monday, Rep. Ginny Ehrhart, R-Powder Springs, cited statistics about recent increases in law enforcement deaths due to motor vehicle incidents as a reason to pass her legislation, House Bill 1076.
Though she later acknowledged that her numbers reflected all manner of vehicular incidents, including collisions while officers were driving their own vehicles, she said cars in the hands of protesters posed a danger to police and that protesters should face stiff penalties for using even stopped vehicles.
“It is dangerous conduct and should be taken seriously,” she said, before a Republican-led committee of the House passed her bill over objections by Democrats. “The danger is real,” she said. “A motor vehicle in the hands of an ill-intentioned person is a lethal weapon.”
HB 1076 would make it a felony punishable by one to five years in prison and a $100,000 fine for anyone using a vehicle who “knowingly obstructs, hinders, blocks, or otherwise interferes” with officers enforcing the law.
Ehrhart said groups representing Georgia police and sheriffs told her they supported her bill and that prosecutors were neutral about it.
Critics said the legislation was unnecessary because Georgia already had a law against harming an officer with a vehicle. Aggravated assault, a felony, could be applied in such a case, said Mazie Lynn Guertin, executive director of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
At a another hearing in early February, a representative with a civil liberties organization offered a similar critique and suggested a motive for the legislation.
“Recent occurrences that we’ve seen in Minneapolis seem to be at least an origin or intention of this bill,” said Sarah Hunt-Blackwell, senior policy council with the ACLU of Georgia.
This was less than a month after Renee Nicole Good was shot dead in her vehicle during an encounter with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents amid a protest in Minneapolis.
Then, Alex Pretti was shot dead as Customs and Border Protection agents forced him to the ground.
Ehrhart’s bill is at least the second to seek enhanced penalties for protesters.
Police can already charge anyone with a misdemeanor who “recklessly obstructs” a road, a violation punishable by up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.
But last week, a Senate committee advanced Senate Bill 443, which would elevate the charge to a high and aggravated misdemeanor punishable by the same amount of jail time but a fine of up to $5,000.
The bill initially would have allowed felony charges in road-blocking protests that led to injury or property damage.
The chief co-sponsor, Sen. Carden Summers, R-Cordele, then reduced the stakes by deleting the felony provision and by offering to strike language in current law prohibiting the reckless blocking of sidewalks or other public passages.
But he kept the high and aggravated misdemeanor charge and his bill would also allow lawsuits against protesters who block roads.
“Protest all you want to,” Summers said. “Just don’t act the fool.”
ATLANTA — Taxpayers, rural drivers and the mentally ill were among the winners in the mid-year budget adopted by the Georgia Senate on Friday.
Financially distressed college students and metro Atlanta drivers were not exactly the losers, but they would get less than initially proposed in the Senate’s version of the $42.3 billion amended budget for the fiscal year through June.
The state House started the budget based on a blueprint from Gov. Brian Kemp. On Friday, it was the Senate’s turn to make some edits.
Both the House and Senate kept Kemp’s $1.2 billion rebate to taxpayers that would break down to $250 per single filer, $375 for heads of household and $500 for couples filing jointly.
But the House added more gravy with an $850 million property tax grant for homeowners, and the Senate liked that line item.
Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, discusses House Bill 973 on the Senate Floor at the Georgia Capitol on Friday, Feb. 20. This legislation is the amended fiscal year 2026 state budget (Ashtin Barker/Capitol Beat)
Several senators are running for higher office, and voters tend to appreciate tax breaks, especially in an election year when affordability is key.
The property tax rebate would work out to about $500 per homeowner in urban areas and $300 in rural areas, said Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia.
“We are laser focused on affordability,” said Tillery, who is running for lieutenant governor and, as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, helped craft the Senate’s budget.
What the Senate gives, the Senate can take away. Under its proposal, state employees would get a smaller bonus than Kemp wanted. He had put a $2,000 one-time pay supplement in the budget at a cost of over $600 million, but the Senate saved a couple hundred million by knocking the payment down to $1,250.
The Senate also kneecapped a new program for college students that Kemp had touted. Georgia is still on a path to give taxpayer dollars to a need-based scholarship fund called Georgia DREAMS.
But instead of the $325 million endowment allotted by Kemp, the Senate kept only $100 million.
The Senate also slashed Kemp’s idea for a $50 million grant to communities to address homelessness, trimming it to $10 million.
Senators needed the money for other priorities. They shifted $15 million to the Department of Veterans Service and put a whopping $409 million toward construction of a regional hospital for the mentally ill who often wind up housed in local jails by default.
The House had introduced money into the budget for the same project, but it was only $27 million to get it started.
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Republican running for governor, said all could agree that mental health services in Georgia were lacking.
“This is not a partisan issue,” he said. Judging by the 49-1 vote to pass the budget, or House Bill 973, he was right.
The Senate made several changes Kemp might appreciate. The governor had proposed $88 million for an aerospace building at Georgia Tech, but the House had pared that back to $15 million. The Senate’s budget restored the funding.
But there were some bumps in the road.
The Senate cut nearly $100 million from Kemp’s $2 billion in improvements to I-75 south of Atlanta and to state Route 316, from Gwinnett County to Athens.
Yet the Senate added back $15 million that the House had trimmed from Kemp’s $100 million to fix rural bridges, some dating to the 1940s, according to Tillery.
Senators also added $30 million for rural infrastructure projects, and they expanded the $35 million improvement program for natural gas infrastructure that had been pitched by Kemp and endorsed by the House.
In the Senate’s budget there is now $55 million to deliver methane to customers as a means of spurring economic development.
“There are areas across our state where gas capacity is so weak that we can’t even put another Burger King on the line,” Tillery said.
The House said later Friday that it did not like the Senate’s changes. So, the budget will now go to a conference committee where a handful of lawmakers will negotiate the finer details.
After they pass the mid-year amendments, they will look to the full budget for the fiscal year that starts in July.
