ATLANTA — The Georgia House completed its work on the budget that will control state spending for the fiscal year starting in July, sending a $38.5 billion spending plan to the Senate Tuesday.
House Bill 974 proposes a 2% increase over the current budget approved this time last year, although lawmakers increased the remaining portion of this year’s spending significantly — to $43.7 billion — in the amended current-year budget that Gov. Brian Kemp signed in early March.
Similar changes are probably in store for the new proposal this time next year. Until then, priorities include funding for education, health care, prisons and poverty, with a nod to problems caused by feral hogs.
Public schools are again consuming more than a third of the budget. The $14.9 billion allocated to elementary, middle and high schools was driven up $14.5 million by the state education funding formula, which considers enrollment and teacher pay grades based on qualifications and experience.
Add in billions for colleges, universities and technical schools, and education takes close to half the state budget. The University System of Georgia, for instance, got a $218 million increase in formula-driven state funding due to nearly 5% enrollment growth.
One of the House’s biggest priorities this year is literacy in the early grades, with $60 million added to the budget for reading interventions through third grade.
There is money for teacher training and for eye and hearing exams on school campuses. There is money for curricula and testing.
The biggest cost is for more than 1,300 classroom literacy coaches.
The House budgeted $31.2 million, which works out to about $24,000 per coach. The experienced educators required for the role earn at least two to three times that amount, and lawmakers know it. But it is difficult to estimate in advance how many will get hired over the next year, and at what pay grade. So House leaders said they expect to add money in the next amended budget a year from now.
“This is a massive downpayment on a historic investment,” said Rep. Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.
The on ramp to literacy begins before kindergarten, so the House added $10 million for after school care for pre-kindergarten students, and $700,000 for another 25 pre-kindergarten classrooms. The House also moved money around in a way that “frees up” another $10 million in federal funds to add 1,288 students to the pre-k financial assistance program.
The budget “represents the House’s dedication to championing Georgia’s students, children, families and communities in every corner of our great state,” Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, said in a statement after the House sent the budget to the Senate by a 159-4 vote.
Among the items he highlighted, besides literacy and pre-k, was $5 million to expand student mental health services and $10 million more toward rural airport aid.
Hatchett said one of his favorite line items was an additional $11.8 million for the Medicaid dental program to raise reimbursement rates and encourage more dentists to serve recipients.
Providing medical care is a challenge, particularly in rural areas. So expanding service has been a priority for lawmakers. To that end, the budget adds $18.2 million for graduate medical education, with $4.7 million toward 147 new primary care slots.
It also puts another $101 million toward prisons, a third of it to hire more correctional officers to reduce the ratio with inmates down from the current 1-12.
And it adds $11 million for more staffers to confirm food stamp enrollees are eligible. Georgia has one of the highest “error” rates in the country. That can mean loss of federal funding, so lawmakers hope to get it down.
There is also another $2 million to draw federal matching funds for a new summer food program for kids in poverty called SUN Bucks.
Feral hogs will not like this budget.
It contains $500,000 for a Department of Natural Resources hog management pilot program and another $400,000 for a hog eradication incentive program.
Hatchett explained that line item on the House floor Tuesday.
“Feral hogs are wreaking havoc statewide,” he said, “causing millions of dollars of damage to crops and farms each year.”
ATLANTA — One thing that Georgia’s House and Senate can agree on after finishing the first round of this year’s legislative session is that the state income tax rate should continue falling.
Friday was the deadline for lawmakers to vote out the bills they were most serious about, moving them from the House to the Senate and vice versa.
The Senate had already sent legislation to the House last month that would cut the income tax rate to 3.99%.
On Friday, the House kicked a bill to the Senate with the same tax rate reduction and with an increase to the standard deduction that was similar to what was in the Senate bill.
Rep. Shaw Blackmon, R-Bonaire, the architect of the House measure, said it would cost the state $600 million in the first full year of implementation.
Democrats ridiculed the Republican plan, asserting that two-thirds of the tax cut would go to the wealthiest fifth of the population while leaving less money for services, such as education. Most Georgians might see a few hundred dollars while the rich would get thousands, said Rep. Sam Park, D-Lawrenceville, the House minority whip.
“We must stop these tax cuts for the rich if we want to lift all Georgians up.”
Republicans flipped the logic.
Rep. Chuck Martin, R-Alpharetta, said that if the top 20% would get two-thirds of the benefit, then they are paying that same proportion of the income tax now.
“The math goes both ways,” he said.
House Bill 880 then passed 102-69.
It would reduce the income tax rate a tenth of a percentage point per year, conditioned upon continued growth in state revenue, until the rate reached 3.99%.
The current income tax rate is 5.19%. But, last month, state representatives passed passed House Bill 1001, which would drop it to 4.99% retroactive to the start of this year. If the Senate embraces both, then it would take a decade to reach 3.99%.
HB 880 would simultaneously increase the standard deduction. It is $12,000 for a single filer now and would increase $600 a year until reaching $18,000 in a decade. These numbers would double for married couples filing jointly.
This approach differs only by degrees from Senate Bill 477 passed by senators early last month. Their approach would reduce the rate to 3.99% much sooner, by 2028. It would raise the standard deduction a little less, to $16,000 for individuals and $32,000 for married couples.
That 3.99% rate was the Senate’s second priority, the first being Senate Bill 476 to increase the standard deduction to $50,000 for individuals and $100,000 for couples.
To make both options palatable, the Senate handed the House what Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, the designer of the two Senate bills, described as an “olive branch.”
He scooped out the contents of two unrelated measures the House had sent the Senate last year and, like a baker filling a donut with custard, squeezed in the language from the two Senate bills. House Bill 463 mirrors SB 477, and House Bill 134 copies SB 476.
So, now the House has two bills that would reduce the income tax rate to 3.99% — one that just reached the Senate and another that just got lobbed back from there.
Either by chance or design (probably the latter), HB 463 — the bill the Senate gutted before tossing it back to the House filled with a 3.99% income tax rate— was originally authored by Blackmon. He is the same state representative who rallied House Republicans to send HB 880, for a 3.99% tax rate, to the Senate on Friday.
There are bragging rights on the campaign trail for getting bills passed, and all seats are up for election this year.
Tillery, when he was asked about HB 880 versus HB 463 outside the Capitol Monday, echoed a line that is often attributed to Harry S. Truman.
“There’s no limit on what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit,” said Tillery, who is running for lieutenant governor and has spoken quite a bit about the Senate Republicans’ tax cutting agenda. “I don’t care who gets the credit.”
ATLANTA — Georgia House Republicans pushed through a new proposal to address fast-rising property tax bills just ahead of the Friday deadline to move legislation between the House and Senate
House Bill 1116 has been evolving constantly, having started the year as a vehicle to eliminate property taxes.
The new version would merely aim to restrain rather than eliminate property taxes. It would cap annual increases at the greater of 3% or the rate of inflation under the federal Consumer Price Index.
Rep. Shaw Blackmon, R-Bonaire, has been re-writing the bill at a feverish pace, converting it to a measure that he said would not require a constitutional amendment. A companion measure that would have placed a referendum to change the constitution on the ballot failed on the House floor Tuesday.
Republicans characterized the new HB 1116 as a way to address runaway housing prices.
“This is a pragmatic, level-headed solution to the problem,” said Rep. Chas Cannon, R-Moultrie.
Democrats didn’t think so. The bill passed over their objections 98-68.
“All of my cities are telling me it’s going to gut their operations,” said Rep. Shea Roberts, D-Atlanta. “This is insane.”
She said it would rip more than $50 million out of the budget of Sandy Springs, reducing money available for core services like public safety. She called it a “defund the police” bill.
The measure would also allow local governments to use a penny sales tax to offset property taxes.
ATLANTA — The Georgia Senate adopted legislation Friday that would encourage judges to think of regular people when considering disputes about contracts between electric utilities and big customers like data centers.
The legislation is aimed at shielding residential customers from Georgia Power’s costs to build new power plants, transmission lines and other infrastructure as it ramps up to feed massive amounts of power to future data centers.
Democrats rejected the measure as fake protection.
Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta, characterized Senate Bill 410 as “window dressing,” since it codifies what state regulators at the Public Service Commission have already been writing into contracts, rather than demanding other protections.
Consumer advocates have been critical of the commission because it voted in December to allow Georgia Power to add 10 gigawatts of power for data centers and because it allowed six rate hikes in recent years.
Critics contended that the contract terms would leave the public on the hook for expansion costs over the next half century if data centers failed to arrive in Georgia as promised — or left early.
“The public understands what is going on here and we are giving them the middle finger,” Parent said.
Republicans heralded SB 410 as an affordability measure that would protect rate payers. It would require that contracts include terms “designed to protect residential and retail electricity customers from costs associated with serving new large load customers … .”
Sen. Matt Brass, R-Newnan, said critics of the legislation misinterpret it because of their disdain for Georgia Power, a monopoly electricity provider to a substantial proportion of the state population.
“Don’t let your hate for Georgia Power cloud your judgment on what this bill actually does,” he said on the Senate floor.
Sen. Matt Brass, R-Newnan, answers questions about Senate Bill 410 in the Georgia Capitol after the Senate passed the legislation on Friday, March 6, 2026 . The bill addresses data center tax exemptions and sector effects on other electricity ratepayers. (Ashtin Barker/Capitol Beat)
The bill attempts to fill gaps that were opened after Senate Bill 34, a measure that consumer advocates praised, was heavily amended. It initially prohibited electric utilities from recovering costs for serving data centers and other high-demand customers by raising rates on everyone else, including households and small businesses. It was revised by dropping the prohibition and leaving only the requirement that utility contracts protect residential and retail customers from large load costs.
During a committee hearing on SB 410 on Tuesday, Brass explained that the protective language in the bill would not be in law, but judges could find it in the preamble to the legislation in case someone sued.
“It will be in the notes to the code,” he said. “And the notes to the code can be used by the courts to help guide the courts’ interpretation of our law.”
Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, R-Rome, the author of SB 34, chairs the committee that heard SB 410.
“The intent of the legislature is here. It’s not codified into law, which would be my preference,” he said at the hearing. “But it’s basically what’s been worked out.”
Sen. Mike Hodges, R-Brunswick, a member of the committee, asked any lawyer on the panel to explain the legal implications of a preamble.
Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, a lawyer, explained that some courts ignore legislative intent while others consider it, and those that do would check the Legislature’s notes.
“So,” asked Hodges, “it might matter and it might not?”
“That’s fair,” Tillery responded.
SB 410 would also abolish tax exemptions for computer equipment and other technology used by future data centers, although existing centers could keep their exemptions.
Sen. Sonya Halpern, D-Atlanta, a member of the committee, raised concerns about that, saying the tax breaks had been “instrumental” in attracting Fortune 500 companies to Georgia.
Nonetheless, she voted to pass SB 410 out of the committee, which comprises several Democrats. The vote was unanimous.
But on the Senate floor Friday, Halpern and all the other Democrats who chose to vote went against SB 410. All Republicans voted for it. It passed 32-21. Later, Sen. Jason Anavitarte, R-Dallas, said Democrats had voted against ending corporate subsidies that would cost the state general fund $1.3 billion.
“The Democrats can sit there and debate all they want, but that’s what they voted against ultimately,” he said in a meeting with reporters.
Anavitarte, the Senate majority leader, said Republicans had just won on the main issue for voters this year, affordability. He nodded to the major upset in November when two GOP members of the Public Service Commission suffered defeat by Democrats who attacked them over those half dozen electricity rate increases. For the first time in years, Democrats were joining the five-member commission, albeit as a minority that would not be in control.
Even so, Republicans saw it as a warning for other elections: take affordability seriously.
“It’s no secret. You all know where the public sentiment is,” Anavitarte said. “I know where it is in my district. And people are tired of politicians making bad decisions. That’s why two members of the PSC were un-elected — because they did not vote in the interests of Georgians.”
ATLANTA — Before she was ousted by President Donald Trump, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem got grilled by a Georgia congresswoman about the way her agency had treated a Loganville man with severe disabilities.
Double amputee Rodney Taylor had been in federal custody for over a year, since agents swarmed the family vehicle and seized him in January 2025.
The husband and father of two was brought to America from Liberia at age 2 for medical treatment. He was born with a deformed left foot, a missing right foot, and three fingers missing from his right hand. He had lived without both legs since they were amputated when he was a child.
Mildred Pierre, wife of Rodney Taylor, at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta on Jan. 13, 2026 (Ty Tagami/Capitol Beat)
Taylor, 47, received a criminal conviction as a teenager, which led to his detention by the federal agents. But Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Marietta, said at Noem’s hearing Wednesday that former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue had pardoned him and that Taylor had a Green Card application pending. She also said he had been held at the Stewart Detention Center in squalid conditions.
Under the care of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Taylor lost 20 pounds, so his prosthetic legs no longer fit, McBath said. The agency made him drag himself to the shower, in less than sanitary conditions, she added.
“Rodney must crawl through that muck and squalor of feces and bodily fluids to enter and exit the shower,” she said. “This is despicable. It’s inhumane torture that no person should have to endure.”
Noem said she was unaware of his case but promised to research it and get back to McBath and Taylor’s wife within two weeks.
That probably will not happen now that Trump has removed Noem.
Taylor is married to a U.S. citizen, Mildred Pierre, and they have two young children.
Pierre went to the Georgia Capitol in January in hopes of drawing attention to her husband’s plight. She said then that she feared for his health. She said he had elevated blood pressure due to the conditions in detention.
“I’m scared they’re going to send him home in a box,” she said.
Taylor is a barber and was the main breadwinner, she said. His conviction for burglary was long behind him and he was a family man when his life was upended, she said.
The kids were 4 and 6 when federal agents surrounded the family vehicle two houses down the street from their home, boxing them in with unmarked vehicles and emerging with ballistic vests and no identification, she said.
“It was scary because they all had their guns and my kids were in the car,” she said. The children were crying and inconsolable, she said.
She said they get to visit him in detention on occasion but that they are separated by glass and talk over a telecommunications system.
