by Ty Tagami | Feb 16, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — An income tax cutting proposal designed by Georgia’s Senate Republicans to address the election year affordability issue would also cut into the supply of new housing for low wage earners, potentially harming some of the same people it would help.
Senate Bill 476, approved by the Senate last week, would return billions a year to taxpayers, and it would pay for that by reducing and then eliminating some $30 billion in tax credits and exemptions.
A chunk of that money goes to developers as a match that doubles the value of federal credits to build apartments that rent at below market rates. The credit gets paid over a 10-year period, so developers with newer projects would see their balance sheets go from black to red as they lost future credits that helped to make those projects feasible.
That would mean less housing for restaurant workers, school cafeteria employees and janitors, said Ken Blankenship, a developer who taps the credits.
“Where is that money going to come from? I’m not going to put it in. I’m going to foreclose on the property,” he said. “It is a financial disaster for our industry. Now, you take my deal and multiply that times 50 or 60 deals that are under construction right now,” said Blankenship, who is president of the Georgia Affordable Housing Coalition.
Lawmakers established the credit in 2000. A 2022 review of the program requested by the state Senate estimated that developers would claim $331 million in credits in fiscal year 2023 alone.
A summary of the review by the Department of Audits and Accounts said projects financed with the credits produced an estimated 19,500 jobs, mostly in construction, that paid about $1.7 billion in labor income. The summary also said much of the economic activity would have occurred without the tax giveaway. It noted, though, that “existing research has pointed to personal and public benefits from safe and secure long-term housing.”
The credit is only for below-market rental properties where a substantial portion of the renters earn 60% or less of the median income.
Under SB 476, the state tax credit would drop to half the federal credit in January before being abolished in 2032.
Blankenship said that in addition to bankrupting some developers in the near term, the loss of state funding would cause a long-term slowdown in construction of housing for people who struggle to make ends meet.
Those are the same people that Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, said he wanted to help when he crafted SB 476, which he likened to a pay raise for the middle class.
The legislation would use the revenue saved from tax credits to increase the state income tax standard deduction to $50,000 for an individual and $100,000 for a married couple, up from the current $12,000 and $24,000.
“I stand with those families making less than $100,000 and a yes vote fully supports them,” Tillery said Thursday on the Senate floor before the measure passed, mostly along party lines. He said firefighters, teachers, lunch counter workers and janitors would benefit the most.
The downsizing of the state subsidy would come amid an abiding shortage in affordable housing that a leading economic forecaster expected to endure at least through this year.
“Activity is depressed because affordability is at record lows, few people are desperate to buy or to sell, economic uncertainly is high, and almost nobody’s moving,” said the 43rd annual economic forecast by the Selig Center for Economic Growth.
The report by the Center, based at the University of Georgia’s business school, said construction finances were squeezed between two federal policies: elevated material costs due to tariffs and a labor shortage due to stricter immigration enforcement.
“Since we do not expect these negative factors to change very much in 2026, the homebuilding and real estate industries will remain in recession,” said the report, released late last year.
It is unclear how far the Senate will get with its tax cutting proposal. To become law, it would need approval by the state House and then by Gov. Brian Kemp.
The House has its own tax-cutting proposal focused on local property taxes. Kemp wants to reduce the income tax rate a fifth of a percentage point to 4.99%, which is something SB 476 also does.
But the governor proposed neither increasing the standard deduction nor cutting tax credits to pay for it — both cornerstones of the legislation.
Kemp’s state economist, Robert Buschman, was asked about approaches to reducing the income tax during a legislative budget hearing in January. Buschman praised Kemp’s approach of slowly lowering the tax rate based on “structural” revenue surpluses, but he also said culling ineffective tax credits to pay for continued lowering of the rate “would be a wonderful thing.”
He did not specify whether any particular credit, such as the affordable housing credit, was ineffective. But he was the lead co-author of the 2022 state review of that credit.
by Ty Tagami | Feb 13, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — People who worry about exposure to the HIV virus may soon be able to walk into a Georgia pharmacy and buy preventative medicines.
Bipartisan legislation that would allow pharmacists to order and dispense or inject preventative HIV drugs passed the Georgia House by a wide margin Thursday.
Seven Republicans opposed the measure, which was authored by a Republican.
Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, R-Rome, who has a master’s degree in medical science, said he introduced the measure for a simple reason.
“I’m in healthcare, I do anesthesia, and I look at the data, and the data says this is far, far more cost effective to prevent it then to treat it, as many things are in medicine,” he said.
The South had the highest infection rate in the country, with 49% of the new cases in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Gay and bisexual men accounted for 67% of new infections and 86% of diagnoses among all men, the CDC reported.
Metro Atlanta was a hotspot, with more than 50 new diagnosed cases per 100,000 people in 2023, about twice the state average, according to the Georgia Department of Public Health.
Senate Bill 195 would authorize pharmacists to order and then dispense or inject a 30- to 90-day supply of preexposure drugs and to do the same with a 30-day supply of postexposure drugs.
The Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people, said it was encouraged to see the legislation moving. “Increasing access to HIV and AIDS care and prevention by empowering pharmacists will save lives,” the group’s Georgia director, Bentley Hudgins, said in a statement.
Senate Bill 195 passed the House 155-7. It now returns to the Senate, where it passed unanimously last year. It must go back there due to amendments by the House that Hufstetler did not oppose. He said he would ask his colleagues in the Senate to agree to the changes, so the bill could go to the desk of Gov. Brian Kemp.
Should it become law, the State Board of Pharmacy would have until Jan. 1 to approve the training that pharmacists would need before they could offer the HIV prophylactic drugs.
Hufstetler said that if the measure becomes law, it could reduce misery and the need for costly medical care.
“This medicine, at about $26, is far cheaper than the cost of treating somebody with an HIV infection, which would be about $420,000 to $1 million — and obviously an improved quality of life,” he said.
by Ty Tagami | Feb 12, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — The Republican-led state Senate adopted an historic income tax cut plan Thursday that Democrats decried as an election year ploy that would undermine the state budget.
There was no official estimate of the cost of Senate Bill 476, which calls for no income tax on the first $50,000 in annual earnings by an individual and $100,000 for a married couple.
The absence of an official analysis of the impact to the more than $40 billion budget led Democrats to assert the plan would cost $9 billion while Republicans touted it as a boon for working people.
“It would represent the largest tax cut in state history,” Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Republican, said after the measure passed 32-18, with all Republicans in favor and nearly all Democrats opposed.
Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, the lead co-sponsor of the legislation, said it would help firefighters, teachers, restaurant employees and middle-class workers in general, ridiculing Democrats’ arguments against it.
“The mental gymnastics you have to jump through to vote against this bill are astounding,” he said.
Democrats said the wealthy would benefit more, since the bill would also reduce the base income tax rate to 4.99% from the current 5.19%. They said it would result in budget shortfalls in the long run, forcing budget cuts and sales tax increases that would drive up prices for groceries, child care and other expenses that are making life difficult for many Georgians.
They called the measure a trick to mislead voters.
Several Senate Republicans are running for higher office, including Jones, who wants to succeed Brian Kemp in the governor’s office, and Tillery, who hopes to follow Jones as lieutenant governor.
Sen. Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain, called the bill “a scam.” Sen. Derek Mallow, D-Savannah, said it was “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
Sen. Nikki Merritt, D-Grayson, said it would “devastate” the economy. “It’s not a plan for working families,” she said. “It’s a plan working families will pay for.”
Kemp’s own budget proposal would reduce the income tax rate to 4.99%, but it does not include increases in the standard deduction for income.
That led Sen. Josh McLaurin, D-Sandy Springs, also running for lieutenant governor, to say SB 476 was a “senseless tax cut that Brian Kemp’s going to veto on sight … this is election year stuff.”
McLaurin said reducing the base rate to 4.99% would cost $3 billion a year while deducting the first $50,000 thousand in income per tax filer (and $100,000 per couple) would cost $6 billion.
Tillery had a much lower estimate, less than $3 billion for the package, which he said would be balanced by cuts to tax credits and exemptions that collectively cost the state treasury about $30 billion.
SB 476 would eliminate them initially for a variety of recipients, including business headquarters, banks, medical manufacturers, telecommunications facilities, boat repairers, crab fishermen and for low- and zero-emission vehicles and electric vehicle chargers.
It would end new exemptions for the manufacture of machinery to reduce or eliminate air or water pollution and for high-technology companies. There would also be no new exemptions for data centers.
Then, all tax credits and exemptions would end in 2032.
The plan had Republicans gloating that they had seized the issue of affordability from Democrats.
“There’s a reason, y’all, why the Republican Party is becoming the party of the working class,” said Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, who is running for lieutenant governor. Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, who wants to be Georgia’s next attorney general, said Democrats used to be the party of the working class while Republicans represented the wealthy.
“That narrative is completely flipped now,” he said.
The Republican-led Senate also passed a backup plan in Senate Bill 477, which Tillery acknowledged was not as beneficial for the middle class. It would also reduce the base income tax rate to 4.99%, then continue dropping it until it reached 3.99% in 2028. It would increase tax deductions by a much smaller amount, raising the untaxed portion of income by a third, to $16,000 for individuals and to $32,000 for married couples. The state tax on corporate income would drop to 4.99% but no further.
Both bills would need consent from the House to become law. So, the Senate extended what Tillery described as an “olive branch” to that chamber by gutting two House bills and replacing them with the language in the two Senate bills, so the House could claim credit.
Meanwhile, House Republicans have their own tax priority. They are targeting local property tax relief as their answer to affordability.
by Ty Tagami | Feb 11, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A verbal skirmish over Fulton County’s elections management unfolded at the Georgia Capitol Wednesday, as a Republican Senator said the state should take over the county elections office and the county’s Democratic leader ridiculed the notion as “laughable.”
Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, pointed to a recently unsealed FBI affidavit for the search warrant that led to the raid on a Fulton election facility last month. The document showed that the Fulton election in 2020 was a “mess,” he said.
“It’s past time for the state to take over Fulton County elections,” said Dolezal, who is running for lieutenant governor.
Fulton Commission Chairman Robb Pitts then came to the Gold Dome to hold his own news conference, telling reporters that numerous reviews and audits had given the county’s election operation “a clean bill of health.” He said the warrant affidavit was a “very weak, weak, weak” document.
“There’s no such thing as a perfect election,” Pitts said. “There’s always a possibility of human error. There’s always a possibility of mechanical failure. But there has not been any organized effort in Fulton County, Georgia to manipulate the outcome of any election.”
Pitts called the raid a “sinister plot” by the administration of President Donald Trump to disrupt upcoming elections. And he said the county was prepared to fight against it in court, adding that he had contacted other local leaders across the country to warn them.
“Fulton County is the poster child here,” Pitts said. “If they’re successful here in Fulton County, Georgia, they’re going to take this show on the road.”
Dolezal had pointed to statements in the affidavit that some ballots had been scanned twice while other ballot images were missing.
State election investigations have never found intentional fraud over the last five years, but Fulton has been cited for poor ballot management, disorganized processes and counting errors.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican running for governor, has repeatedly said Georgia’s elections are safe and secure.
by Ty Tagami | Feb 11, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Student athletes who sign sponsorship contracts in high school would not be stuck with those contract terms after graduation, under legislation approved unanimously Wednesday by the Georgia House of Representatives.
House Bill 383 would nullify contracts to use a student’s name, image or likeness soon after the student either earns a diploma or leaves their high school for some other reason. It is an attempt to address a perceived power imbalance between the families of teenagers and the sports industry.
A contract termination law is needed to avoid exploitation, said Rep. Brent Cox, R-Dawsonville, the chief co-sponsor of the bill. Too many students have found themselves locked into exploitative contracts in perpetuity, he said.
“It protects these student athletes from having these unending contracts at the collegiate and the NFL level,” Cox said, adding that he’d heard of agents collecting as much as a tenth of a former student athlete’s earnings after the student went pro.
The bill had bipartisan backing, with former Atlanta Falcons player Rep. Dewey McClain, D-Lawrenceville, signing on.
Rep. Chris Erwin, R-Homer, a retired school superintendent who now chairs the House Education Committee, sponsored the measure too.
HB 383, which now heads to the Senate, also would not allow schools to prevent students from obtaining agents or other legal representation, and it would impose restrictions on contract terms.
It would prohibit student athletes endorsing or promoting weapons or vice products, including alcohol, tobacco, drugs, gambling and pornography.
