by Ty Tagami | Feb 27, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — After approving one-time income and property tax rebates for Georgians earlier this week, the state House returned with four more affordability measures, this time aimed at insurance costs.
The legislation passed by the House Thursday aims to curb excess insurance industry billing and profits while increasing what’s covered and punishing drivers for inadequate insurance.
“Georgia is leading the nation in tackling affordability and driving down the cost of living for our neighbors — from energy and healthcare to housing and now insurance,” House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, said in a statement after the insurance bills passed with commanding bipartisan majorities, one of them unanimously.
This was one day after the House and Senate approved a midyear budget that returns $2 billion to taxpayers in the form of one-time property and income tax rebates.
The insurance measures now headed to the Senate take several approaches.
House Bill 1262 would increase fines against insurance companies for surprise billing, failure to cover mental health treatment, and other violations. House Bill 1263 would reduce the amount of time companies can take before seeking refunds for premium tax payment errors.
House Bill 1274 would require rate decreases by insurance companies that notch profits exceeding 5% of projections for three straight years.
House Bill 1344 would increase nearly 40 outdated insurance fines in state law, and it would hand the Office of the Insurance Commissioner John King more authority to levy fines. It also would amend uninsured motorist laws by allowing police to cite drivers who operate a vehicle while “excluded” from the owner’s insurance. Owners who give excluded drivers the keys would face a misdemeanor charge that could result in up to a year in jail, plus a $1,000 fine.
Rep. Matt Reeves, R-Duluth, introduced the latter two bills. He also led a study committee on insurance rates that Burns appointed last year and that shaped the House’s new approach to insurance.
Reeves said King asked for some of the measures, adding that the insurance commissioner told him a Florida bill like HB 1274 had resulted in a $1 billion rebate to customers there.
It might be a while before something like that happens in Georgia. Insurance companies would need to be highly profitable first.
During a hearing in mid-February on HB 1274, a fellow Republican asked Reeves to remind him the last time a Georgia insurer had profits over 5%.
“For three straight years?” Reeves asked him.
“For three straight years,” responded his colleague, Rep. Bruce Williamson, R-Monroe, a member of the House Insurance Committee.
“That’s been a while,” Reeves said.
Williamson said insurance company profitability was the problem in Georgia. He said he applauded the goal of limiting profits. “But I do want to point out for the benefit of the audience that this has not happened in a very long time.”
Reeves agreed.
by Ty Tagami | Feb 26, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Students with too many unexcused absences would be barred from playing sports and could lose their driver’s license under legislation approved by the state Senate Thursday.
“These are privileges,” said Sen. Jason Dickerson, R-Canton. “And this bill reinforces the connection between responsibility and opportunity.”
He carried the bill to address “chronic” absenteeism in public schools, defined as missing a tenth or more of the school year.
A legislative study committee learned last summer that more than one in five students had missed more than 15 days of school in 2024, nearly double the rate in 2019. The rate missing six to 15 days climbed to 42%, six points higher than in 2019.
The study committee heard proposals to address the problem, such as prohibiting participation in extracurricular and interscholastic sports and suspending driver’s licenses. Those are the punishments present in Senate Bill 513, co-sponsored by numerous senators, including several in leadership posts.
The punishment would only be a last resort.
Schools would have to first identify students at risk of missing too many days, then they would have to craft attendance intervention plans with the student and parents.
The student would have to sign the plan, and noncompliance would trigger the sanctions.
The measure was popular with both Republicans and Democrats.
“If we do not have kids’ butts in seats, they are not going to learn,” said Sen. RaShaun Kemp, D-Atlanta, who was a high school principal and now serves on the board of an Atlanta charter school.
One lawmaker had an issue with it, though.
Sen. Jaha Howard, D-Smyrna, who served on the Cobb County school board, said the idea was “wonderful,” but he also thought it burdensome for teachers, since the state would not help fund the mandates.
Among the requirements are that school districts assemble systemwide attendance review teams, with school-based teams required at schools with at least 15% of students chronically absent.
The measure passed 46-1, with Howard opposed. It now heads to the state House.
by Ty Tagami | Feb 25, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
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.
by Ty Tagami | Feb 25, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
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.
by Ty Tagami | Feb 24, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
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.
