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.
by Ty Tagami | Feb 10, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Senate Republicans commandeered legislation involving nurses Tuesday and refashioned the measure as a ban on transgender services for youth.
The move under Georgia’s Gold Dome triggered an hour of by-now familiar debate, with Democrats opposed and Republicans in favor. That is how the final vote went, as well, with the heavily amended House Bill 54 passing 30-18 along party lines.
When the bill passed the House unanimously last year, on the final day of the legislative session, it was about nurses and home health care. When the clock reset this year, the second half of the biennial assembly of lawmakers, it was sitting in the Senate and ripe for the taking.
So, on Tuesday, the Senate took the bill, and changed it to its core, using it as a vehicle to prohibit puberty blockers and other interventions for youth experiencing gender dysphoria.
Afterward, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Republican running to be Georgia’s next governor, said Senate Republicans had stood with the majority in acting “to protect our youth.” He added that he “will always fight for Georgia values and the safety of our kids.”
Democrats dismissed the amendment as an election year ploy to grab attention.
“This is a real easy playbook for you all to run, but I want you to know, maybe it worked in 2024, I think voters are tired of it,” said Sen. Josh McLaurin, D-Sandy Springs, who is running to succeed Jones in the lieutenant governor’s office.
The measure now returns to the House, where the original version dealing with nurses was backed by House Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones, R-Milton, the second-ranked member of that chamber.
by Ty Tagami | Feb 9, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Another Georgia legislative initiative this year seeks to build on prior efforts to increase the reading and writing performance of young students.
“We must teach our children to read,” Rep. Chris Erwin, R-Homer, chairman of the House Education committee, said Monday about the new initiative. “We must have the belief that all of our children can read on grade level.”
Erwin is the chief co-sponsor of House Bill 1193, which is backed by leaders in both the House and Senate. The Senate even has its own version of essentially the same bill.
The Georgia Early Literacy Act of 2026 would require sweeping changes, from mandatory curriculum and teacher training to routine testing and state-funded tutoring for children. The legislation also would encourage but not require kindergarten attendance. Students who skipped kindergarten and then failed a literacy test would have to start in kindergarten even if they were old enough for first grade.
One of the most far-reaching proposals would amend the state education funding formula. The legislation would send state money to every school district to hire a classroom literacy coach in each school that has kindergarten through third grade classrooms. (K-3 schools with fewer than 200 students would only get a part-time coach though.)
The wholistic approach is necessary because teaching and learning to read is difficult work, said Erwin, a retired school superintendent. “So it’s got to be planned; it’s got to be precise.”
The Legislature has not yet published a cost associated with the initiative.
But House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, said at the start of this year’s legislative session that literacy was among his top agenda items this year, a position he reiterated last week. He said the state was prepared to pay for classroom reinforcements.
“How many Georgians would be leading happy, healthy, fulfilling lives if they had only been able to read?” he asked at a news conference.
A House subcommittee voted unanimously Monday to send HB 1193 to the House Education committee. Before the vote, several parents commented favorably, including Jeremy Hendrix from Gwinnett County, who said he was “pleasantly surprised” by the legislation.
“It is amazing what you are doing and especially in this political climate where we can see everybody get behind one cart and push in the same direction,” he said. “I really appreciate that and it makes my heart happy as a citizen.”
by Ty Tagami | Feb 9, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — With affordability a top concern of voters, Georgia lawmakers are moving to insulate electricity ratepayers from costs driven by demand from power-guzzling data centers.
Late last year, the state Public Service Commission authorized a Georgia Power request to expand its power production by nearly 10 gigawatts, mostly to serve current and projected demand from data centers.
That expansion will require the construction of new methane-burning facilities, and House Bill 1063 seeks to ensure that those costs are borne only by data centers.
Data center electricity costs are a top concern, said Rep. Brad Thomas, R-Holly Springs, chief co-sponsor the bill.
Lawmakers have heard from people across the state that ratepayers are concerned their electrical bills will rise because of data centers, he said. The main concern, he said, is that Georgia Power’s demand projections will prove inaccurate, leading the company to build excess capacity and then pass on the costs.
“We have heard that concern and we are going to address it,” Thomas said Friday after a House committee unanimously passed HB 1063.
A similar measure — Senate Bill 34 — awaits a hearing in the Senate.
During the hearing Friday on Thomas’ bill, advocates for the public, for the environment and for data centers said they supported the measure but had concerns about some of the details.
Thomas took that to mean he had struck the right compromise between their competing interests.
A Georgia Power executive who testified said the company was neither for nor against the bill. Many of the protections the legislation would codify are already required by Public Service Commission regulations, an agency representative said, but regulations can change and passage of HB 1063 would write the requirements into law.
