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.
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.
