by Ty Tagami | Apr 11, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Out-of-state investors own tens of thousands of houses in Georgia, and lawmakers tried to limit the number due to concerns about decaying properties and diminished options for would be homeowners.
A bill that sought to cap each big owner at 2,000 properties didn’t get far after constitutional concerns were raised. But a measure that requires these companies to hire Georgia brokers did pass, and some lawmakers are waiting to see whether it will become law.
House Bill 399 also requires tenants of houses or duplexes to give code enforcement officers the contact information for the property manager.
First, the tenants have to know who manages their property, which is one reason Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, D-Decatur, gave for bringing her bill.
“It requires out-of-state investors, hedge fund type entities to have a local broker and a local property manager,” Oliver said last week. She said local officials often cannot identify the owners of properties that have deteriorated to the point that they are violating local ordinances.
Sen. Max Burns, R-Sylvania, carried the bill through the Senate, which had just passed the measure 41-9 when the two talked about it with reporters.
“The renter has to have someone that they can call and talk to and resolve any problem,” Burns said, adding that investors had acquired whole subdivisions in suburban Augusta near his hometown.
“They all go into the rental market. And that undermines the single-family home buyer, especially that first-time homebuyer,” he said.
Seven corporations own more than 51,000 single-family homes in the 21-county metro Atlanta region, according to a blog by the Atlanta Regional Commission late last year.
Paulding County in northwest metro Atlanta was a hotspot for this ownership model, with as much as a fifth of the single-family homes in some census tracts there owned by investors, the ARC reported, using data provided by Parcl Labs. Overall, 6.5% of the houses in Paulding were corporate-owned.
Rep. Martin Momtahan, R-Dallas, said he has constituents in Paulding who don’t know how to contact their out-of-state landlords.
“They have a lot of issues with just getting things fixed,” he said. “Imagine a septic tank is leaking in your backyard.”
Momtahan voted for HB 399 and also was among all but one of the lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee who voted for a more aggressive bill last month. House Bill 555 sought to limit companies from having an ownership interest in more than 2,000 single-family residences or 10 multifamily residences in Georgia.
Former state Attorney General Sam Olens testified against the bill as a representative of the National Home Rental Council, calling it “constitutionally unfirm.” He said investors who buy houses are doing Georgians a favor by renting them out at a lower monthly price than renters would be paying if they bought a house under current mortgage rates.
A representative of the Georgia Association of Realtors also opposed the bill, saying investor home ownership is a problem but that HB 555 wouldn’t fix it. Corporate owners would just create a network of subsidiary companies that would each own fewer than 2,000 properties, she said. She also said her group opposed a bill by Momtahan that would have required companies to disclose the properties they own, so local governments could keep track.
The vice chairman of the committee, Rep. Matt Reeves, R-Duluth, said creating subsidiary companies to hide properties would be illegal.
“If a company large or small does a transfer of an asset to avoid the law, that’s fraudulent,” he said. “Give the American Dream back to individual homeowners in Georgia. That’s what this bill is trying to do.”
HB 555 passed that committee on March 3, but didn’t get a vote by the full House of Representatives. It will remain in play when lawmakers return next year though.
Meanwhile, lawmakers are waiting to see whether Gov. Brian Kemp will sign HB 399 into law, opening a new channel of communication with these big property owners.
by Ty Tagami | Apr 9, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The annual federal child tax credit will shrink in half at the end of the year, falling to $1,000 if Congress does not intervene.
Most of the Democrats in the U.S. Senate, including Georgia’s Raphael Warnock, are calling not only to prevent that from happening but also to permanently expand the credit.
Legislation introduced Wednesday by Sen. Mchael Bennet, D-Colo., would increase the annual credit to $4,320 for parents with a child aged 5 and under and to $3,600 for each child aged 6 through 17. It would also offer a one-time $2,400 “baby bonus” to parents of newborns.
“This is about attacking poverty in our country and ensuring that the government isn’t taxing people into poverty,” said Warnock, who is among more than 40 other Senate Democrats co-sponsoring the bill.
Crucially, no members of the Senate’s Republican majority have signed onto the measure.
The tax credit was temporarily expanded in 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan, which got no votes from Republicans in Congress.
But last year, J.D. Vance, then running for vice president, floated the idea of doubling the credit. And Republican state lawmakers in Georgia demonstrated that the GOP can get behind such policies when, in bipartisan votes, they passed House Bill 136 this year to establish a $250 per child state credit.
Child tax credits are growing in popularity as an effective way to support families, according to the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, a left-leaning group.
After Congress temporarily expanded the credit in 2021, the child poverty rate for children under 6 fell nearly in half, from 9.8% to 5.3%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The poverty rate for older children fell to 5.2% from 8.9%.
When that temporary expansion expired, child poverty shot back up, with 5 million more children living in poverty in 2022, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank.
Unlike the existing federal credit and the state credit in HB 136, the national Democrats’ proposal would establish a “refundable” credit, meaning low-income families who owe less in taxes than the value of the credit would actually get money from the federal government. Currently, they lose out on the difference between the credit and their tax bill, so higher earners are more able to take full advantage.
by Ty Tagami | Apr 8, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The surge of measles infections in West Texas connected with the death of two children is prompting Georgia health officials to stress the importance of vaccination against the highly contagious disease.
“It’s a really very unique and very, very large outbreak,” State Epidemiologist Dr. Cherie Drenzek said Tuesday. “I think that we can expect that this Texas outbreak will likely go on for months more as well.”
Two children have died during the outbreak in a largely unvaccinated religious community, Drenzek said at a briefing for the Georgia Board of Public Health, adding that a U.S. adult has died of measles as well.
The infections have resulted in nearly two dozen calls to the Georgia Department of Public Health from concerned medical providers about potential measles infections here, but so far Georgia officials have identified only three cases.
The infections were all in one family and resulted from international travel, with no connection to Texas.
But the Texas infections appear to be spreading to nearby states, with New Mexico recently reporting 56 cases and Kansas reporting 24.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Friday that there have been 607 documented measles cases in the country so far this year, up from 285 in all of 2024. This year, 12% of the infected have been hospitalized.
Children and adults under 20 have been the most affected age group, with a fifth of those hospitalized being under age 5.
The CDC reports that 97% were either unvaccinated or their vaccination status was unknown.
Measles was declared eliminated in the Unted States in 2020, meaning there was no spread within the country and new cases developed only after travel abroad.
But infections started climbing during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 49 cases in 2021 and 121 in 2022. Infections fell to 59 in 2023 but then started rising sharply last year.
“Every single one is a public health emergency,” Drenzek said.
She said the measles vaccine is the most effective prevention and urged Georgians to ensure they’ve been vaccinated unless they contracted the disease as children and that children get the vaccine in preschool.
Drenzek also urged medical providers to continue calling the state hotline with suspicious cases, at 866-PUB-HLTH.
by Ty Tagami | Apr 5, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia legislators clocked out unusually early Friday night, leaving behind stacks of unfinished bills, many of them torn into pieces for the ceremonial throwing of confetti that marks the final moments of a legislative session.
Among the abandoned bills were several that had seemed to be a priority for Republican lawmakers. They had devoted many hours of hearings to them, to the consternation of Democrats, who called the measures “hateful” and a waste of time.
Left on the table were a bill to withhold puberty blockers from teens and a ban on coverage of transgender-related care for employees on the state health plan. A measure to financially punish colleges and schools that promote diversity, equity and inclusion also foundered. So did a “Red Tape Rollback” touted as Georgia’s answer to Elon Musk’s DOGE. An overhaul of election law also failed to pass.
Before they left, lawmakers did pass a measure banning medical care for prisoners changing their gender. They also gave a Senate committee that has been investigating Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis permission to pursue former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. And they gave that committee subpoena powers, with Democrats labeling the effort “authoritarianism.”
“This is a dangerous bill,” Rep. Sam Park, D-Lawrenceville, the minority whip in the House of Representatives, said before the House passed Senate Bill 255 Wednesday. The Senate sent it to Gov. Brian Kemp on Friday.
The flurry of partisan legislation had Democrats fuming as Republicans ignored many of their bills, including measures about guns after the mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Barrow County last fall.
The General Assembly did pass a comprehensive school safety bill with bipartisan support, but some Democrats complained it did nothing to curb the availability of firearms.
For the second year in a row, legislation that sought an income tax credit for Georgians who buy trigger locks or gun safes failed to pass. Other priorities for Democrats, from expanding Medicaid to tax breaks on clothing and school supplies, went nowhere.
“Instead of coming to the table and working across the aisle with us to address real issues Georgians are facing, they have introduced the politics of hate,” Rep. Carolyn Hugley, D-Columbus, the House minority leader, said last month amid the fusillade of bills that she said were trickling down from President Donald Trump. “Because you know what? Hate wins elections.”
Republicans countered that popular opinion was on their side with their priorities, such as a ban on transgender athletes in female sports that the Senate sent to the governor Monday and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act signed by Kemp on Friday.
Then-Gov. Nathan Deal vetoed a religious liberty bill nine years ago, fearing the boycotts and other economic harm that might have resulted. At least three dozen states now have such a law, Sen. Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega, noted on Friday.
“So it was time for Georgia to take that final step, and we did it, with very little opposition from the business community,” said Gooch, the Senate majority leader. “You didn’t see the protesters. You didn’t see the chambers of commerce coming down to the building in protest like we’ve seen in the past.”
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones gaveled the Senate’s session to a close a little after 9 p.m., which shocked many observers — and lawmakers. They are used to voting past midnight on the last legislative day, called Sine Die.
The House gaveled to a close an hour and a half later, formally ending the first half of the 158th biennium of Georgia’s General Assembly.
Jones told reporters that he was in no rush to hammer bills through during this year’s session.
“This is a two-year cycle,” he said after leaving the Senate floor. “That means whatever doesn’t get done this this year will be available exactly where it sits for next year.”
by Ty Tagami | Apr 4, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia lawmakers approved legislation late Friday that would give innocent people who were convicted and sent to prison money for the time they spent behind bars, while also allowing defendants to recover legal costs when their prosecutor is disqualified and the case against them is dismissed.
Senate Bill 244 passed the Georgia Senate last month as a measure that only allowed defendants to recoup attorney fees and court costs when the case against them is dismissed following the disqualification of their prosecutor over improper conduct.
Then on Wednesday, the state House of Representatives added an amendment that would pay inmates $75,000 per year of incarceration when their conviction is reversed or vacated or they are pardoned. Those awaiting a death sentence would get $100,000 per year.
The bill, when it was only about attorney fees, had passed unanimously in the Senate, with Democrats backing it even though it could allow President Donald Trump and his co-defendants to recoup their legal costs in the election case brought against them by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
Willis acknowledged romantic involvement with a prosecutor she had hired to help her with that case, and the Georgia Court of Appeals disqualified her.
When Sen. Brandon Beach, R-Alpharetta presented the amended measure on the Senate floor Friday evening, a Democrat brought up Trump’s call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger when Trump sought 11,780 votes after he lost the 2020 election.
“If the Supreme Court dismisses it, you don’t think those 15 defendants have some kind of right to get some compensation?” responded Beach, an ardent Trump supporter whom the president recently tapped to be U.S. Treasurer.
Sen. RaShaun Kemp, D-Atlanta, said, “We should not pay Donald Trump’s legal fees for trying to break the laws of this state.”
The measure then passed 35-18, with the support of a few Democrats, sending it to Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature.
