Guide to the Issues

The Georgia Public Policy Foundation’s goal for this Guide to the Issues is to provide a compilation of commonsense policies upon which Georgia’s elected officials can base laws, ordinances, rules and regulations without fear of partisan influence. The policies proposed are based on facts and the principles of limited government, individual responsibility and free enterprise. They support an approach that reinforces policy over politics.

Our motto is “Changing Georgia Policy, Changing Georgians Lives” – for the better. Since the Foundation was established in 1991, many Guide to the Issues proposals have been embraced and codified. You may not see the Georgia Public Policy Foundation’s “fingerprints,” but – as the saying goes –“There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he does not mind who gets the credit.”

Each issue chapter includes the Georgia Public Policy Foundation’s principles for reform, facts on the issue, background information and, in most cases, specific recommendations that provide positive solutions to the state’s challenges

Why a guide to the issues?

Candidates for office are often motivated to run for election based on a single issue, such as dissatisfaction with their child’s education. But while a candidate who is a teacher, for example, may be familiar with education issues, he or she may need background information and sound policy proposals on tax, criminal justice and transportation reforms. The Guide to the Issues is intended to serve as a resource, informing candidates by providing an overview of major upcoming issues as well as offering informed decisions from a limited government perspective.

Likewise, this Guide to the Issues can help inform voters who wish to know facts about issues facing fellow Georgians and possible solutions to Georgia’s challenges.

Education

Overview

Georgia is decidedly middle-of-the-pack when it comes to K-12 education. Using national data on a variety of key metrics, our GPPF Educational Dashboard rates Georgia 27th in student achievement, 28th in educational freedom, 21st in accountability and 28th overall. Even worse than being in the middle nationally, we trail most of our neighbors: Tennessee ranks second overall, Florida fifth, North Carolina 11th, South Carolina 19th and Alabama is only two spots behind us at 30th.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), widely considered the gold standard for comparing student achievement, shows that Georgia improved steadily through the early 2010s before stagnating or declining. Much of the state’s earlier progress in fourth-grade reading has been lost, with similar patterns of decline in fourth-grade math and eighth-grade reading and math. Because this “learning recession” began before the pandemic, it cannot be attributed solely to school closures and other pandemic disruptions.

A recent analysis of other national education data by the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University and the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University found that every state improving in reading between 2022 and 2025 had implemented comprehensive “science of reading” reforms, while none of the states that had declined to do so, including Georgia, improved. Georgia lawmakers have begun responding with literacy coaches for elementary schools and the Math Matters Act.

For almost two decades, Georgia has offered the Qualified Education Expense (QEE) tax credit and the Special Needs Scholarship (SNS) to help families afford private-school tuition. Georgia expanded educational freedom by creating the Promise Scholarship in 2024, but eligibility remains limited to students zoned for the bottom 25% of public schools and the program already has a waiting list. Demand also continues to exceed the available QEE tax credits and scholarships.

Public-school funding has risen even as statewide enrollment has stagnated. The General Assembly has fully funded QBE in eight of the past nine years, while districts also benefited from rising property-tax collections and billions in temporary federal pandemic aid. With that aid expiring, revenue growth slowing and enrollment flattening or declining, districts must begin aligning staffing and facilities with the number of students they serve.

Recommendations

Expand the Promise Scholarship.

While more than a dozen other states created universal education savings account programs earlier in this decade, Georgia was the only state to create a new program hamstrung by permanent eligibility limits. Lawmakers should correct that by allowing any public-school student to claim a Promise Scholarship regardless of where he or she lives.

They might also consider a partial, or perhaps means-tested, scholarship for those who already left the public schools; the state should not punish families which could not wait to exercise choice for their children. At the same time, the state should eliminate the funding cap for the program so that children are not excluded for fiscal reasons.

Because the $6,500 scholarship amount is equal to the state’s per-pupil spending on K-12 education, money spent on additional Promise Scholarships should be offset by reductions elsewhere in the budget.the base per-pupil allotment, eliminating burdensome regulations, and pushing funds down from district to school level.

Make it easier to open public charter schools.

Georgia’s total K-12 public school enrollment has fallen slightly since peaking in 2019-20, but enrollment in public charter schools has risen during the same time period. Charters also maintain a collective waitlist equal to about one-third of their current enrollment, demonstrating strong demand.

They have been unable to fulfill that demand due to overly onerous replication requirements and the difficulty and cost of securing adequate facilities. Charters with a proven track record of strong performance should be allowed to secure charters longer than the current five-year limit and should be given more flexibility to add seats or open new campuses.

For facilities, the state should enforce its existing requirement that charters be offered the use of under- and unutilized buildings owned by their local school district.

Address declining enrollment through QBE reform and better data.

Demographic trends suggest declining public school enrollment is here to stay, with Georgia suffering less than most other states only because of continued strong in-migration. But that positive effect may dampen over time, and migration patterns are widely disparate across the state.

The result is that many districts are built for a much larger student population than they may see again for many years, if ever. The state has an opportunity through funding reform to help right-size spending – including on central office staff and other expenses outside the classroom – and ensure taxpayers across Georgia are not subsidizing other districts’ refusal to reconcile their budgets with their enrollments.

What’s more, the state has done a poor job of cataloguing district facilities and their capacities, which has made it difficult to enforce existing policy regarding charters’ access to unused buildings as well as parents’ right to request transfers of their children to schools with extra capacity.

Maintain the College and Career Ready Performance Index (CCRPI).

Public school systems have chafed under accountability metrics and provisions since they were created more than two decades ago. But as the Harvard-Stanford study noted, the weakening of accountability is at least correlated with a decade-plus of declining student achievement. Anything that is important must be measured.

The Georgia DOE in recent years has made multiple attempts to water down its College and Career Ready Performance Index to appease local districts’ complaints. The General Assembly had to pass legislation in 2024 reinstating the “single score” for each district and school, which the DOE had tried to eliminate quietly.

Parents, taxpayers and educators all need to know how their local public schools are actually performing. That includes avoiding small tweaks to the formula each year that education officials then cite to discourage comparing performance across years – one of the key reasons for having such a metric in the first place.

Healthcare

Overview

Effective healthcare policy should be focused on ensuring quality and affordability for all Georgians through a transparent, equitable and patient-centered system.

Quality depends on an abundance of readily available information that consumers can easily understand. Transparency is as important to healthcare as medication and treatment, and it is necessary to achieve better outcomes at lower costs. Healthcare purchasing power and decision-making should be patient-centered, minimizing third-party reimbursements.

We believe in security for the sickest and access for all. Reform should be designed to work for the healthy as well as those who are sick or chronically ill. Targeted solutions such as high-risk pools for those with pre-existing conditions and subsidies for low-income individuals are more efficient than top-down solutions. Furthermore, tax policy should be equitable and should not favor certain methods of financing healthcare over others.

Finally, healthcare reform should combine personal responsibility with appropriate financial incentives to encourage program participation, reward compliance and support better personal health management.

Recommendations

Repeal Certificate of Need.

Providers often control healthcare services offered to consumers and exclude competitors through state-issued, Certificates of Need (CON). These CONs discourage price transparency by facilitating market dominance for a handful of health systems, limiting competition through local market mergers, reinforcing service line limitations, and strengthening territorial advantages.

All players in the healthcare system – insurers, hospitals, doctors and other providers – need to support a competitive free market. Currently, their incentives are not aligned toward this action.

Expand Georgia’s healthcare workforce.

Georgia needs to increase its healthcare workforce across the full range of professions to account for both its growing population statewide and the healthcare deserts that have formed in many parts of the state. 

According to the Georgia Higher Education Healthcare Initiative, Georgia has 218 active patient care physicians per 100,000 people, compared to the national average of 255. To match it, Georgia would need about 4,400 more physicians — it currently ranks 38th of the 50 states. The state has drawn billions of dollars from the federal government in recent years with the stated intent to train more physicians, primarily in rural and underserved areas. However, there is currently no state-level requirement that hospitals receiving these funds train any additional physicians beyond their existing capacity. This means that public funds are distributed regardless of whether any new residency slots are created to address the physician shortage. At a minimum, a certain percentage of funds dedicated to new residency slots should be required. 

The United States produces more medical school graduates each year than we have available residency slots nationwide for them to continue their graduate medical education. Georgia should follow the lead of other states and allow these unmatched medical school graduates to practice medicine in a supervised manner under a licensed physician for a defined period of time. 

Reasonably expanding the scope of practice of advanced practice nurses, physician assistants and other medical personnel could also help improve critical access to care and address shortages of physicians and dentists in many areas of Georgia.

In its 2024 annual survey report, the Georgia Board of Health Care Workforce found that ten Georgia counties did not have a single practicing physician, 42 lacked an internal medicine physician, 63 did not have a pediatrician and 82 counties did not have an OB/GYN. Increasing opportunities for advanced practitioners to practice medicine to the full extent of their training will help address these shortages.

Improve price transparency.

Recent polling reflected that 88% of Americans favor initiatives by the government to mandate that insurers and hospitals disclose the prices of their services or negotiated rates. Hospitals, either by choice or inability, have notably struggled to provide price transparency. One study in 2023 analyzed the websites of 2,000 U.S. hospitals and found only 36% were fully compliant with all requirements of the rule. Although patients often receive care without knowing what it will cost, as much pricing information as possible should be available to them.

Housing

Overview

Housing affordability is determined by costs associated with the “five L’s”: land, lumber, labor, lending and laws. There is little that the state government can do about the first four, which are subject to economic trends and federal policy, but it can do a great deal to reduce the costs imposed by laws, or regulations.

Addressing these costs has become urgent. Georgia’s reputation as an affordable place to live has helped attract families, workers and businesses for decades, but that advantage is eroding, in part due to rising home prices and burdensome regulations on homebuilding.

Georgia’s housing affordability problem is fundamentally a problem of insufficient supply. The state added more than 806,000 housing units from 2000 to 2010, but only about 322,000 during the following decade. That reduction followed the Great Recession, during which dozens of local banks that financed home development failed, many small and midsize homebuilding firms went bankrupt and much of the construction workforce entered other industries. The industry has never fully recovered, even as Georgia has continued to add residents.

The Georgia Public Policy Foundation has estimated that housing shortages exist in 94 of the state’s 159 counties, amounting to a statewide shortage of approximately 365,000 homes. The largest estimated gaps are concentrated in Georgia’s most populous communities, including approximately 75,000 units in Fulton County, 58,000 in DeKalb County, 45,000 in Cobb County and 27,000 in Gwinnett County.

Government regulation adds substantially to the price of the homes that are built. A Foundation study found that regulations imposed by federal, state and local governments accounted for an estimated 26.9% of the final price of a new single-family home in Georgia. This included costs incurred during both lot development and home construction, such as fees, zoning requirements, building code changes, architectural standards and regulatory delays. The Foundation’s estimate was slightly higher than a 2026 national estimate from the National Association of Home Builders.

While building codes, environmental protections and infrastructure standards serve legitimate public purposes, the relevant questions are whether each rule produces benefits proportionate to its costs and whether potential homebuyers can afford those costs. Even those regulations which are vital to public safety should be administered as clearly, consistently and efficiently as possible.

Because these barriers directly constrain housing production, they deserve greater attention than explanations focused on who purchases existing homes. Institutional investors have a notable presence in parts of Metro Atlanta, but they own only a small fraction of the region’s total housing stock. Homeownership rates have also increased since 2017 in all 12 Metro Atlanta counties examined by the Foundation, including counties with relatively high levels of institutional investment. Institutional investors may respond to or intensify existing market conditions, but they did not create Georgia’s long-term shortage, and restricting particular purchasers would not produce the additional homes Georgia needs.

Recommendations

Make increasing housing supply the central goal.

Subsidies for buyers and renters might provide temporary assistance to a handful of households, but they do not resolve Georgia’s underlying shortage. When more people are given additional purchasing power to compete for the same limited inventory, prices are likely to continue rising while nothing is done to improve access.

Similar problems exist with inclusionary zoning and affordable-unit set-asides, which benefit the recipients of lower-priced homes but shift higher prices onto the remaining units. Rent controls are even more counterproductive because they can discourage maintenance and future construction by limiting the return available to housing providers. Subsidies for new construction may help at the margin, but they will be more effective if regulatory barriers are reduced first.

Georgia should pursue reforms that make it possible to build more housing of different sizes, prices and types. This includes detached homes, townhomes, duplexes and triplexes, condominiums, apartments, accessory dwelling units and other options suited to different stages of life. A growing state cannot achieve affordable workforce housing without producing enough homes for its population.

Review zoning rules that exclude lower-cost homes.

Local zoning rules often determine what kinds of homes may be built. Excessive minimum lot and home sizes, low-density limits, extensive setbacks and prohibitions on attached housing can prevent builders from offering less expensive options even where market demand exists. In many parts of Georgia, it is practically illegal to build what most people would consider a starter home.

Georgia should establish stronger protections for property owners and housing production. State and local policymakers should identify areas where duplexes, townhomes, cottage courts, accessory dwelling units and smaller-lot homes can be allowed “by right” rather than through lengthy, case-by-case rezoning proceedings.

Review regulatory mandates and development fees that increase construction costs.

Problems arise when building codes, development standards and other requirements are opaque or unpredictable or when fees are used as a revenue source unrelated to the demands created by development. Aesthetic mandates, material requirements, parking rules, inspection fees, impact fees and utility connection charges can substantially increase the cost of a new home.

The Foundation’s study found that more than 70% of surveyed builders in Georgia encountered architectural standards that required them to spend more than they otherwise would. These mandates accounted for an estimated 4.1% of the final home price across the survey sample, or $14,350 for a $350,000 home. Regulatory changes to building codes represented an even larger share.

State and local governments should regularly review these requirements to determine whether they remain necessary and whether less costly alternatives are available. Rules that go beyond basic health and safety protections should receive particular scrutiny when they limit the production of starter homes or other moderately priced housing.

Development fees should also be easy to find and understand. Local governments should explain what each fee supports and consider how increases will affect the final cost of housing. Necessary infrastructure should be funded fairly, but new homeowners should not be treated as an unlimited source of revenue.

Increase efficiency in the home-building process.

Local governments across the state often slow-roll residential developments, including multifamily housing, creating costs for developers that are ultimately passed on to consumers. While waiting for municipalities to record a final plat, developers continue to carry interest expenses, property taxes, insurance costs and other expenses that are incorporated into lot prices and the cost of homes.

Local governments should provide greater certainty, reduce unnecessary delays and help lower the carrying costs that ultimately increase housing prices. This should include allowing a final plat to be recorded within 15 days of final field inspection or submission of the as-built drawings and required maintenance bond.

Maintenance bond requirements should also be standardized to lower development carrying costs and help small and midsize homebuilders compete in jurisdictions where prohibitively high bond costs currently price them out.

Senate Bill 447 improved local permitting by establishing clearer standards and enforceable review timelines, though eight metro counties were exempted. Lawmakers should revisit that exemption so the reforms can benefit homebuilders and consumers across the state.

Medicaid

Overview

This is a period of uncertainty for Georgia’s Medicaid program. Georgia Pathways, the state’s existing alternative to full Medicaid expansion, is set to expire at the end of 2026 and its future is unknown. Calls for Georgia to fully expand Medicaid remain, despite unresolved questions over the financial implications and capability to deliver quality healthcare to the new beneficiaries. 

In Georgia, “traditional” Medicaid covers certain individuals, primarily women and children, at 100% of the federal poverty level (FPL) and below. Medicaid also covers those with physical and intellectual disabilities. Expanding Medicaid to provide health coverage to able-bodied individuals at up to 138% FPL presents several concerns, including the growing difficulty of Medicaid recipients to see a healthcare provider, the impact of crowding out existing Medicaid recipients – including those with developmental disabilities – and uncertainty surrounding funding and the program’s total cost. 

Using data from the 2024 Georgia Department of Community Health annual report, expansion could mean adding an estimated 1.1 million Georgians to the state’s Medicaid rolls, including over 700,000 already covered through Georgia’s marketplace with private health insurance. According to the Georgia Board for Healthcare Workforce, less than 50% of Georgia physicians accept new Medicaid patients; expansion would further strain the state’s ability to provide healthcare for the neediest. 

Georgia Access, the state’s health insurance marketplace, provides almost entirely subsidized private insurance for Georgians up to 150% FPL. For 2027 “Silver” plans, enrollee premium payments are capped at 2.15% of income for those between 100-133% FPL, and there is a tiered cap for those with incomes between 133–150% FPL (3.23% to 4.3%). 

Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent annually in Georgia on uncompensated care for the uninsured. Undoubtedly, uninsured Georgians do get sick and, one way or another, we all pay for their care in a way that is terribly inefficient. Money should follow people. While it is important to support the institutions and providers that make up Georgia’s safety net, solutions should be people-centered, not institution-centered. Additionally, micromanaging every detail is a recipe for the status quo. The best way to address these issues is through innovation, which requires flexibility and choice.

Recommendations

Expand Medicaid recipient access to primary care.

One immediate way to help the uninsured (and save money) is to provide access to primary care that would replace expensive and unnecessary trips to emergency rooms. Direct Primary Care (DPC) practices generally do not accept health insurance, instead serving patients in exchange for a recurring monthly fee. Along with personalized healthcare, DPC practices offer longer hours and telehealth appointments (phone or video), important to low-income individuals who may be unwilling or unable to skip a work shift to visit a physician.

Encourage innovation.

Georgia benefited during the COVID-19 pandemic due to a strong legal and regulatory framework already in place for telehealth. Creating additional opportunities for the working poor to benefit from innovative options for convenient care such as telehealth, mobile health, direct pay options and DPC services echoes studies showing that for the working poor, a lack of time may be even more consequential than a lack of money. Telehealth companies are also making use of their equipment in schools to expand healthcare access to the parents of students and to teachers. 

Long-term care (LTC) services should target Georgia’s most vulnerable populations.

With a rapidly increasing elderly population, higher numbers of LTC recipients with disabilities or dementia, and a Medicaid program already strained as the principal LTC payer, we should seek ways to ensure the neediest Georgians are the ones receiving publicly funded LTC.

LTC eligibility criteria should be tightened as much as possible so as to avoid “crowding out” private sources of financing and encourage a privately financed home- and community-based service infrastructure.

Furthermore, middle-class and affluent people should prepay for care or repay from their estates, and waivers should be sought to eliminate or severely reduce the home equity exemption to encourage the use of home equity conversion to privately fund home care, assisted living and nursing home care.

Finally, we should review lien and estate recovery programs under Medicaid, study other states that operate their programs more successfully and maximize non-tax revenues from this source.

Regulatory Reform

Overview

Regulations are generally adopted to protect public safety or ensure quality, but it is often unclear whether they achieve their goals, produce benefits proportionate to their costs or remain in effect after becoming obsolete. Compliance costs ultimately affect consumers and workers through higher prices, lower wages, fewer job opportunities and reduced investment.

These burdens fall particularly heavily on small businesses, and complex regulations can discourage entrepreneurs from entering a market, protecting established companies from competition and leaving consumers with fewer choices and higher prices.

Georgia’s regulatory code has grown steadily over several decades. A 2024 analysis counted 111,899 regulatory restrictions and approximately 6.3 million words in the state’s compiled rules and regulations, placing Georgia 26th among the states measured. An earlier review, prepared for the Georgians First Commission in 2019, identified 18,160 individual regulations and found that more than half needed review because they were outdated or referred to laws that had already been repealed.

Regulatory reform is therefore an affordability issue. A more disciplined system would preserve necessary protections while removing outdated rules and preventing new requirements from imposing costs greater than their public benefits.

Georgia made progress with the passage of House Bill 1247, which took effect in May 2026. The legislation ended judicial deference to state agencies’ interpretations of laws and regulations and strengthened the General Assembly’s ability to object to agency rules. It also requires covered agencies to report on their existing rules to the Office of Planning and Budget by July 1, 2028 and every five years thereafter. These reports must analyze the impact, cost, effectiveness and possible streamlining of agency rules.

HB 1247 provides a foundation for further reform, but Georgia still lacks a central entity responsible for coordinating regulatory review, establishing analytical standards and measuring the cumulative burden imposed across state government.

Recommendations

Create a central regulatory management office.

Georgia should establish a small, permanent office responsible for coordinating regulatory review across the executive branch. Individual agencies possess specialized expertise, but they may lack the incentive, capacity or government-wide perspective necessary to evaluate regulatory burdens consistently.

The office should coordinate implementation of HB 1247, establish standards for economic analysis, review the quality of agency analyses and maintain a transparent database of proposed rules and review reports. Its evaluations should consider effects on families, small businesses, local governments and competition and should measure practical burdens such as compliance expenses and approval times.

The Foundation has highlighted Virginia’s Office of Regulatory Management as a useful model. Virginia reported reducing regulatory requirements by more than one-quarter during the office’s first several years. The governor’s office also estimated annual savings of $1.2 billion, a reduction of more than $24,000 in the cost of constructing a new home and substantially shorter approval times for certain permits and professional licenses. Georgia’s results would depend on the reforms adopted, but Virginia demonstrates how regulatory management can affect household costs rather than merely reorganizing government paperwork.

Require legislative approval of major regulations.

Georgia should require affirmative legislative approval before particularly costly regulations take effect. Under a REINS-style law, named for the proposed federal Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act, a regulation exceeding a defined economic threshold would not take effect without approval from the General Assembly.

The threshold should account for costs borne by businesses and consumers, as well as compliance costs imposed by the government. Several states have adopted similar reforms. Wisconsin, for example, requires legislative approval for regulations expected to produce at least $10 million in implementation and compliance costs.

Major regulations can have effects comparable to legislation despite being adopted by executive agencies. Requiring elected lawmakers to approve the most consequential rules would improve accountability and establish a higher standard for regulations that impose substantial economic burdens.

Expand the Administrative Procedure Act to apply more broadly and consistently.

Georgia should require all executive agencies to follow the Georgia Administrative Procedure Act unless a specific exemption is justified. The APA establishes safeguards including public notice of proposed rules, opportunities for public participation and legislative review. Existing exemptions leave Georgians with different procedural protections depending on which part of the executive branch regulates them.

House Bill 903, which passed the House during the 2026 session, would have applied the APA to nearly all executive-branch entities authorized to adopt rules or decide contested cases. The proposal would have removed numerous agency-specific exemptions, bringing previously excluded departments, boards and public authorities under a common administrative framework. The APA language did not receive final passage, but lawmakers should revisit that approach and require existing exemptions to be justified individually.

Taxes

Overview

Since Georgia implemented a flat tax in 2022, it has slowly but conservatively reduced its income tax to 4.99%. In 2026, Georgia lawmakers passed legislation that raised the standard deduction and added temporary exemptions for tipped income and overtime pay until 2028. This legislation also allows the state to continue reducing the income tax rate to 3.99% if the state meets certain revenue targets.

Reductions in the income tax rate have helped Georgia improve its competitiveness among other states. According to the Tax Foundation’s 2026 State Tax Competitiveness Index, Georgia currently ranks 18th nationally, up from 23rd in 2025 and 32nd in 2024. This is meaningful progress. However, Georgia lags behind some of its SEC neighbors, including Tennessee (8th) and Florida (5th). Additionally, Mississippi and Alabama continue to accelerate the lowering of their income tax rates, and North Carolina reached a flat 3.99% rate at the start of 2026, placing it 13th nationally. However, Georgia’s neighbors do not have a Taxpayer Relief Fund, which was enacted here in 2026 to capture excess revenue for the purpose of tax relief. This mechanism has been used in Iowa to reduce its income tax rate from a progressive, multi-rate income tax that once topped out at 8.98% to a 3.8% flat tax rate. If used effectively, this fund can accelerate Georgia’s competitiveness.

Property taxes are the other major pressure on Georgia taxpayers. The state’s current framework, built around the 2024 floating homestead exemption, caps assessment growth for participating homeowners. However, participation is left to local governments, many of which have opted out. While the General Assembly attempted to fix this issue in the 2026 legislative session by limiting homestead assessment increases statewide, that does not address the core issue of local governments placing significant tax burdens on their constituents through rising millage rates. Additional measures, such as levy limits and revenue caps, should be put in place to protect homeowners, renters and businesses from significant rate increases. A more sweeping proposal to address the underlying structure failed in the 2026 session, leaving Georgia with a patchwork of partial protections rather than a comprehensive fix. 

Recommendations

Continue reducing Georgia’s income tax-rate.

Georgia must continue to reform its tax code if it wants to compete economically in a low-tax region of the country. Strong economic performance and an influx of federal dollars during the pandemic produced robust surpluses that should be returned to Georgia’s taxpayers via rate cuts, not rebates, as policymakers look for additional ways to build upon tax reforms.

Tax codes should be transparent and simple, with low rates and broad bases across the board. Georgia cannot afford a high income tax rate relative to its regional neighbors if it seeks to remain competitive. Simplifying the state income tax with a flat tax has proven a solid start, but incrementally reducing the tax rate below the current 3.99% target will also help attract and keep workers and businesses while remaining fiscally sound.

Strengthen Georgia’s Taxpayer Relief Fund. 

Georgia should dedicate additional surplus reserves to Georgia’s Taxpayer Relief Fund. The Taxpayer Relief Fund should also be given firmer statutory, or even constitutional, protection restricting its use to income tax reduction. This would eliminate the temptation to redirect a growing balance toward other spending priorities once it becomes large enough to attract attention. Iowa’s Taxpayer Relief Fund is not safeguarded against diverting funds to new spending programs, which moves the surplus away from its original intent of income tax relief. The fund should not be used for additional government spending, aiding local governments or one-time relief checks.

Strengthen Truth in Taxation. 

Georgia already requires local governments to provide public notice when adopting a millage rate that would generate more revenue than the prior year, even if the rate itself is unchanged. But that notice requirement, on its own, has proven too weak to restrain local revenue growth. Rising assessments continue to do the work of raising property taxes without a vote for a rate increase.

Georgia lacks a key element of what is usually found in initiatives known as Truth in Taxation: a direct, individualized notice to every property owner at the moment a taxing authority proposes to exceed the certified rate, spelling out exactly how much a given parcel’s tax bill would rise. Today, that decision only triggers a newspaper advertisement and a posting on the local government’s website stating the jurisdiction-wide percentage increase, not a notice mailed to each affected taxpayer showing the dollar impact on their own bill. Fixing this would ensure Georgians understand exactly how their property taxes would rise if their millage rate was increased, rather than relying on residents to seek out a public notice on their own.

Impose levy limits.

Levy limits are an effective tool for keeping property taxes in check by limiting the total revenue a local government can collect, requiring rollbacks or reductions whenever collections rise above a set amount. By generally applying this limit to revenue from all classes of property (residential, commercial and industrial), this method does not distort property markets or shift burdens onto new homeowners the way assessment limits or “freezes” often do. Homeowners, renters and businesses all benefit.

Assessment limits are superficially appealing but can make housing affordability worse by disincentivizing new construction, which ends up being taxed more heavily than existing homes. This shifts the tax burden onto new investment and constrains housing supply. Levy limits avoid this distortion and may even encourage new housing supply as a way for local governments to grow their tax base. By capping the total revenue property taxes can generate, rather than capping individual assessments, they are the most economically efficient and structurally sound way to curb the growth of tax bills over time: Even as home values rise, tax bills can’t rise fully alongside them.

Technology and Innovation

Overview

Demand for cloud computing, artificial intelligence and other digital services is driving rapid growth in data center construction throughout the country. Georgia has emerged as a major market for these facilities, bringing significant capital investment while also creating new demands on resources, raising questions about tax incentives and drawing increased public scrutiny.

Data centers physically store and process information for a long list of digital services including cloud computing, streaming, communications, financial transactions, healthcare systems and artificial intelligence. The industry’s recent boom – specifically that which has been driven by the growth of AI – is fundamentally a response to growing demand for digital services.

AI has emerged as a general-purpose technology that has applications in day-to-day life as well as across countless critical industries. Its full effects remain difficult to forecast, but it offers opportunities for economic growth if it is managed correctly.

In 2018, Georgia lawmakers enacted a state and local sales-and-use-tax exemption for qualifying data center equipment, with investment and job requirements that vary according to county population. The latest state evaluation estimates that the exemption resulted in $474.2 million in forgone state revenue in 2025. That is projected to rise to $866.7 million in 2030 under existing policy. Forgone revenue is not the same as a direct expenditure, and the fiscal effect depends partly on how much investment would have occurred without the exemption.

Large data centers can require substantial investments in new generation and transmission infrastructure. Whether those costs affect household affordability depends largely on how they are allocated. In 2025, the Public Service Commission approved rules for customers using more than 100 megawatts, including longer-term contracts, minimum billing requirements, regulatory review of large-load agreements and provisions allowing Georgia Power to recover site-specific and upstream infrastructure costs from those companies. The commission also required Georgia Power to financially backstop new generation through 2031 if projected large-load demand fails to materialize, helping protect existing ratepayers from stranded costs.

Data centers can also place demands on water, land and local infrastructure. These demands vary considerably according to location, climate, cooling technology and facility design. Policymakers should evaluate the actual needs and effects of individual projects rather than relying on a single generalized estimate for the industry.

Recommendations

Require large-load customers to pay the costs they create.

New data centers and other large electricity users should bear the incremental generation, transmission and distribution costs necessary to serve them rather than shifting those costs onto existing residential and commercial customers.

The PSC’s minimum billing requirements, longer-term contracts and large-load review process are useful tools because they address stranded-cost risk.

Preserve strong oversight while allowing flexibility in utility regulation.

HB 1063 overwhelmingly passed the House in 2026 and would have required contracts with data centers to protect other customers from incremental costs, but it did not pass the Senate. Meanwhile, the PSC had already implemented many similar protections administratively.

Putting protections into statute can make them durable, while ratemaking through the PSC allows regulators to adjust as technology, demand forecasts and market conditions change. Georgia should maintain enforceable protections against cost shifting while preserving enough regulatory flexibility to respond to rapidly changing markets and technology.

Regularly reevaluate data-center tax incentives.

Georgia should periodically evaluate the data-center sales-tax exemption using current information about forgone revenue, additional investment attributable to the incentive, employment, local tax collections and the state’s competitiveness. Incentives should be evaluated using the full set of costs and benefits.

Reject blunt restrictions on data-center development.

Georgia should resist moratoria, arbitrary construction limits and other policies that treat data-center growth itself as a problem. Demand for digital services will continue regardless of whether the physical infrastructure serving that demand is built in Georgia. Preventing infrastructure from expanding alongside that demand could produce tighter computing capacity, diminished reliability and higher costs for consumers and businesses, while shifting investment to states or countries more willing to accommodate it.

Policymakers should instead address demonstrated problems directly. The objective should be neither to subsidize data centers at any cost nor to obstruct an industry because it has become politically unpopular. Georgia should apply the same principles of transparent taxation, cost responsibility and limited government that it would apply to any other industry.

Allow for responsible AI innovation.

Similar to the approach to data centers, Georgia should neither subsidize AI development at all costs nor should it obstruct innovation. A tech-optimistic approach should match safeguards to demonstrable harms, and existing laws governing fraud, privacy, consumer protection and other harmful conduct should apply equally where AI is involved. If new technologies expose lapses in those protections, measures should be taken to address specific harms, rather than regulating AI wholesale.

Tort Reform

Overview

Frivolous lawsuits and excessive litigation costs have negative economic consequences across numerous industries – which are eventually borne by all Georgians. Costs are incorporated into insurance premiums, healthcare costs and other prices paid by Georgia families. Businesses forced to carry higher liability costs tend to raise prices. Physicians and healthcare providers must account for the cost of malpractice insurance when determining where and how they practice. While liability litigation is not categorically frivolous, the need for tort reform typically highlights cases that are, such as when plaintiffs and their trial attorneys are awarded damages for predatory lawsuits.

Georgia lawmakers sought to address several sources of litigation risk through Senate Bill 68 in 2025. The legislation created a more defined standard for premises liability claims, limiting circumstances in which property owners can be held responsible for criminal acts committed by third parties. It also changed the treatment of medical expense damages so that recovery is based on the reasonable value of necessary care. The legislation restricted when attorneys may suggest dollar values for noneconomic (“pain and suffering”) damages until after all of the evidence has been presented, and allowed liability, fault and damages to be determined separately in certain cases. It also addressed procedural rules intended to reduce unnecessary litigation costs and prevent duplicate recovery of attorney’s fees and expenses.

Senate Bill 69 addressed the growing use of third-party litigation financing, in which an outside investor provides money connected to a lawsuit in exchange for a financial return. These provisions were intended to increase transparency and consumer protections while reducing the risk that outside financial interests distort litigation incentives.

Georgia should maintain a civil justice system that fully compensates people who have been legitimately harmed while preventing legal rules and litigation practices from producing excessive or unrelated costs that are ultimately passed on to consumers.

Recommendations

Measure whether reforms are reducing costs.

Georgia should evaluate the 2025 reforms using measurable outcomes as more cases filed under the new rules work their way through the courts. Insurance premiums are one important measure that has already begun to yield results. Policymakers should also track litigation frequency, defense expenses, claim severity, insurer participation and the cost and availability of commercial liability and medical malpractice coverage as such information becomes available.

Early evidence is encouraging. State Farm reduced Georgia auto rates by more than 10% over roughly a year, while Allstate and Travelers also filed significant reductions. Georgia’s insurance commissioner has cited lawsuit-abuse reform as one contributor to the improving environment, alongside anti-fraud efforts, regulatory negotiations and broader market conditions.

Florida provides a useful example of the information Georgia should collect over time. After a series of insurance and litigation reforms beginning in 2022, Florida regulators reported that average homeowners’ defense and cost-containment expenses fell from about $993 per claim in 2022 to $818 in 2024. Personal residential legal-service filings fell 23% from 2023 to 2024 and continued declining in 2025. Florida has also experienced new insurer entry and numerous rate reductions as its insurance market has stabilized.

Establishing consistent measurements now will make it possible to determine the economic impact of tort reform over the next several years.

Continue addressing sources of lawsuit abuse.

Future reforms should remain focused on specific practices that increase litigation costs or make outcomes unnecessarily unpredictable.

A remaining concern is the prevalence of unusually large “nuclear verdicts,” or court decisions that award a plaintiff $10 million or more. These have been particularly common in several Georgia courts. Medical malpractice cases also sometimes result in large and unpredictable awards, contributing to higher liability premiums for physicians and hospitals. This raises healthcare costs and makes it harder to maintain services, especially in communities that are already underserved.

Senate Bill 68 addressed some practices that can contribute to excessive awards, but the broader problem of unpredictable and extraordinarily large judgments remains worth monitoring and addressing.

Georgia should address “litigation tourism,” in which lawsuits are filed in plaintiff-friendly courts despite having little connection to the underlying dispute. Venue rules should ensure that cases are heard in jurisdictions with a meaningful connection to the parties or events involved rather than allowing courts to be selected primarily because they are perceived as more favorable to plaintiffs.

Workforce Freedom

Overview

Among our inalienable rights as Americans and Georgians is the freedom to work. This means freedom from overly restrictive licensing practices, union demands and regulatory infringements on individual prosperity. 

Citizens have a right to pursue a legal occupation, and the burden should fall on the government to justify any restrictions to that right.

Recommendations

Reduce, convert and repeal occupational licenses.

An “occupational license” is, put simply, government permission to work in a particular field. To earn a license, an aspiring worker must clear various hurdles, such as earning a certain amount of education or training or passing an exam. Research to date – on occupations as diverse as school teachers, interior designers, mortgage brokers, dentists and physicians – provides little evidence that government licenses protect public health and safety or improve the quality of products or services.

We should examine existing occupational license requirements for opportunities to reduce qualifications for licensure such as the hours of training and continuing education required to obtain and retain certain licenses; convert license requirements to a less restrictive form of regulations such as inspections, bonding or voluntary certification; or repeal regulatory requirements.

Efficiency can be further improved with the consolidation of like-kind occupational boards. In 2026, the General Assembly took a step in that direction with HB 1254, which eliminated several standalone boards, including the State Board of Cemeterians and the State Board of Hearing Aid Dealers and Dispensers, and transferred their licensing functions to the Secretary of State. Lawmakers should build on this by reviewing remaining boards that perform similar functions.

In its 2020 report, the Georgians First Commission recommended the creation of a Uniform Occupational Licensing Law Commission to review current statutes. Such a review would help Georgia live up to its reputation as the “best state for business.” The Archbridge Institute’s 2025 State Occupational Licensing Index ranks Georgia near the middle of the states for its overall licensing burden. The state imposes 117 occupational licenses, fewer than the national average, but restricts work through 158 licensing barriers, roughly matching the national average.

Create protections for economic opportunity.

Protect economic opportunity by creating a statutory right to an occupation; requiring proof of a clear, likely and well-established danger to the public; and ensuring that less restrictive means have been tried before resorting to professional licensing. In 2026, the Georgia General Assembly took a promising step by requiring licensing authorities to show a direct relationship between an offense and the occupation before denying a license. 

Ensure that Georgia workers and companies are not forced or coerced into union participation.

Georgia is a “Right to Work” state, meaning that workers cannot be required to join a union or pay union dues. It also means employees cannot be fired, or not hired, for refusal to join a union. These kinds of protections should be upheld, and all Georgia workers should be allowed to pursue the employment of their choice without union interference or fear of coercion.

In 2024, the Georgia General Assembly strengthened worker protections with the passage of SB 362. This bill protects workers’ rights to a private vote on union participation for companies that receive taxpayer incentives. The bill also protects Georgia taxpayers from subsidizing companies that refuse to protect their employees from unnecessary and unjust forms of union intimidation in their workplaces.