Guide to the Issues: 2026: Thirty years after the first edition

This November, Georgia voters will elect a new governor for the first time in eight years, a new lieutenant governor and every member of the General Assembly, many of whom will have only a few years of legislative experience. That is a great deal of new leadership arriving at once, and those officials will quickly face decisions on issues beyond the platforms that got them elected.

That is where the Georgia Public Policy Foundation’s 2026 Guide to the Issues comes in. Its nine chapters cover housing, taxes, healthcare, Medicaid, K-12 education, technology and innovation, regulatory reform, tort reform and workforce freedom. Each issue page explains where Georgia stands and offers recommendations grounded in limited government, individual responsibility and free enterprise.

The Guide serves as a briefing book for Georgia’s next leaders, and it is just as useful for voters: With early voting about to begin, Georgians can use it to weigh candidates’ promises and ask how they plan to deliver.

Since the 2024 edition, lawmakers have acted on several of its recommendations. Tort reforms passed in 2025 narrowed premises liability and reined in inflated “phantom” medical damages, and the early signs are encouraging. State Farm has cut Georgia auto rates by more than 10%, with the state insurance commissioner citing lawsuit reform as one reason. In 2026, lawmakers folded several standalone licensing boards into the Secretary of State’s office, created a Taxpayer Relief Fund to capture surplus revenue for tax relief and set enforceable deadlines for local permit reviews. Georgia’s tax code now ranks 18th in the nation for competitiveness, up from 32nd two years ago.

This is laudable progress, but the pressure on family budgets is still significant.

Affordability has become the defining word of this campaign season, with candidates up and down the ballot promising to lower Georgians’ costs. But promises are easy to make and hard to keep when so many of those costs are set by decisions buried in state and local law. These include how long a building permit takes, how much property tax revenue a county can collect without a vote and whether a new medical facility needs state permission to open.

On housing, Georgia isn’t building enough homes to keep up with its growth. The Guide recommends making supply the central goal: allowing starter homes, townhomes and duplexes “by right” in more places, speeding up final plat approvals and extending this year’s permitting reforms to the eight exempted metro counties.

In regards to property taxes, rising assessments keep pushing bills higher even when no one votes to raise the rate. A levy limit, which caps growth in a local government’s total property tax revenue, would restrain that trend without shifting the burden onto new homeowners. Every property owner should also receive a notice showing how a proposed increase would affect his or her bill.

On healthcare, too many Georgians live in communities where finding a doctor — let alone a specialist — is a struggle. Repealing certificate-of-need laws, allowing unmatched medical school graduates to practice under supervision and tying part of hospitals’ federal training dollars to the creation of new residency slots would all expand access.

The Guide offers a measured approach to data centers. Large electricity users should pay the full costs they add to the grid, and the state’s sales-tax exemption for data centers, which meant $474.2 million in forgone state revenue in 2025, should be reevaluated regularly. But moratoria and arbitrary limits would disrupt critical digital services and the economy in general.

Lower costs are only half the picture. The Guide also makes the case for expanding opportunity: opening the Promise Scholarship to every public-school student, making it easier for successful charter schools to grow and removing unnecessary barriers to work.

Finally, the Guide highlights a reform the Foundation has long championed and every new officeholder should welcome: making the administrative state more accountable. State agencies write rules that carry the force of law, yet many of those rules are developed and administered by unelected bureaucrats.

This year’s law ending judicial deference was a strong start. Next, the Guide recommends a central office to coordinate regulatory review; Virginia’s previous administration credited its own Office of Regulatory Management with cutting more than $24,000 from the cost of building a new home. The Guide also calls for legislative approval of the costliest rules and for applying the Administrative Procedure Act to nearly every agency.

A growing state needs more homes, more doctors, predictable courts and a tax code that lets families keep more of what they earn. The Guide to the Issues turns 30 with this edition, and many of its recommendations since have become Georgia law.

We hope the state’s next generation of leaders, and the voters who elect them, find this edition just as useful.

Read the New Guide to the Issues Here