James_May-June_2026_web - Flipbook - Page 35
ost legislative sessions are judged
by what passed
and what failed.
It is a clean way
to read politics.
Count the wins, note the losses,
and move on. That is also where
most analysis stops.
The Georgia General Assembly’s 2026 session will be described
as productive. Lawmakers passed
a large budget, accelerated tax
cuts under House Bill 463, and
advanced a series of targeted
measures on public safety, property
rights and health care. By the usual
measures, the system worked.
But that is only part of the story. What matters more is where the
system moved easily and where it
did not.
Let’s start with taxes. House
Bill 463, the Georgia Economic
Growth and Tax Relief Act, continues the state’s push toward a 3.99
percent income tax rate. It lowers
rates, returns money to taxpayers
and reinforces the state’s progrowth posture.
It is also made possible by
strong fiscal conditions. This is not
a restructuring of the tax system. It
is an acceleration of a path already
underway, supported by surplus revenue. That distinction tends to get
lost. Cutting taxes is easy politics.
There is also a second-order
effect that is not being discussed.
As rates fall, pressure builds
elsewhere in the system. Georgia’s film tax credit is the clearest
example. It has been outwardly
successful, drawing production and
building an industry presence. But it
is also one of the largest targeted incentives in the state’s tax structure.
The more aggressively the state
lowers broad tax rates, the harder
it becomes to justify maintaining
large, selective credits without
scrutiny. At some point, those incentives begin to compete directly
with the broader push for lower
taxation. What looks like a growth
strategy in one area starts to work
against it in another.
That tension is not resolved in
this session. It is deferred.
The same pattern shows up
across several other bills that
passed with relatively little friction.
Senate Bill 443 increases penalties for obstructing roadways, a
clear signal on public order. House
Bill 369 shifts district attorney
elections to a non-partisan format
in several metro Atlanta counties.
Senate Bill 195 allows pharmacists
to dispense HIV prevention drugs,
expanding access without forcing a
larger fight over health care policy.
None of them fundamentally
disrupt the system.
Even the more consequential measures follow this pattern.
House Bill 295, which allows property owners to seek compensation
when local governments fail to
enforce certain laws, shifts some
leverage away from local governments and toward private actors.
Senate Bill 33, aimed at property
tax relief, responds to real pressure
from rising assessments without
changing the underlying structure.
What passed follows a clear
pattern. The legislature performs
well when it is allocating benefits,
reinforcing priorities or making
contained changes. It becomes
less effective when decisions carry
broader institutional risk.
The clearest signal was not
what passed, but what didn’t.
After years of debate over
Georgia’s voting system, lawmakers left without resolving even the
most basic issues. There was no
agreement on replacing the Dominion system. There was no action on
addressing the use of unreadable
QR codes on ballots ahead of a
looming July 1st deadline.
The issue is not a lack of options. The state already has a fallback. Hand-marked paper ballots
are written into law for situations
where the current system is impracticable. They are already used
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