Eggs, Issues and Magical Thinking

Schrödinger’s Tax Cut is alive until someone names the corporation that has to pay for it.

Once a year, the Georgia Chamber of Commerce commandeers Mercedes-Benz Stadium for the Eggs and Issues Breakfast, which is usually little more than an opportunity for political schmoozing and free Chick-fil-A sandwiches. I haven’t been to one for years.

This year is different. Gov. Brian Kemp is in his last year in office, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones has a tax plan to sell and we are 147 days away from the World Cup.

Three headlines from the event today. First, speaker Jon Burns said he intends for the legislature to end the homestead exemption for property taxes, a response to about 316 municipal governments — two out of three cities — opting out of property tax reforms passed in 2024.

“No one should ever face a loss of their home place because they can’t afford to pay rent to the government,” he said. The run up in home values without cuts to local property taxes have made tax payments rise “to excessive and unsustainable levels.”

Georgia voters approved a statewide change to property tax formulas by about 63 percent in 2024. Amendment one limited annual increases on existing homes to 3 percent a year. But the law was confusing and complex, and most municipalities and school boards opted out of it. According to the Tax Foundation, about two-thirds of counties (64.8 percent), representing nearly 83 percent of Georgia’s population, saw their school system, general government, or both opt out.

Burns plans to get rid of that opt-out this year. Of course, some of those municipal governments and school boards were front-running that move with big property tax increases, anticipating the constraints of a new system that limits increases moving forward.

This is a bread-and-butter pocketbook issue that appears to be driving politics in Georgia and the country right now. Everyone referred to it one way or another.

Burt Jones wants his proposal to eliminate income taxes for most Georgia taxpayers—a rate of zero for filers under $50,000 (households under $100,000) by 2032.

It's not terrible. Some of it is quite progressive. But most people I spoke to today think it’s dead on arrival at the legislature. The devil is in the details—specifically, which loopholes get closed.

The math—which is questionable—rests on assumptions like an annual tax surplus of $1.5-$2 billion and investment returns of a perpetual $1 billion+ from the $15-$20 billion Georgia has in the bank. It refers to the idiocy of the Laffer Curve as something to bank on.

But it also requires Georgia lawmakers to vote to cut tax credits subsidizing businesses like Kia in south Georgia, the film industry and Georgia Power, which speaker after speaker at this Georgia Chamber of Commerce breakfast painfully praised for its work expanding power output for data center growth.

“This growth is good for Georgia,” said Kim Greene, president of Georgia Power. Some parts of America might have to wonder about rate increases because of data center development, she said. “But not in Georgia, not in Georgia.”

She argued that data centers are covering their costs for power. “They pay more so families and small businesses pay less.” The Public Service Commission voted to freeze base rates for three years and that Georgia Power will have rates in decline in 2026.

Brian Kemp took a swing at the AJC over its seemingly-critical coverage of data center expansion. “Now that the Atlanta paper has gone digital-only, maybe they’ll have more resources to tell both sides of this story, not just the propaganda of special interest groups sponsoring their articles.”

As though Georgia Power has some problem articulating its position on the matter.

Let me say loudly: I would welcome a change to Georgia tax law that exempted the first $100,000 of family income—more than 60 percent of Georgia households—while taxing corporations more to cover the loss in tax revenue. It is the definition of progressive tax policy. So much so, I’m shocked to hear a Republican articulate it.

But approximately 12 nanoseconds after lawmakers articulate exactly which corporations will pay more money by losing their tax credits, those corporations will use some portion of the money they might otherwise lose to taxes to hire lobbyists and to run political ads attacking those lawmakers and to buy those lawmakers straight up. We are in Schrödinger’s politics right now. The wave function of lawmaking has not condensed into a point; when it does, it will probably kill the idea.

But until that happens, Jones can campaign on it. And as long as he can dodge specific questions about whose ox gets gored, he can claim it’s a real idea being considered.

Kemp also announced a $50 million initiative to fight homelessness ahead of the World Cup.

“Known as the Homelessness Response Grant, the state will make a one-time investment of $50 million that will be coupled with other funds from public, private, and non-profit partners to launch this initiative,” he said. “Through very targeted use of funds, this grant will act as a force multiplier to complement the good work already underway by Mayor [Andre] Dickens and other champions on this challenging subject. Awards will go to local governments and nonprofit organizations addressing street-level homelessness in Georgia, and it will ensure that every stakeholder has equal skin in the game.”

The problem here is that the federal government has cut funding to metro Atlanta for homelessness prevention … by about $50 million.

That’s a thumbnail guess, but one I worked out while I was speaking with service providers last week. The Trump Administration has been attacking Housing First models and anything that smacks of “DEI” in housing programming, federal and state antidiscrimination law be damned.

Normally, only about 10 percent of federal grants to service providers are competitive; the rest are sent to grantees based on performance or level-funding. The formula is now something like 30-70, with a hard cap on the portion of money used for permanent supportive housing.

Providers have spent the last 10 years shifting toward a Housing First approach, which prioritizes providing permanent housing—that is, getting someone stabilized and off the street—while working on other issues like drug addiction or mental health treatment. They shifted because this has proven to be more effective than other approaches. Trump disagrees, because of course he does.

The Trump Administration began a $3 billion overhaul of the Continuum of Care program last year, reducing support for permanent housing programs and replacing it with temporary, transitional housing models and work or service requirements that, frankly, cannot be met by most people on the street. Metro Atlanta, at about 5 million residents, is about 1.6 percent of the U.S. And 1.6 percent of $3 billion is about $50 million.

Providers sued. A judge in Washington blocked the changes. Yesterday, the administration sent out a letter wiping out hundreds of grants for mental health and addiction services worth about $2 billion.

Cathryn Vassell, who heads the Continuum of Care in Atlanta, said she hasn’t heard if any local providers have lost their funding, but it’s unclear right now where Atlanta stands. She’s fighting other battles: Fulton County reneged on a promise to help fund 230 units of housing last month.

”In 2019, they made a promise to provide the support services for all the units we developed for 30 years. And they told us on December 10th that they don’t have the money, and that we needed to go back to the city and get the city to give us the money, even though the city already paid $22 million,” Vassell said. The loss is about $2 million this year and $4.7 million through 2027. “The county refusing to fund these services is unconscionable, and they’re making political decisions on the backs of homeless people.”

Kemp’s intent with this homelessness grant is to get Atlanta prepared to receive visitors from around the world, so “they will not only see a state with a thriving economy, but also one that cares about its people and helps those willing and able to work for it access those opportunities.”

Vassell said that Atlanta’s grants have been protected by a different ruling in a Rhode Island case. But given what the federal government is doing to homelessness services, $50 million more from the state may look like running hard to stay in the same spot.

As an aside. I find myself writing about the ICE shooting in Minneapolis. In a Facebook post, I wrote:

In the weeks following Ahmaud Arbery’s murder by racist goons in Glynn County, with criticism mounting about the district attorney’s seeming inability to prosecute the case, an attorney who had consulted with one of the murderers released a video taken during the event to a local radio station.

Asked why he had leaked the video, Mr. Tucker told the New York Times that he had wanted to dispel rumors that he said had fueled tension in the community. “It wasn’t two men with a Confederate flag in the back of a truck going down the road and shooting a jogger in the back,” Mr. Tucker said.

He said his purpose wasn’t to exonerate them or convict them ... but he plainly thought the video was exculpatory evidence. It wasn’t. It depicted the brutality and stupidity of the crime, plainly.

That’s what’s going on here with the cell phone video from the ICE agent. If you are completely committed to the idea that ICE agents should have “absolute immunity” to shoot American citizens in the face without review by external authority, that driving away from ICE agents is a crime punishable by summary execution, and that anyone who confronts an ICE agent is a “domestic terrorist,” then you’re going to look at this video as somehow exonerating the agent.

Everyone else will see this as a woman who is apologizing to the officers - “I’m not even mad at you” were her last words - and then when she completes the three point turn and pulls out to get out of the way *as instructed* the cop shoots her dead and calls her a f***ing bitch.

I praise Minneapolis for its restraint right now.

The Internet is awash in bullshit right now. There’s a plain push in social media, plainly driven by partisan interest, to try to recast what we can all see with our two eyes in videos that corroborate each other that the Renee Good shooting at the very least deserves a fair examination using longstanding standards for police conduct. Instead, federal prosecutors and the leadership of the Department of Justice’s civil rights division have quit over the last two days after demands to ignore the agent who killed someone and investigate Rachel Good’s conduct instead.

I’ve been looking at police-involved shooting video and data for more than a decade. The effort to recast this as an act by Good that justifies her death is obvious in its intent, and you should recognize it for that.