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While lawmakers are back at work for the 2025 session of the General Assembly, a lot of the talk around the Capitol and across the state has been about a bill that passed last year, won approval as a ballot question this past November, was signed by Gov. Brian Kemp, and went into effect on January 1, 2025.

Georgia’s House Bill 581, the Save Our Homes Act, limits the amount by which local governments can increase property taxes – based on the rate of inflation. Lawmakers say the bill was designed to provide property tax relief for homeowners by capping the annual increase in property values for tax purposes. It also makes changes to the state’s property and sales tax systems. Over 62 percent of voters across the state said ‘yes’ to the homestead exemption question on the ballot.

Sounds like good news to taxpayers, but not so fast. According to this bill, any local governing authority may elect to opt out of the floating homestead by following a procedure like the “public notification of tax increase” when a full rollback is not taken. The opt-out requires three public hearings of intent, and the adoption of a resolution that must be filed with the Secretary of State by March 1, 2025. If a local government opts out, there is no future method to opt in to the HB 581 exemption, according to information released by the Georgia Municipal Association.

It’s important to note that HB 581 does not eliminate any existing homestead exemptions for any jurisdiction, regardless of the type of homestead exemption, but it may override existing floating, base-year, and frozen exemptions — if the HB 581 exemption provides a greater benefit to the taxpayer, GMA documents explain.

Most school boards across the state are currently holding hearings on the bill, and analyzing what they say could be “unintended negative consequences for Georgia’s local school systems.”

One local school official in west Georgia said that under HB 581 local governments, including school districts, can only raise property taxes in line with inflation which would “potentially leave them with fewer resources for funding vital services like education. Especially those districts that rely heavily on property taxes.”

Bibb County schools have announced they will opt out of the bill. Superintendent Dan Sims was quoted in Macon media as saying that opting into the bill would cost the school system a lot.

“I believe it’s 50 years, like it is a long-term commitment, and the financial implications on the district are not good,” Sims was quoted as saying. “Specifically, we already did research, and going back to 2018 to show if we were to have opted in to this kind of bill from 2018 to the present, it would have cost us an upwards of $3.7 million. That would have been less money towards our needs as a school district.”

Houston County School District officials sent out a statement that said they can’t afford to opt in.

In a recent local publication, John Floresta, with the Cobb County School District, pointed out that while protecting school funding is important for children’s education, strong schools also boost property values. “In Cobb County, each student receives about $11,000 in educational services annually, a figure that falls behind neighboring districts, which spend between $12,000 and $18,000 per student. Despite its more conservative fiscal approach, Cobb has managed to remain debt-free while providing senior tax exemptions for homeowners.”

Residents in counties where school officials are holding public hearings to opt out, have turned to social media to express their dissatisfaction.

● “This was on the ballot, and we overwhelmingly said yes, how can they go against the wishes of the voters?”

● “How can they opt out of this? It was designed by lawmakers to save us money during this time when everything costs so much.”

● “They don’t care about the taxpayers who voted to approve this.”

Lawmakers around the Capitol are also talking about this. One state representative was heard saying, “We heard the homeowners when they said they needed help. We were also concerned about rising property value assessments and property taxes. We worked to find a way to control the increases. But in the end, it’s up to the local governments to make the decision they feel is best for their community.”