ATLANTA (AP) — A former Georgia House member pleaded guilty Wednesday to lying to collect federal unemployment benefits during the pandemic. Karen Bennett's guilty plea to one count of making false statements to collect $13,940 had been expected after waiving indictment on Jan. 5. She resigned from the House just before being charged.

ATLANTA — Georgians now have another way to give away money and get it all back when they support private school students in Georgia after Gov. Brian Kemp signed onto a federal tax credit program. The credit, established under President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year, gives federal taxpayers up to $1,700 back for each dollar they give to authorized K-12 scholarship-granting organizations.

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Voters in a coastal Georgia county on Tuesday rejected an ordinance allowing large homes on remote Sapelo Island, where Black landowners feared the change could saddle them with unaffordable property taxes in one of the South’s few remaining Gullah-Geechee communities founded by freed slaves.

ATLANTA — A proposed amendment to the Georgia Constitution would end sales taxes on timber, a major industry battered by mill closings and storms. House Majority Leader Chuck Efstration said a bipartisan group of legislators wants to help protect “a cornerstone of the state’s rural economy.”

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Voters in a coastal Georgia county will decide Tuesday whether large homes should be allowed on remote Sapelo Island, where Black landowners fear the change could saddle them with unaffordable property taxes in one of the South’s few remaining Gullah-Geechee communities founded by freed slaves.

ATLANTA — Financially strapped college students in Georgia often must drop out for want of money for room and board, but their prospects could improve under a new initiative from Gov. Brian Kemp.

ATLANTA — Tax increases on Georgia homeowners could be limited to the inflation rate, including taxes for education, after most school systems decided against capping property tax hikes last year.

ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp’s last budget proposal would stockpile billions for any rough economy one of his successors might encounter while also asking lawmakers to return over $1 billion to taxpayers.

ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp will take a hammer to gridlock during his last year in office, spending more than $2 billion to upgrade major highways south and east of Atlanta.

ATLANTA — Data centers in Georgia did not produce the same high payback in exchange for nearly half a billion dollars in tax breaks as reported by state auditors last month, according to a correction issued Wednesday.

ATLANTA — The voters in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s old northwest Georgia congressional district have less than two months to winnow a winner out of a list of 22 candidates who qualified to succeed her.

ATLANTA — The Republican leaders of Georgia’s Senate will push to reduce both income and property taxes while targeting other cost-of-living issues during a legislative session that will be influenced by election-year politics.

ATLANTA — The Georgia Senate voted along party lines Tuesday to ban cities from requiring gun owners to lock up their guns in cars, the first bill approved in this year’s legislative session.

ATLANTA — Lawmakers, lobbyists, and protesters swarmed to the Georgia Capitol on Monday, the first day of the annual legislative session in a crucial election year.

ATLANTA — When Georgia lawmakers return to Atlanta for the new legislative session, they will proceed to their weathered wooden desks, and if they are observant, they will notice something new. The carpeted floor will offer a little more give, and the old stains will be gone.

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Most of the Democrats who have announced that they are running for governor appeared in a forum televised from a Savannah church Thursday night, where they worked to differentiate themselves before a primary election just four months away.

ATLANTA (AP) — An elected leader in Georgia's Fulton County, which drew national attention after the 2020 election when President Donald Trump claimed that voter fraud there cost him victory in Georgia, announced that she is running to be the state's top election official.

ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp on Tuesday scheduled March 10 for the special election to select a successor to former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

ATLANTA — Former state Rep. Karen Bennett, D-Stone Mountain, became the second Georgia lawmaker to be indicted in federal court in the past month over alleged fraud concerning COVID-19 federal assistance.

ATLANTA (AP) — A congressional ethics watchdog said in a report released Monday that there's substantial reason to believe the former chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Mike Collins hired his girlfriend as an office intern and that she “did not perform duties commensurate with her compensation.”

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — One of the world's rarest whale species is having more babies this year than in some recent seasons. The North Atlantic right whale's population numbers an estimated 384 animals and is slowly rising after several years of decline.

ATLANTA — Hospitalizations for flu spiked in the last full week of December, resulting in several deaths in Georgia and an urgent call by state health officials.

ATLANTA — The federal government will give Georgia nearly $219 million to bolster health care in 126 rural counties, under a program established by President Donald Trump’s signature budget reconciliation bill passed in July.

KENNESAW, Ga. (AP) — A Georgia judge on Monday ordered a temporary pause to a December execution that was already put on hold, saying questions about the state's clemency process must be addressed before Stacey Humphreys ' death sentence could be carried out.

ATLANTA — Most new laws from this year’s legislative session took effect in July, but a handful of significant bills will become law on New Year’s Day.