On December 15, 1791, Virginia ratified the Bill of Rights, giving the first ten Amendments a three-quarter majority required to become law.
On December 15, 1859, Georgia Governor Joseph Brown signed legislation outlawing public execution of criminals. The previous day he signed legislation prohibiting slave owners from freeing their slaves on the owner’s death.
On December 15, 1939, Gone With the Wind held its world premiere at Loew’s Grand Theater in Atlanta.
President Jimmy Carter announced on December 15, 1978 that U.S. diplomatic recognition of the People’s Republic of China would begin on January 1, 1979.
The United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee released a report on December 15, 1998 that recommended impeachment against President Bill Clinton and introduced H.Res. 611.
On December 15, 2016, Republican Tim Echols was sworn in by Gov. Nathan Deal to a second term on the Georgia Public Service Commission.
Dougherty County unveiled a new digital Resistance Trail about the second-largest slave sale in U.S. History, according to WALB.
A new digital Resistance Trail spanning more than six Southwest Georgia counties reveals that Albany was the site of the second-largest single sale of enslaved Africans in U.S. history.
The Dougherty County Commission, alongside Clennon King, unveiled the 22-stop interactive trail that uses short films, QR codes, and location-based storytelling to reveal Black history across Dougherty, Mitchell, Baker, Terrell, Calhoun, and Crisp counties.
Although this is the third courthouse at this location, the history remains the same. In the late 1800s, on the courthouse steps, Albany saw the second-largest single sale of enslaved Africans in the United States.
The sale stemmed from a murder between two white men; Joseph Bond, a planter and slave owner, and Lucious Brown, an overseer Bond had fired.
“This stems from a murder. Two white men fighting with each other. One is a planter; one is an overseer that used to work for him – he had fired him,” said Clennon King, Historian with Resistance Trail of Southwest Georgia. “They got into it about a dispute. And the planter went in an attacked him with a stick, and the overseer turns around takes his gun and shoots and kills him. At this point, he’s one of the largest enslavers in the state, and now he’s got to liquidate his estate.”
Historical records show the original sale advertisement: “I will offer for sale before the courthouse door in Albany, Georgia, on Tuesday, the 3rd day of January. This is what it looked like; this is the original one, we were sold here.”
The sale lasted two days. Five hundred thirty-six people were sold at an average price of $1,000 each.
The names and details of those sold have been preserved, showing the human cost of the liquidation.
“Yes, he owned them all. There are all these names of all these people, men, women, and children. It’s very specific. There’s Charles, Larkin, Betsy, his wife, their children,” said King.
The records show specific prices: “17-year-old girl, 20-year-old boy, 36-hundred dollars, 1 field hand,” demonstrating how enslaved people were valued as property.
King emphasizes the positive legacy that emerged from this painful history.
“We’re a resilient people, a talented people, we built this country, and we did it free of charge, and I think we’re capable of anything,” King says. “SWGA produces a lot, there’s a lot to be proud of, and that’s what these stories are all about, so that people understand it. Sometimes resistance looks like leaving, sometimes it looks like staying and fighting, sometimes it looks like coming in and helping people here.”
Visitors can access the trail by scanning QR codes at locations throughout the region. Each code leads to short films that tell the stories of resistance, resilience, and cultural achievement.
One of the great things is that you can learn so much more about the history of Southwest Georgia just by going on your phone. When you go to a location, you’ll see a QR Code at one of the locations, and then it’ll take you to a video.`
Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections
State Senator Nabilah Islam Parkes (D-Duluth) wrote a letter to Governor Kemp asking him to support Medicaid expansion, according to AccessWDUN.
A Democrat State Senator from Gwinnett County has written a letter to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp requesting a special session to discuss Medicaid expansion in the state.
District 7 State Senator Nabilah Islam Parkes (D-Duluth) wrote the letter Wednesday, Dec. 10 and posted it to her social media pages the next day. She said the call comes in response to congressional Republicans blocking the further extension of enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, which had been enacted under the America Rescue Plan Act (ARPA.)
“Without new federal action, which at this point appears unlikely, millions of Americans — including more than a million Georgians enrolled in Georgia Access plans — will face automatic healthcare premium hikes starting January 1, 2026,” Parkes said. “Now Georgia is on the verge of compounding one healthcare crisis with another. As enhanced ACA subsidies reach their federally imposed deadline, and other ARPA public health subsidies sunset, the window is also closing to take advantage of ARPA incentive funding to reduce the cost of Medicaid expansion.”
Parkes said the deadline to utilize the increased Federal Medicaid Assistance Percentage money offered by ARPA is Dec. 31, three weeks from the date of the letter. She urged Kemp to push for the state legislature to use that money to relieve healthcare premium increases on Georgians.
“You have demonstrated before that when a matter is urgent, you are willing to act decisively. You have called previous special sessions when you believed Georgia faced challenges that required immediate action. The threats facing our healthcare system now…are every bit as severe,” Parkes said. “Tens of thousands of people in my State Senate district rely on the enhanced subsidies to make health insurance affordable…For families barely making ends meet, this would put basic healthcare out of reach.”
Kemp has not publicly responded to the letter as of noon Friday, Dec. 12.
From Atlanta News First via WALB:
After the U.S. Senate failed on Thursday to renew 2021 tax credits tied to the Affordable Care Act, Georgians using the subsidies to pay for their health coverage are wondering what to do next.
The credits, which were expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, will revert to their original rate. But for some using them – especially people with health impairments – it may not be enough to cover their costs.
“Insurance for me is a huge relief, as long as I have it,” said Himali Patel, who suffers from multiple autoimmune disorders and has battled cancer.
Patel said the tax credits allowed her to afford her coverage, so while not having insurance isn’t an option for her, she’ll have to find other ways to trim her budget.
“In my world, I don’t really have a choice. My choice is literally, ‘Do I stay alive, do I function as I’m currently functioning, or do I have no insurance?’” she said. “I just have to make it work some other way and, unfortunately, ‘some other’ way just means making really tough decisions.”
Patel also said that the Republican-backed alternative, a program similar to health savings accounts for Americans, wouldn’t be near enough to cover the cost of fighting her illnesses.
“I wish they were more common because they might be cheaper to treat, but they’re rare,” she said.
Republicans at the state level have argued that Georgia, with the second-largest state-based health care exchange in the nation, provides plenty of options for patients.
“We have, in Georgia, done a really wonderful job of doing this. Access has been a terribly great success,” said Republican state Sen. Ben Watson, a medical doctor. “For the hysteria to get started here in the state is just unwarranted now, and I think it’s unwarranted in the future.”
The Georgia Public Service Commission and Georgia Power may have reached a deal for expanding the utility’s generation fleet, according to the Capitol Beat News Service via the Augusta Chronicle.
Georgia’s dominant electric power monopoly has a reached a tentative deal with state regulators that would allow a major expansion of energy production, mostly from natural gas.
The Public Service Commission’s public interest advocacy staff had previously advised approving only a third of Georgia Power’s request for a 10-megawatt expansion. They had argued in November that ratepayers would face “unreasonable risk” if the company built its new power plants and no one came to use the energy.
But on Wednesday the agency revealed that the staff had negotiated a “stipulated agreement” that would authorize nearly everything Georgia Power requested, with some new guarantees for ratepayers.
The company wants more capacity so it can sell more energy as it forecasts massive growth in demand from data centers. Those server warehouses that power the internet have been sprouting across the state and devouring energy to enable the computations behind artificial intelligence.
The agreement will not be final unless the five elected commissioners, all Republicans, approve it next week.
At month’s end, two of them will be off the commission, having lost decisively in the November election to two Democrats who campaigned against a series of recent electricity price hikes.
One of the incoming commissioners, Peter Hubbard, attended a protest outside the commission offices before Wednesday’s hearing, where he said he had just learned about the new agreement revealed earlier in the morning.
He said the estimated cost of $17 billion was just the start and that it could rise to $50 billion or even $60 billion during the 45-year lifespan of the power expansion plan.
He warned that “speculative customers” might not show up if they find better deals in other states, and he said a “data center bubble” could pop, leaving ratepayers on the hook for unnecessary power plant construction.
The state can provide affordable, clean and reliable energy, said Hubbard, who takes office Jan. 1, “but we must not lock ourselves into a massively expensive mistake, with the decision made by two commissioners who are just days away from leaving office.”
The protest moved indoors for the hearing, but police escorted several back out after they caused a disruption.
“This whole meeting is a sham,” one man yelled as he exited. “They’ve already made a deal.”
Nearly 50 members of the public then got to speak. A handful, including a developer and a representative of the Clayton County Chamber of Commerce, backed the expansion, saying economic growth and jobs rely on power.
But a representative from DeKalb County read a resolution by the county commission that called on the Public Service Commission to delay its vote to ensure more time to evaluate the impact on local governments, customers, public health and the environment.
Ava Trachtenberg, an environmental science student at Emory University, spoke of the impact on the climate of burning more fossil fuel for energy. She said she was concerned that extreme heat, flooding and drought would cause crop failures and political instability.
“I don’t know about you,” she said, “but I want my future to be livable.”
Some were concerned about cost, such as Joshua Tolbert, an energy engineer, who said Georgia Power should only be authorized to build power plants for customers with executed contracts.
Satya Vatti, a nurse, said the tentative agreement would let Georgia Power profit from the expanded supply while ratepayers assumed the risk if demand didn’t materialize.
“While working people agonize over the necessities they’ll be able to afford and which they’ll have to cut each month, Georgia Power investors and executives are raking in cash,” said Vatti, who described herself as a socialist.
Records from a November hearing indicate that the commission’s public advocacy staff had misgivings about ratepayers absorbing the cost of unrealistic demand forecasts.
“Staff’s primary recommendation is that the Commission should approve the acquisition of 3,125″ megawatts, the document said.
The staff’s turnaround Wednesday to support 10 megawatts in new capacity was due in part to a pledge by Georgia Power to calculate rates based on the forecast rather than actual revenue from “large load” customers like data centers. The pledge means a “downward pressure” for the typical residential customer’s rates, amounting to $8.50 a month, said Jeffrey R. Grubb, a director at Georgia Power who testified Wednesday.
“We want to assure the commission and our customers that certification of the requested resources will not change residential customers’ rates,” he said. “As we have stated before and reiterate here, existing customers will not pay for the cost associated with serving new large load customers.”
But that guaranty is only good from 2029 through 2031.
Tricia Pridemore, one of the five commissioners scheduled to vote Dec. 19 on Georgia Power’s expansion request, said large load ratepayers drive economic development and pump tax revenue into local government. She said she’d heard of one community that was “retiring” property taxes because of the income and of others using the proceeds to build schools or waterworks.
That is a “tremendous benefit,” she said. “So when these folks up here want to talk about affordability, that’s just one more way where that revenue is being put to use at a local level.”
In Washington, the Promoting Efficient Review for Modern Infrastructure Today Act, also called the PERMIT Act, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Mike Collins (R-Jackson) passed, according to AccessWDUN.
An act sponsored by U.S. Rep. for Georgia’s 10th Congressional District Mike Collins passed the House in a 221-205 vote on Thursday largely on party lines.
The act looks to reform the Clean Water Act (CWA) of 1972 by excluding certain bodies of water from its protection.
The specific amendment is to exclude waste treatment systems, including treatment ponds or lagoons; short streams that only flow in response to precipitation; prior converted cropland; groundwater and “any other features determined to be excluded by the Administrator or the Secretary of the Army, acting through the Chief of Engineers.”
Collins said in a release that the bill will have an “immediate impact” for energy producers, the agriculture industry, and home and road builders.
“As we enter a new era with a renewed focus on domestic energy production and growth, this legislation delivers the tools that our country needs to build faster, smarter, and safer,” Collins said. “When I was appointed as Chairman of the Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee, I put myself on a mission to make our government more efficient and productive for the American people. I am proud to say that we are doing just that with the PERMIT Act.”
Only six Democrats voted “yea,” including: Sanford Bishop (D-GA).
Democrat Beth Fuller announced she is running for State House District 53, a seat held by Republican Rep. Deborah Silcox, according to Rough Draft Atlanta.
Fuller served as a contractor for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta for a decade before the Trump administration laid off thousands of jobs in Georgia, including her contract, according to a news release.
Fuller is seeking the seat held by Republican Deborah Silcox, who won the election in November 2022 to represent District 53 in November 2022. The district encompasses parts of Sandy Springs, Buckhead, and Roswell.
“I’m running because Georgia families deserve bold leadership to navigate the challenges ahead. I refuse to stand by and watch Georgia politicians act as a rubber stamp for Trump’s agenda—or even worse, cheer on the destruction while Georgia families lose their jobs,” said Fuller, according to the release. “For over 25 years, I’ve worked in public health, advocating and educating policymakers on what it takes to build healthy communities.”
Fuller said she’s ready to work across the aisle to get the work done. She said providing affordable healthcare should unites Georgians, not divide them.
Democrat and former State Senator Jason Esteves (Atlanta) campaigned in Albany, according to the Albany Herald.
When a Democratic candidate makes a trip to Albany, one spot he or she invariably hits is Helen’s Barber Shop. On Thursday, gubernatorial candidate Jason Esteves made a stop at the West Highland Avenue landmark.
The candidate, who gave up his state Senate seat to join a pack of six other Democrats seeking the nomination, met with a politically active group of about 25 to lay out his vision for the state.
Among his proposals were paid child care for mothers with young children, building affordable housing and making health care more accessible, particularly in rural Georgia where residents often have to drive a significant distance to see a doctor.
“I’m running for governor of Georgia for a simple reason: I’m tired of seeing people working harder than they’ve ever worked and barely getting by … seeing schools defunded and the cost of living going up,” he told the audience.
“I taught 150 kids who were no different than everybody else’s, but because of where they live, they did not have the same opportunities others have,” Estevez said. “Georgia is one of two states that does not have a needs-based scholarship. I’m going to make sure we have one.”
As well as making health care more accessible, Esteves said he wants it to be more affordable.
“As your governor, I’m going to make sure we increase access to health care by doing what we should have done more than a decade ago: increase access to Medicaid,” he said. “I’m also going to work to build health care hubs. We need more facilities, more buildings where people can go to get the care they need.”
“We have a homeless crisis all across the state because we don’t have enough affordable housing,” he said. “We also want to make sure we protect renters from predatory landlords.”
“One hundred fifty of 159 counties are seeing more deaths than they see births,” he said. “South and middle Georgia have not gotten the attention they need to survive.”
Chatham County Police Department withdrew from a SWAT partnership with the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office over misused equipment, according to the Savannah Morning News.
The two law enforcement agencies formed a partnership to operate a SWAT team in 2018 when the CCPD was reformed after the combined Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department split. Recent reporting by an online news organization, Georgia Virtue, revealed the CCSO allowed a local family to use a $275,000 BearCat armored vehicle used in SWAT operations for photos at a wedding.
When CCPD Chief Jeff Hadley learned about the BearCat being used for personal purposes, he decided to withdraw from the agreement as the incident “subjected the county to unnecessary liability and embarrassment.”
“SWAT Team Operations are an extremely ‘High Risk Law Enforcement Function,’ which necessitates strong relations amongst its leaders and open paths to communication,” the CCPD release stated. “The lack of the aforementioned puts SWAT Team members and the community at risk.”
The Trump Administration lowered the wages of migrant farm workers in Georgia under the H-2A guest worker program, according to the AJC.
Tens of thousands of migrant farmworkers in Georgia saw their hourly wages slashed by as much as 35% in late 2025 after a Trump administration policy change.
The affected farmworkers are in the U.S. legally. They come in for months at a time through a temporary visa on which the state’s agricultural employers have come to rely for their labor needs: the H-2A guest worker program. The federal government sets those wages.
The Trump administration’s nationwide pay cuts brought Georgia-based farmworkers’ minimum hourly wages from $16.08 at the beginning of the year to $10.52.
In response, a coalition of farmworkers, including one based in Georgia, filed suit last month in federal court. Their argument: Cutting H-2A wages will also trigger a cut in the pay and standard of living of U.S. agricultural workers.
In the first three quarters of the 2025 fiscal year, Georgia welcomed 35,223 H-2A workers, second only to Florida’s 36,232.
That’s a familiar position for the state. Georgia was a top-two destination state for H-2A farmworkers for six of the past eight years.
In 2024, Georgia received a peak of 43,436 H-2A farmworkers, up from 10,387 just 10 years prior. As the program has grown, industry groups and experts have told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution the H-2A visa has become growers’ only source of dependable labor.
According to Cesar Escalante, a professor in the University of Georgia’s Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Georgia takes in a disproportionately large number of H-2A workers relative to other, bigger states. That’s due, in part, to Georgia farms producing more labor-intensive crops, Escalante said.
Many are small and medium-sized operations that can’t afford to turn to mechanization as an alternative to bringing guest workers in, he said.
Speakers at the 2026 Georgia Economic Outlook presentation said the state’s economic growth is expected to slow in 2026, according to the Georgia Recorder via the Tifton Gazette.
Economists are offering a “sobering” forecast for 2026, marking the second consecutive year of slowed growth across both Georgia and the U.S. at large. The state’s economy is projected to grow 1.5% in 2026, only marginally better than the 1.3% growth expected nationally, according to economists at the University of Georgia.
During a 2026 Georgia Economic Outlook presentation in downtown Atlanta Wednesday, interim Terry College of Business dean Santanu Chatterjee told business leaders that Georgia’s economy grew by roughly 3% in 2025. But heading into 2026, he said, growth will be slower as a result of “uncertainty” around trade policies, slowing population growth, labor force declines, and slower national economic growth.
Unemployment is also expected to be on the rise, with Georgia’s rates estimated to climb to 4.1%, an increase of half a percentage point. National unemployment is expected to sit at 4.7%, up from the current 4.4%. Inflation is expected to hover around 3.5%, up from 3% in September.
As with last year’s prediction, Georgia is expected to have a stronger economy than the U.S. as a whole, but the state’s economy is still predicted to struggle. Nationally, the U.S. faces a 49% risk of recession.
Georgia has a few protective factors that make its economy more resilient than the U.S. as a whole, Chatterjee said. Existing economic development projects from companies like EnergyTek Corporation, TriNet and JS Link America will continue to ramp up production.
Additionally, the state’s numerous military bases and the cities around them will likely benefit from increased federal spending on defense and immigration enforcement. An expanded immigrant detention facility near Folkston, Georgia — which is expected to be the nation’s largest — is also projected to create 400 new jobs in the area.
Data centers are also expected to be a major source of growth in the upcoming year. According to one report, Georgia recently surpassed Virginia as the most active data center market in the nation.
Though Georgia is expected to have a slightly brighter economic outlook than the U.S. at large, national trends around wage growth and consumer spending indicate that the country is experiencing a “K-shaped economy” where high earners see their wealth and income rise, while lower earners struggle to keep pace with the rising cost of living.
“Across the board, lower income households appear to be significantly more challenged right now than the rest of the economy,” said Mark Mathews, the executive director of research at the National Retail Federation, who delivered the national economic forecast at Wednesday’s event.
As President Donald Trump wraps up the first year of his second term, his policies on tariffs and immigration are also beginning to make their impact on the national economy.
Tariffs on imports are expected to settle at around 15% in 2026, which is six times higher than the rate at the beginning of 2025. The rate is not high enough to trigger a recession by itself, Chatterjee said, but elevated global tensions and economic uncertainty could slow growth.
Some companies may also choose to postpone hiring and other business decisions “until trade policies stabilize and become more predictable.”
Trump’s immigration policies could also lead to changes in the economy. Normally, immigrants help contribute to annual population growth, Mathews said. But under policies that have ramped up immigration enforcement and placed a new emphasis on “self-deportation,” 2026 “could well be the first year in American history where we have a population decline,” he said.
From USA Today via the Savannah Morning News:
Despite low consumer sentiment, retail spending has not slowed down, Mathews said.
The drop in consumer sentiment — how consumers feel about the economy, their personal finances and their savings — started during the pandemic and has since continued to decline as people notice higher prices at the grocery store or the gas station, and higher debt with lower savings. But, these feelings are “disconnected” from trends in the retail market, Mathews said.
“Consumers are spending. They’re not feeling great, but the consumer is really the bright spot in the economy,” he said. Economists are seeing “the highest percentage contribution toward GDP from consumer spending that we’ve seen in the last 15 years.”
Consumers bring a lot of this spending momentum into the holidays, where some companies will make up to 20% of their profit in the last quarter, according to Mathews.
High earners, however, are carrying most of the weight behind consumer power. In 1990, the top 10% of earners accounted for about 37% of total consumer expenditures, Mathews said. Today, that same group makes up 50%.
This is called a “K-shaped” economy, when the spending of high earners masks the decreased spending of low and middle income households, according to Mathews.
Mathews also said part of the disconnect between positive economic reports and American’s lived experiences comes from data being analyzed year-over-year, while many consumers compare the price of necessities to costs five or ten years ago.
“Growth will be slow because of uncertainty related to trade policies, a slowdown in population growth, decline in the size of the labor force and slower overall growth of the U.S. economy,” Chatterjee said. “These factors will keep the risk of recession at an elevated risk in the near term, as in years past.”
Georgia is being courted for data centers, and is set to surpass Virginia as the top state for data center development, much of which is used for artificial intelligence, Chatterjee said. The Public Service Commission recently considered a pitch from Georgia Power to expand power production to handle the projected drain from data centers.
There is uncertainty, however, on what these data center investments will mean for the job market as artificial intelligence improves.
The State House Committee on Economic Development and Tourism heard calls for more state investment in promoting tourism, according to The Brunswick News.
If Georgia is to become the No. 1 state for tourism, the state must spend more money to market the brand.
That was the message from speakers who addressed the state House Committee on Economic Development and Tourism, which met at the Jekyll Island Convention Center on Friday.
The annual budget for Georgia’s tourism office is around $11.8 million annually, which lags behind other states, said Michael Owens, president and CEO of the Tourism Leadership Council in Savannah. Out of that, around $5.8 million is used to market the state’s Explore Georgia brand.
He pointed to the biggest business brand in the state, and one of the largest in the world, Coca-Cola. It spends billions on advertising for the main brand and its sub-brands, and it works, Owens said.
By spending more money on marketing the overall brand of Explore Georgia, all the sub-brands, the communities like the Golden Isles and Savannah, will benefit, he said.
“It’s not that you don’t take care of tourism,” he told the committee of state representatives. “We appreciate what you do. What we hope to show you is that more will get us all more.”
While Georgia is pouring less than $6 million each year into Explore Georgia, which is about $0.50 per person in the state, states like South Carolina and North Carolina are pouring more than $27 million into marketing their brand to attract new visitors.
“What you have to remember is that we are in a rivalry. Our customers have choices,” Owens said.
Rail-borne freight from Savannah to the Appalachian Regional Port in Chatsworth hit a record level last week, according to the Savannah Morning News.
Georgia’s freight rail line from the Port of Savannah to Murray County had a record haul last month, as seven CSX trains per week carried nearly 4,000 containers, up 35% from November 2024.
The Appalachian Regional Port opened in 2018 near Chatsworth, about an hour and a half north of Atlanta.
The Georgia Ports Authority reported Thursday that the rail traffic to and from the inland port reduces congestion and emissions in metro Atlanta by cutting back on truck mileage.
The agency also pointed to a University of Georgia study that said the port supported an increase of about 5,600 jobs in the northwest part of the state between fiscal years 2023 and 2024, for a 14% increase.
From the Dalton Daily Citizen:
The Appalachian Regional Port achieved its busiest November on record, moving 3,876 containers last month — a nearly 35 percent jump from a year earlier.
“Our customers are experiencing a very strong, smooth running supply chain for their exports and imports using the Appalachian Regional Port. This enables them to compete and win more business in world markets,” said Georgia Ports Chief Commercial Officer Flavio Batista.
The roughly 1,000-container gain underscores the inland terminal’s expanding role as a logistics hub. The rail facility provides daily service, with seven outbound and seven inbound trains per week to and from the Port of Savannah. Set near the town of Chatsworth, about an hour and a half north of Atlanta, the rail-served terminal connects directly to Savannah via CSX. Each container railed to the Port of Savannah through the inland hub eliminates about 710 roundtrip truck miles, reducing highway congestion and emissions through Metro Atlanta.
“The Appalachian Regional Port is a strong operational service for supply chains. We have a 48 hour rail transit with daily service from ARP connecting to our 35 ship calls a week in Savannah,” said Chief Operating Officer Ed McCarthy. “With easy access to Interstate 75 and U.S. 411, the ARP is ideally located to generate business opportunities and drive economic growth for Northwest Georgia.”
The state of Georgia lists the ARP’s home of Murray County as a Tier 1 county, incentivizing development through the highest job creation tax credits available at $4,000 per new job. Since opening in 2018, the ARP has helped to draw billions in private investment and thousands of jobs from manufacturers. The ARP is in the 15-county Northwest Georgia economic development region, in which the economic impact from the Port of Savannah supports 45,800 full- and part-time jobs. According to an economic impact study by the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business, port-supported employment across Northwest Georgia increased by 14 percent or more than 5,600 jobs between fiscal year 2023 and FY2024.
The ARP handled more than 46,000 containers in fiscal 2025, which ended June 30, 2025.
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