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Deadline nears to lodge appeals on assessments 2024 will be final year for 3-year value freeze By BEECHER TUTTLE newsroom@appenmedia.com
Corrections, according to documentation Richards provided to the Herald. Richards suggested the software can be used to identify registrations of people who are no longer eligible to vote in the state, such as those who have permanently moved out of Georgia or who are serving a felony sentence.
ATLANTA — Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp in April signed a bill to limit large annual property tax increases that have plagued homeowners in Metro Atlanta suburbs for the better part of a decade. While the legislation should help property owners in counties like Fulton, DeKalb and Forsyth, it will also quietly remove what some deem a loophole that has benefitted taxpayers who know the ins and outs of the property assessment process. The coming days and weeks will likely represent the last chance homeowners have to lock in their property values without much of a fight. Set to be enacted prior to the 2025 tax season, House Bill 581 will enable counties to limit the appreciation of property values to no more than the current rate of inflation. The new law comes on the heels of significant annual surges in taxable property values in most every county in North Georgia and parts of Metro Atlanta. However, the bill will also soon prevent homeowners from taking advantage of the current system where simply appealing a property tax assessment will freeze the appraisal value for the current and two succeeding years, no matter if they actually win their case. Starting in 2025, property owners will need an appeal to be
See VOTER, Page 15
See TAXES, Page 6
JAKE DRUKMAN/APPEN MEDIA
From left, Dr. John “Rick” Richards and Stefan Bartelski speak at a press conference following the June 28 Forsyth County Elections Board meeting. Bartelski unsuccessfully challenged 742 Forsyth County voter registrations using information from EagleAI, a program Richards developed to identify potentially ineligible voters.
Elections Board tosses AI voter challenges By JAKE DRUKMAN newsroom@appenmedia.com FORSYTH COUNTY, Ga. — The Forsyth County Board of Voter Registrations and Elections rejected challenges to 742 voter registrations June 28 citing a lack of evidence that the voters were ineligible to vote in Georgia. The list of challenged voters was
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generated by a group of activists using a software called “EagleAI,” which creator Dr. John “Rick” Richards says is not actually an artificial intelligence program. Instead, the software compares the state’s publicly available voter rolls with other records, such as the National Change of Address registry and inmate records from the Georgia Department of
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