Georgia Today: Data center jobs report; Kemp delivers State of the State; Synovus Financial ended

Peter Biello: Welcome to the Georgia Today podcast. Here we bring you the latest reports from the GPB newsroom. On today's episode, a corrected report shows data centers don't create as many jobs as once thought. Gov. Brian Kemp delivers his annual State of the State address, and Synovus Financial is no more. How will its hometown of Columbus, Ga., be affected? 

Kevin Blair: We have a total of around 850 team members in the Columbus area. And so what you should see in Columbus is not a great deal of change. 

Peter Biello: Today is Thursday, Jan. 15. I'm Peter Biello, and this is Georgia Today. 

Story 1:

Peter Biello: Gov. Brian Kemp delivered his final State of the State address to the Legislature today. GPB's Sarah Kallis reports. 

Sarah Kallis: In his eighth and final address, Kemp announced state investment in a new needs-based effort to pay for college, called the Dream Scholarship. 

Brian Kemp: I believe we owe it to every child to ensure they start out on a level playing field, no matter their ZIP code. Therefore, my amended budget proposal invests $325 million in the University System of Georgia's scholarship program. 

Sarah Kallis: The scholarship is the first of its kind in Georgia history. He also announced another round of tax rebates and a one-time bonus for state employees, and an accelerated income tax cut to bring the income tax down to just under 5%. He did not comment on a Senate proposal to eliminate the income. For GPB News, I'm Sarah Kallis at the state capitol. 

Story 2:

Peter Biello: Georgia Democrats are calling Republican tax cuts an illusion. State House Minority Leader Columbus State Rep. Carolyn Hughley delivered the party's official response to Kemp's speech. 

Carolyn Hughley: While they cut taxes for the top, they're increasing the pressure on homeowners, renters, and local governments to make up the difference. This is not tax relief. This is cost shifting, and working Georgians always end up holding the bag. 

Peter Biello: You can follow the latest in Georgia politics at GPB.org/news. 

Credit: Associated Press

Story 3:

Peter Biello: A district attorney, a state senator, and a trash-hauling entrepreneur are among the 22 candidates aiming to succeed former U.S. congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene in a Northwest Georgia congressional seat. A total of 17 Republicans filed to run by the time qualifying closed yesterday, as did three Democrats, a Libertarian, and an independent. Candidates will run on the same all-party ballot on March 10. If no one wins a majority, the top two finishers will go on to a runoff four weeks later on April 7. Greene resigned from Congress earlier this month following a tumultuous five years. 

Story 4:

Peter Biello: The head of a nonpartisan group supporting Georgia prosecutors says a new state law used by Donald Trump and others to seek attorney fees is likely unconstitutional. The Georgia Prosecuting Attorneys Council Executive Director Pete Scandalakis wrote in a court filing yesterday that the law denies county governments due process when defendants request reimbursement. The law allows defendants to request fees if a prosecutor is disqualified for improper conduct. Trump is seeking more than $6 million from Fulton County after the now-dropped prosecution led by County District Attorney Fani Willis. A spokesperson for Willis declined to comment. 

Story 5:

Peter Biello: State auditors say they made a mistake in a report issued last month on the costs and benefits of data centers. The Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts issued a correction yesterday saying data centers create fewer jobs and add less value to the state's economy than originally estimated. In a report first released on Christmas Eve, the agency said the state effectively gave away $474 million in the fiscal year that ended in July by exempting data centers from some taxes. In exchange, auditors said data centers created about 28,000 construction-related jobs in 2025, adding $3.4 billion to the state's economy, and they created more than 5,000 data center operations jobs for an additional $823 million injection into the state economy. In the correction, the state agency revised those numbers: Data centers produce less than a third as many jobs and less than third as much economic value. That's according to the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia. Data centers actually produced more than 8,000 construction jobs and added $1 billion to the economy and more than 1,000 operations jobs for another $247 million added. There was no explanation for the error. 

Story 6:

Peter Biello: Synovus Financial corporation is no more. The Columbus-based bank completed its merger with Nashville-based Pinnacle Financial Partners with the new year. The union creates the largest bank holding company in Georgia. The headquarters of the combined holding company will be based in Atlanta while Pinnacle headquarters remains in Nashville. So where does that leave Columbus, the bank's home since 1888? GPB's Orlando Montoya recently spoke about the merger and what comes next with Kevin Blair, president and CEO of Pinnacle.

Orlando Montoya: Mr. Blair, first of all, can you talk a little bit about the history of Synovus in Columbus? 

Kevin Blair: It's actually a really great story. In 1888, there was a mill worker who was working at the cotton mill. And one of the pieces of machinery happened to snag her skirt at the hemline. And when it did, money fell out of the sewn-in hem of her skirt. The mill owner at the time said, well, "Why would you keep your money sewn in the hem of your skirt?" And she said, "I have no other safe place to keep it." And from that random act of kindness, he said, "Well, why don't you keep your savings in my vault?" That first lady took advantage of that. He started offering that to all of the other mill workers. And that's when Columbus Bank and Trust basically began. And I love that story because it was on a random act of kindness. 

Orlando Montoya: Let's talk about the state of the company right now in Columbus. How many employees does Pinnacle currently have in the Columbus area? 

Kevin Blair: We have a total of around 850 team members in the Columbus area. And that number is largely a function of technology, operations, a lot of our corporate service areas, as well as we have around 13 branches in the MSA. And so what you should see in Columbus is not a great deal of change. All of our client frontline bankers will stay intact. No one's changing. There was no overlap with the legacy Pinnacle franchise. So there's no reason to close branches or to downsize any of the frontline team members, those will all stay intact. Some of the corporate service functions — we also call those, some people would call them back office functions, non-client facing — there'll be some overlap with other areas in the company and there'll some rightsizing. But what you should know when we announced this merger, we said that this merger was more about growth, less about reductions. And so we committed to a cost synergy number that would only represent a headcount reduction of less than 5% of the combined company. And so just know our job is to make sure that we understand the impacts in these communities and we largely can minimize the impact from an employment standpoint. 

Orlando Montoya: Can you talk about the corporate philanthropy, community outreach, and the overall impact of Synovus in the community and how that will continue under Pinnacle? 

Kevin Blair: Well look, back to the 137 years, we believe that strong banks build strong communities and strong communities support strong banks. One of the reasons we did this deal, back-to-the-scale with the sole, we need to get larger. And when you grow your revenue faster, when you have a bigger platform from which to serve clients, it should be rising tides lift all boats. And so what we believe is that our commitment, our philanthropic commitment, both monetarily as well as the resources, the number of hours that we commit in our communities, those will stay intact because as I said, the people are not going anywhere. If we grow our top line faster, it just gives us the ability to put more of that revenue to work in our community by giving even more back. 

Orlando Montoya: What kind of conversations have you been having with Columbus leaders in business and government? 

Kevin Blair: We have a monthly meeting of community leaders, and I'm blessed to be part of that. And as you can imagine, the questions that come up are generally focused on a couple things. No. 1, they wanna know what the impact's gonna be to the employment base. I mean, Synovus is one of the larger employers in Columbus, so they wanna understand how that's gonna impact the United Way, what that's going to mean for the underlying economy, and how any sort of job reductions would cause pain. Once we had the discussion that it will be minimal, I think they're very excited to hear that this thing can actually lead to growth. And if growth happens, they think it could actually benefit the Columbus MSA as long as well as all the other MSAs. No. 2, they wanna know about the name change. And I think one of the things that's important to note for the Synovus name, we only went to the Synovus name in 2018. For most of the years of our 130-year, 37-year heritage, we had individually chartered banks and branches across the Southeast. So in Columbus, we were Columbus Bank and Trust. In Birmingham, we were First Commercial Bank. In Atlanta, we were the Bank of North Georgia. We didn't change that until 2018. So what I would submit to you is although the Synovus name has some pride and legacy to it, we've only been branded Synovus for about seven years. People wanna understand when the name's gonna change and that's gonna happen in 2027, when we do the systems conversion. 

Orlando Montoya: Pinnacle stock value has declined since the merger was announced in June. What does that say about investors' view of the union? 

Kevin Blair: There's an old adage that in the short run, the stock market is a voting machine and the long run, it's a weighing machine. And so what you've seen happen, and it's been published by various analysts, most have stated that the reason the stock price declined on both firms is that the investment community wanted to see Synovus and Pinnacle sell to a larger bank, thinking that they would get a larger premium up front. And that may have been the case. We didn't have any suitors. We weren't trying to sell ourselves. Pinnacle was looking for a partner to continue their legacy. And so it's easy to say that in the short run, you could go out and get a large premium, even if that existed. But I think what those same investors would say is that over the long haul, that that may not be best for the team members in this company. It may not best for the clients, it may not be best those communities, and ultimately for the shareholders. Because if you sell yourself to a larger bank, you lose your identity and ultimately, that could all fall to impacting clients and ultimately having turnover in the institution. We've seen that happen in the industry. The short run, people are voting based on what they wish would have happened. But I think you're going to see when we build this bank, which we will, we will be the most profitable regional bank, the highest level of client satisfaction amongst regional banks, the fastest-growing regional bank, and the most efficient regional bank. Well, if those four things don't matter, then you probably aren't investing in regional banks. But we think we're creating something very, very special. 

Orlando Montoya: How do you intend to do that? And whose territory are you gonna compete in? I mean, name some names. 

Kevin Blair: Well, look, I always hate naming names because it just creates whiteboard material for these other banks. But Orlando, here's the simple answer to that: We're going to win based on talent, and we're going win based a level of client service that no one else has. So when we made this decision, we're gonna move to this Pinnacle model, we're gonna start expanding our talent base at a much faster pace. We committed next year to add 225 new revenue producers. In 2027, that number will be 250. That will serve as the impetus for growth. And ultimately, we'll be able to take those resources from some of those larger institutions. And when they come over, you can imagine that they're able to win some of the business that they were able to bank at their previous institution. And that track record, Pinnacle has been doing it for 25 years. We started doing several years ago, and so It's not a pipe dream. It's something that we've — that's been proven that we can be successful at doing. And now we're just gonna accelerate that in the legacy Synovus side. 

Orlando Montoya: Kevin Blair, President and CEO of Pinnacle Financial Partners. Thank you very much. 

Kevin Blair: Thank you, Orlando. It's great to be with you today. 

Story 7:

Peter Biello: Officials in the Middle Georgia city of Forsyth deadlocked yesterday in a vote on whether to recommend a 12 million-square-foot data center project move forward. GPB's Grant Blankenship has more.

Grant Blankenship: The Forsyth Technology Campus is planned for a 6-mile-long strip of timberland. It was annexed from Monroe County into the city of Forsyth in 2020. Nearby county residents like Bo Drinkard worry now city leaders are ignoring their concerns. 

Bo Drinkard: You don't have any residents from the city from Forsyth live in this land. Zero. City's never run a police call up there, never run a fire call up there. But they're happy to collect the taxes on them.

Grant Blankenship: Before their split vote, zoning officials considered feedback from regional planners and the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, suggesting challenges to water supply and air quality. The Forsyth City Council votes on the data center project on Feb. 2. For GPB News, I'm Grant Blankenship. 

Story 8:

Peter Biello: Augusta-Richmond County officials say the Federal Emergency Management Agency has reimbursed the Augusta government about half of its Hurricane Helene expenses so far. The county says they've submitted $82 million in expenses for FEMA reimbursement and have received about $42 million for damage that occurred now 15 months ago. 

Story 9:

Peter Biello: Celebrations honoring the life and birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are happening across the state this weekend through the federal holiday on Monday. The Atlanta-born civil rights leader would have turned 97 years old on his birthday today, Jan. 15. Bernice King, CEO of the King Center and King's daughter, kicked off the 2026 King holiday observance last week, describing it as a framework for action rather than a remembrance alone. 

Bernice King: As our nation enters another year marked by social strain, economic uncertainty, global conflict and moral confusion, the 2026 King Holiday observance is more critical than ever because we are living in a time when violence, displacement, and dehumanization are being normalized. 

Peter Biello: The celebrations include parades, community service events, runs, and concerts. GPB published a list of some of the weekend's activities that you can find at gpb.org. 

That's it for this edition of Georgia Today. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you want to learn more about these stories, go to gpb.org/news, and remember to subscribe to this podcast because we're coming at you tomorrow with all of the latest Georgia headlines. If you've got feedback, we want to hear from you, send it to us by email. The address is GeorgiaToday@GPB.org. I'm Peter Biello. 

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For more on these stories and more, go to GPB.org/news