TIFTON — Hunter Hill, who’s running for the Republican nomination for governor, wants to see Georgia focus on three top priorities: public safety, transportation and education.

Hill, a life-long Georgian, went to West Point on a football scholarship.

From there, he became an infantry officer and later attended airborne school, followed by ranger school at Fort Benning.

It was his third combat tour in Afghanistan that sparked an interest in running for office.

“In my third tour in Afghanistan, I really noticed how the government misuses its resources,” said Hill. “I was an airborne ranger. I was trained to close with and destroy the enemy, and yet I was being used in a nation building capacity to win the hearts and minds of the Afghans.”

When he got out of the Army, he ran for State Senate, serving two terms.

“We have a lot of those same broken philosophies in our state government,” said Hill. “We put a lot of money behind a certain idea and it’s not going to deliver results.

“What I want to do is have a more limited, focused government that delivers results for taxpayers.”

To start with, Hill wants to do away with Georgia’s state income tax.

“That will allow families to keep more of their hard earned money and will allow businesses to have an environment that is more conducive to people keeping more of their hard-earned money or putting it into the business if they want,” said Hill.

Doing so would also make Georgia more competitive with some of its neighboring states who don’t have a state income tax, Hill said.

“And if Tifton, for example, were to not have an income tax, I believe it would attract opportunities for economic development,” said Hill.

In transportation, Hill wants to double the state’s transportation spending.

“When Georgia was really growing in the 70s, we were spending 15 percent of the budget on transportation,” said Hill. “Now we’re spending 5 [percent]…I want to put, basically, a billion more dollars a year in transportation without raising taxes.”

To accomplish that, Hill proposes pulling money away from other areas of state government.

“Everything’s going to be on the table: higher education, welfare, food stamps, healthcare,” said Hill. “All these areas which have gone up over time in terms of government investment.

“Then we’ll focus on the other things.”

He also supports putting more money into public safety, but he stops short of backing a top-down pay increase for law enforcement.

“We don’t like the federal government to tell us what to do as a state,” said Hill. “So I would not want to put an unfunded mandate on cities and counties in this state, requiring them to pay more to their law enforcement. But the cities and counties in our state need to do the right thing and prioritize public safety.”

Education is another focus.

For education, Hill wants to give parents more choices about where to send their children and offer them education savings accounts.

“The free market principal of competition is not currently in education,” said Hill. “You’re assigned a school based off of where you live. If you had choices or options where the consumer, in this case the parents and child, were able to choose, you would elevate all of public education.”

On the educator side, Hill decries regulations for teachers and principals.

“We’re preventing teachers from teaching. There’s so many burdens and regulations on teachers,” said Hill. “Principals aren’t allowed to lead the way they used to.”

Hill sees private and charter schools as a possible answer to that regulation.

“It’s hard to take Title 20 and strip it of all the regulations,” said Hill. “Instead of reforming public education, we should compete against it.”

The May 22 primary election will determine the Republican candidate.

If that’s Hill — and he also wins the Nov. 6, 2018 election — he’ll enter office with two first priorities.

“It’s gonna be a toss up between eliminating the income tax and immediately getting into reforming education,” said Hill. “Those are my top two priorities, [but] probably eliminating the income tax. One of those two major planks is going to get done in the first year.”