Some Democrats called on the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to determine whether Mr. Walker had voted illegally in that state or had falsely attested that he was a resident. A spokeswoman for the bureau said in an email on Tuesday that it had not received a request to investigate the matter.
What has Mr. Walker said about whether he resides in Georgia?
In an interview posted in September by Rolling Out, a multimedia company, Mr. Walker said that he often stayed at a hotel in Atlanta instead of his residence of “about 17 years” because of the upkeep involved in maintaining the home.
“What’s strange is I sit on a board of hotels, and so when I come back to Atlanta I hardly ever came back to this house because I’d stay at the hotel,” Mr. Walker said in the interview at the Atlanta residence. “Because not that I’m lazy. I didn’t want to clean up. When you open up a house, you have to fix it up and do all this. So it’s easier to stay at a hotel and not come to the house.”
Fulton County listed the Atlanta residence’s fair market value this year as $853,800.
Mr. Walker said that he grew up about two-and-a-half hours away in the middle of the state, where he noted that he has a house and his mother lives.
What is a homestead exemption?
Homestead exemptions, offered in many states, are generally geared toward giving homeowners a tax break on their primary residence.
In Texas, Mr. Walker received an exemption of roughly $1,500 for his home in the Dallas area, which he listed as his primary residence. He has received the tax relief for that home since 2012, according to an official in the tax appraisal office of Tarrant County, where Mr. Walker’s Texas home is located. The program requires recipients to own and occupy the home as their principal residence.
In Atlanta, no homestead exemptions were in place for the property associated with Mr. Walker, according to Jessica A. Corbitt-Dominguez, a spokeswoman for Fulton County. There were no pending applications for tax relief, either.