ATLANTA – The Georgia House of Representatives overwhelmingly adopted a $30.2 billion fiscal 2023 budget Friday that would increase state spending by 10.8% over the budget lawmakers passed last year.
A year ago, Georgia was struggling with a global pandemic that prompted businesses to close and lay off employees. The shaky economy left Gov. Brian Kemp and lawmakers uncertain of the impact COVID-19 would have on tax collections.
But tax revenues have been unexpectedly strong, allowing the governor and legislator to tee up election-year raises for state workers, teachers and university system employees.
“What a difference a year makes,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Terry England, R-Auburn.
The fiscal 2023 budget, which takes effect July 1, would pour a record $11.8 billion into K-12 education, including more than $300 million to pay for $2,000 raises for K-12 and pre-kindergarten teachers.
The spending plan also would fully fund Georgia’s K-12 student funding formula, which was cut during the early months of the pandemic.
Additional raises would go to correctional officers in Georgia’s adult and juvenile prison systems, and to nurses and aides at state mental hospitals. Those agencies have been hit particularly hard by turnover.
The Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities would receive a nearly $100 million influx of funding to help implement an overhaul of the state’s mental health system. The mental health bill, which the House passed this week, is a top priority of House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge.
The budget also includes a $900 billion bond package. However, the House didn’t add as many building projects as usual because lawmakers decided to accelerate many projects by funding them with cash in the fiscal 2022 mid-year budget rather than with bonds.
Bond projects House lawmakers did add to the fiscal 2023 budget include $13 million for a planned expansion of the University of North Georgia’s Blue Ridge campus – located in Ralston’s House district – and $5 million for the Lake Lanier Islands Conference Center.
Rep. Donna McLeod, D-Lawrenceville, who voted against the budget, objected to a $12.7 million allocation for raises for correctional officers in four private prisons. Democratic lawmakers have opposed private prisons in the past as encouraging the warehousing of low-income African Americans incarcerated for non-violent crimes.
“This ensures we have a thriving school-to-prison pipeline with nice warm bodies,” McLeod said.
The fiscal 2023 budget now moves to the Georgia Senate, which gave the mid-year budget final passage Friday in a unanimous vote.
The mid-year plan includes a $1.6 billion tax refund for all Georgia taxpayers and $5,000 raises for most state workers and university system employees. Non-teaching school employees, including cafeteria and custodial workers and school bus drivers, will receive $2,000 bonuses.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The Republican-controlled Georgia Senate passed controversial legislation Friday prohibiting the teaching of a series of “divisive concepts” on race in the state’s public schools over the objections of Democrats.
The bill, which passed 34-20 along party lines, lists nine concepts teachers could not teach, including that the United States and Georgia are systematically racist and that no race is inherently superior or inferior to any other.
The measure requires local school boards to adopt a process allowing parents to file a complaint to their child’s school if they believe the law has been violated. Parents not satisfied with the response could appeal to the school district’s superintendent, the local school board and – if still not satisfied – to the state Board of Education.
Nothing in the bill would prohibit the teaching of slavery, racial segregation or the Holocaust, said Sen. Bo Hatchett, R-Cornelia, the legislation’s chief sponsor.
“What this bill says is a teacher should not tell a child that because of their race, ethnicity or skin color, they should feel guilty, that it’s their fault,” he said.
Senate Democrats argued the bill is unnecessary because racist concepts are not being taught in Georgia schools.
“What is it we’re trying to stop?” asked Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta. “Do we have a problem we’re not solving?”
Hatchett responded that the divisive concepts listed in the bill would not be taught by “99.9%” of Georgia teachers.
“But 0.1% of the population believes these divisive concepts are true and need to be taught,” he said.
Other opponents said the bill would discourage teachers from addressing racism in their teaching of history for fear of drawing complaints from parents.
“We should not be sending a message that we don’t trust teachers when we are already facing a massive shortage of teachers,” said Sen. Freddie Powell Sims, D-Sasser.
“Let’s not pit parents against teachers,” added Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler, D-Stone Mountain. “Whoever heard of reprimanding teachers for teaching our children?”
Senators approved an amendment proposed by Sen. Sonya Halpern, D-Atlanta, removing the attorney general and local district attorneys from considering appeals from parents not satisfied with the way school officials handled their complaint.
“How we teach our kids is not a criminal justice issue,” she said.
The Senate also removed a provision from the original bill that would have extended its provisions to University System of Georgia students and professors.
The bill now moves to the state House of Representatives, which passed similar legislation last week.
This story isavailable through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The deepening of Savannah Harbor has been completed seven years after the $1 billion project began, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced Wednesday.
The harbor has been deepened from 42 feet to 47 feet to accommodate the giant containerized cargo ships now calling at the Port of Savannah regularly with fewer weight and tidal restrictions.
“A deeper channel means more than just efficient passage for the largest vessels calling the U.S. East Coast,” Griff Lynch, executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority, said Thursday. “It means continued opportunity, job growth and prosperity for the state of Georgia.”
Savannah is the nation’s third busiest port and has been the fastest growing during the last decade. It handled 9.3% of total U.S. containerized cargo volume and 10.5% of all U.S. containerized exports in fiscal 2020.
The dredging project is expected to net more than $291 million in annual benefits to the nation.
The work took longer to plan -15 years – than it did to build. Extensive environmental mitigation was involved, including the construction of a fish bypass around the New Savannah Bluff Lock & Dam up the Savannah River near Augusta, a freshwater impoundment for the city of Savannah’s water treatment plant and recovery of the Civil War ironclad CSS Georgia from the bottom of the river.
This story isavailable through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia House budget writers Thursday approved Gov. Brian Kemp’s record $30.2 billion fiscal 2023 state budget, including the long-awaited second and final installment of a $5,000 teacher pay raise.
The spending plan, which takes effect July 1, would increase teacher salaries by $2,000. Teachers got the other $3,000 in 2019 in keeping with a promise Kemp made on the campaign trail the year before.
The full pay raise was held up for a couple of years by the financial uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus pandemic. But Georgia tax revenues have fared much better than expected, so much so that the governor and lawmakers can afford to be generous in this election year.
“This is an incredible budget for what we’ve been able to do for the least of these among us,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Terry England, R-Auburn.
The House budget puts significant funding toward the chamber’s priorities, including increased spending to support an overhaul of Georgia’s mental health-care delivery system sponsored by House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge.
Correctional officers in the adult and juvenile prison systems would get an additional raise of $2,000 above the $5,000 increase earmarked in the fiscal 2022 mid-year budget for employees throughout state government.
The extra raises also would go to guards in four private prisons scattered across rural Georgia, even though they are not state employees.
“These facilities are often the largest employers in their communities,” England said.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation would add 67 positions, including four new employees dedicated to investigating election complaints.
The House budget also would eliminate special institutional fees the University System of Georgia began charging students after the Great Recession more than a decade ago left the system strapped for cash.
“That’s less money coming out of the student’s pocket, which we all know is the parent’s pocket,” England said.
The state Department of Veterans Services would receive funding to hire a suicide prevention counselor. Veterans in Georgia and across the country suffer from a higher suicide rate than non-veterans.
“These are folks who have defended our freedom,” England said. “We need to make sure they receive the support services they need when they get home.”
The budget now moves to the full House.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Legislation making major changes to regulations governing Georgia’s coin-operated amusement machines (COAM) industry is back on the table in the General Assembly.
But committees in the state House and Senate adopted significantly different versions of COAM reform this week.
Both chambers’ Regulated Industries committees approved raising the prize limit on the so-called “kiddie” machines typically found at businesses including Dave & Buster’s and Chuck E. Cheese from redeemable merchandise valued at $5 to $50.
Both versions of the legislation also would exempt fraternal and veterans organizations from a requirement that locations hosting adult COAM machines derive at least 50% of their income from the machines.
But the Senate committee removed from its version of the bill a provision allowing the awarding of gift cards to winners. The Senate legislation also would increase the share of revenue from the machines going to the Georgia Lottery from 10% to 30%.
Companies that own the machines and the convenience stores, restaurants and other businesses that install them would each receive 35% of the proceeds, down from the current 45%.
COAM income has soared since the Georgia Lottery began managing the machines in 2014.
An industry that brought in more than $2 billion in 2016 more than doubled its revenue to $4.5 billion last year. Proceeds going to Georgia’s HOPE Scholarships and pre-kindergarten programs rose from $33.5 million in 2016 to $145 million last year.
Much of that growth has come during the coronavirus pandemic, Lottery President and CEO Gretchen Corbin told members of the Senate committee Tuesday.
“We provided a very good form of entertainment during that time period,” she said.
But the COAM industry has been plagued by retailers awarding cash payouts to winners. The gift card provision in the House bill is aimed at discouraging that illegal activity, said state Rep. Alan Powell, R-Hartwell, chairman of the House committee and the House bill’s chief sponsor.
“This would take away any rationale for these folks to pass out cash money,” he said.
But Georgia Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, the Senate committee’s chairman, said the Senate leadership does not support awarding gift cards.
Another provision Senate leaders insist on is increasing the lottery’s share of COAM proceeds from 10% to 30%, he said.
Cowsert said the higher take is more in line with what other states are collecting from their COAM machines.
He also noted that the Georgia Lottery Corp. gets 27% of the proceeds from lottery sales.
Emily Dunn, CEO of Tom’s Amusement Co., a COAM machine installer from Blue Ridge, said awarding gift cards would attract more players and, thus, increase sales.
“We need more transparency,” she said. “That card gives it to us.”
As is the case with efforts in the General Assembly to legalize casinos in Georgia, the COAM legislation is drawing opposition from faith-based groups warning of increased rates of bankruptcy, suicides and family violence associated with addicted gamblers.
“It’s a dangerous industry,” said Mike Griffin, public affairs director for the Georgia Baptist Mission Board. “The social cost typically outweighs whatever benefit you get.”
A lack of consensus on how to reform the COAM business doomed legislation in the General Assembly last year, and the differences between the House and Senate bills could spell trouble again this year.
Crossover Day falls on Tuesday. Bills must pass at least one legislative chamber to remain alive for the year.
This story isavailable through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
