ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp’s $30.2 billion fiscal 2023 state budget is another step closer to passage.
The Georgia Senate Appropriations Committee approved the spending plan Wednesday, sending it to the Senate floor for action as soon as Friday.
The budget raises state spending for the fiscal year starting July 1 by 10.8% over the budget the General Assembly adopted last spring. It annualizes $5,000 raises most state employees received in the fiscal 2022 mid-year budget Kemp signed last week and gives teachers a $2,000 raise to go with the $3,000 increase they received three years ago.
Unexpectedly healthy state tax collections despite the coronavirus pandemic made the spending boom possible, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery said Wednesday.
“[Taxpayers’] continued resilience through the pandemic has put us in a position to fund these things,” Tillery, R-Vidalia, told committee members.
Tillery highlighted a series of budget line items where the Senate increased spending above what the state House of Representatives approved two weeks ago. The committee added $28 million to the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement to reward elementary schools that report positive results in third-grade reading proficiency, $2.8 million to establish a new Georgia Bureau of Investigation medical examiner’s office in Macon and $2.5 million for a pilot summer program offering tours of college campuses to teenage foster children.
The Senate also added $2.5 million in bond financing to design a building for the new medical examiner’s office and slightly raised the next installment of state bond funding for the Savannah Convention Center expansion from $80 million to $83 million.
The committee also supported a House proposal to eliminate the institutional fee on University System of Georgia students a cash-strapped Board of Regents approved during the pandemic.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.