Gov. Brian Kemp’s fiscal 2024 bond package includes $29.8 million for the second phase of modernization at the University of Georgia’s Science and Ag Hill.
ATLANTA – Schools account for a major portion of the $600 million bond package Gov. Brian Kemp is recommending in the $32.5 billion budget proposal the governor released late last week.
More than a third of the package – $217 million – would go toward K-12 school construction projects across the state financed by the Georgia Department of Education.
The rest of the bonds would be divided between the other state agencies, including $113.4 million earmarked for University System of Georgia campuses.
Highlights include $29.8 million for the second phase of a modernization project at the University of Georgia’s Science and Ag Hill in Athens, $16.6 million going toward construction of a research tower on the downtown Atlanta campus of Georgia State University, and $13.7 million for an interdisciplinary STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) research building at Kennesaw State University.
The most significant bond project in the Technical College System of Georgia’s budget is $19.9 million earmarked for the planned Industrial Robotics Training Center at Ogeechee Technical College in Statesboro.
Kemp’s bond package also includes $10.3 million to build a 56-bed expansion at the Muscogee juvenile detention center in Columbus, $8 million toward a major expansion of the Savannah Convention Center, and $7.8 million in repairs and renovations at the Roosevelt Warm Springs Rehabilitation facility.
The $600 million in bonds Kemp is requesting is well below the $950 million bond package the General Assembly approved last spring for this year. But legislators typically add projects to the package as it makes it way through the budget review process.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
The Augusta University Medical Center (Photo credit: Michael Holahan/Augusta University)
ATLANTA – An Augusta University Health System (AUHS) – WellStar partnership proposed last month is in line with national trends toward health-care partnerships, experts said this week as a few additional details emerged about the plan.
AUHS is a key training facility for medical residents and other future health-care providers. It houses the Medical College of Georgia, the state’s only public medical school. WellStar, a non-profit health system, currently owns nine hospitals in the Atlanta region.
A three-page letter of intent recently made public states: “WellStar would become the sole corporate member of AUHS,” meaning the non-profit hospital system would replace the current not-for-profit corporation that runs AUHS.
The AUHS holdings that would come into WellStar’s control under the proposed transaction include a 632-bed hospital, the faculty practice group for the Medical College of Georgia, the Roosevelt Warm Springs Rehabilitation facility – which includes a 32-bed acute-care hospital and a 52-bed rehabilitation facility – and other AUHS facilities and holdings, according to the letter of intent.
The letter also outlines the expected benefits of the new plan, including providing better health care to underserved populations.
The partnership would “expand the clinical platform, including a new state-of-the-art hospital in Columbia County,” according to the letter. AUHS had planned to build a 100-bed facility in the eastern Georgia county, and construction was slated to begin this year.
While few other details of the proposed partnership have been made public, health-care experts say such partnerships between academic medical centers and hospital systems are increasingly common across the country.
“In these days, a partnership is absolutely necessary,” said Dr. Andrew Balas, a professor of health management and policy at Augusta University. “Becoming part of a health system is an upside … because a stand-alone hospital is just not a viable option in the long run.”
“The need for revenue has created … innovations [or] a lot of creative business arrangements,” echoed Dr. Vikas Saini, president of the Lown Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that measures hospitals’ social responsibility. “The fact that this is happening is not particularly surprising. … What may be novel are the details.”
The Lown Institute ranked the WellStar hospital system second in the country in 2022 for the largest “fair share surplus,” that is, for how much its spending on charity care and community investment exceeded its tax exemptions. The hospital system spent $144 million more on charity care and community investment than it received in tax breaks.
Some of that may be because Georgia has not expanded Medicaid, meaning hospitals here must fund more charity care for uninsured patients than in Medicaid-expansion states, Saini said. The hospital system received a “B” grade in the Lown Institute’s social responsibility index, which measures hospital outcomes, value and equity.
WellStar drew criticism last year when it announced it was closing two Atlanta-area hospitals and emergency rooms that served large numbers of uninsured and Black patients. Many Democrats, among them gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, blamed those hospital closures on the state’s failure to expand Medicaid. At that time, WellStar said that Medicaid expansion would not have been sufficient to keep the two hospitals from closing.
The partnership would extend WellStar’s current academic profile. The hospital system has been a long-time supporter of the Kennesaw State University School of Nursing. In 2003 a $3.1 million donation led KSU to name its College of Health and Human Services after WellStar.
The proposed partnership might yield a new Augusta University teaching campus at WellStar’s large Kennestone hospital, a December statement announcing the proposal noted. This could help increase the Medical College’s capacity to train new doctors in Georgia.
Multiplestudies suggest that doctors and other health-care providers are more likely to practice where they train, meaning that one solution to Georgia’s health-care workforce shortage is to increase the state’s training capacity.
“We hope there will be a rational agreement that is respectful and supportive of the university’s tripartite mission of education, research, and service,” said Balas, who also serves as president of the Augusta University chapter of the American Association of University Professors. “Personally, I am hopeful. … I think it will work out fine.”
The partnership will need approval from both the University System of Georgia Board of Regents and the state Attorney General’s office. The Attorney General office’s review process will include a public hearing. However, details about the timeline are not yet available.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp released a $32.5 billion fiscal 2024 state budget proposal Friday that’s heavy on spending for education and gives Georgia teachers and state employees $2,000 raises.
The spending plan, up more than $2 billion over this year’s record budget, is built on an all-time high state surplus of more than $6 billion.
“As we look ahead to the upcoming fiscal year, we expect the state’s economy to be well positioned to withstand any further national economic slowing,” the governor wrote in his annual budget message to legislative leaders.
“As such, the … budgets I am presenting herein ensure that we continue to meet our financial obligations as a state while also investing in the education, health, and safety of our citizens to maintain our position as the best state in the country to live, work, and raise our families.”
Kemp is calling for fully funding Georgia’s Quality Basic Education (QBE) k-12 student funding formula with $745 million in the fiscal 2023 mid-year budget – which covers state spending through June 30 – and $1.1 billion in fiscal 2024. The QBE was not fully funded when Georgia was suffering leaner economic times, but full funding has been restored for the last several years.
On the higher education side, the governor’s budget earmarks $61.2 million to fully fund the HOPE Scholarship program for the first time since then-Gov. Nathan Deal and the legislature cut HOPE benefits more than a decade ago due to growing demand for scholarships combined with rising tuition costs.
After raising teacher salaries in Georgia by $5,000 during his first term, Kemp is calling for another $2,000 raise for teachers and other certified educators. State employees also would see their pay increased by $2,000.
Kemp is fulfilling a promise he made on the campaign trail last year to provide a second $1 billion state income tax rebate on top of the refund Georgia taxpayers received last year. He also is proposing $1.1 billion in property tax relief to homeowners.
“These actions will put real money back in the pockets of hardworking Georgians facing unforeseen jumps in property values and record-high inflation,” the governor wrote.
Other major goodies for education include $115 million to give every k-12 public school a $50,000 school safety grant and $25 million in “learning loss” grants to help offset the impacts of the pandemic on student instruction.
With Georgia poised to become a leader in the electric mobility space, the proposed budget calls for $130 million to build two training facilities for workers in the state’s fast-growing electric vehicles manufacturing industry.
Kemp is seeking to repurpose $35.7 million from the state’s One Georgia rural economic development fund to launch a Rural Workforce Housing Fund to help ensure an adequate supply of housing for workers who will fill the jobs being created in rural communities.
Another $52 million would go to Georgia Pathways, the limited expansion of the state’s Medicaid program backed by Kemp, which is expected to launch in July.
The governor is requesting $25 million to build an additional state prison.
The state House and Senate Appropriations committees will kick off the legislative review of Kemp’s budget recommendations with three days of hearings next week.
The governor will open the proceedings Tuesday with a remote presentation from Switzerland, where he will be appearing on a discussion panel at the World Economic Forum.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Trees block a road in Austell Thursday. (Photo credit: Cobb County Fire and Emergence Services)
ATLANTA – Four confirmed tornadoes ripped through Georgia Thursday, part of a storm system that left widespread structural damage, power outages and two deaths in their wake.
“The damage is literally statewide,” Gov. Brian Kemp told reporters Friday at the state Capitol shortly before he, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, and Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns left on a helicopter tour of damaged areas.
The first tornado report came in mid-afternoon Thursday in the LaGrange area, said James Stallings, director of the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency. But Spalding County suffered the worst damage when a tornado cut a path up to five miles wide, Stallings said.
Jones’ hometown of Jackson in Butts County also suffered heavy damage. A 5-year-old died there when a tree fell on a car in which he was riding. A state emergency response worker also was killed by falling debris.
The storm and its aftermath also caused multiple injuries, including to a parent of the child who was killed, Stallings said.
Stallings said the damage wasn’t limited to areas in the direct path of the tornadoes. High straight-line winds downed trees and damaged homes in many other communities across the state, he said.
Work crews from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the state Forestry Commission are working with chainsaws to clear debris from blocked roads.
Until the roads are clear, restoring power to affected areas will be slow work, Kemp said.
The governor urged Georgians affected by the storms to remain patient.
“We still have a lot of work to do,” he said.
Kemp said it’s too early to assess the cost of the damage. He said Georgia will seek federal assistance if the cost is high enough to qualify.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The General Assembly will begin reviewing Gov. Brian Kemp’s budget proposals next week with some strong revenue numbers as a backdrop.
The state collected more than $3.2 billion in taxes last month, an increase of 7.5% over December of last year, the Georgia Department of Revenue reported Friday.
The December results closed out the first half of the current fiscal year with tax receipts up 6.5% over the first six months of the last fiscal year.
Despite the overall strength of December tax collections, individual income taxes fell by 6.5% compared to December 2021, driven by a rise in refunds issued and a decrease in payments.
Net sales tax collections increased by 7.5% last month, a sign of a strong holiday shopping season.
Corporate income tax receipts shot up by 108.9% in December, with the rise in payments issued far exceeding an increase in refunds issued to corporate taxpayers.
With the temporary suspension of Georgia’s sales tax on gasoline and other motor fuels still in effect last month, motor fuels tax receipts dropped by 104.2%. Kemp’s last order renewing the suspension of the tax expired this week.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
