ATLANTA – Georgia Senate budget writers approved a $32.5 billion mid-year budget Tuesday that signals leaner times likely lie ahead in the coming fiscal year.
The mid-year spending plan, up 6.8% over the fiscal 2023 budget the General Assembly adopted last spring, includes Senate changes that would move some construction projects originally to be financed with bonds in fiscal 2024 into the current fiscal year and pay for them with cash.
With many economists expecting a recession to hit Georgia and the nation later this year, state tax collections could fall or at least not grow as much as they have in recent years.
“We feel we have more flexibility in the ’23 budget than we will in ’24,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, told committee members Tuesday.
Tillery said the Senate’s version of the mid-year budget meets or exceeds Gov. Brian Kemp’s spending recommendations on 27 of the governor’s 30 top priorities. It includes $1 billion in state income tax relief, a $1 billion property tax rebate, and $1.1 billion to backfill the loss of state sales tax revenue from gasoline and other motor fuels that occurred during a 10-month suspension of the tax ordered by Kemp to compensate for rising pump prices.
The Senate committee also supported the governor’s spending requests to give every k-12 public school a $50,000 school safety grant and “learning loss” grants to help offset the impacts of the pandemic on student instruction.
About $137 million sought by Kemp would be earmarked for the additional staffing that will be necessary to accomplish “the great unwinding” of Medicaid in April, when the federal government will relax pandemic-era regulations that prevented states from disenrolling people from Medicaid.
Senate budget writers anted up more funds than the House provided in its version of the mid-year budget for a variety of programs, including doubling a $5 million House appropriation aimed at the “hoteling” of children in foster care.
“It’s just not the best place we should be caring for those youth, who are our wards,” Tillery said.
The Senate committee added $3.5 million to a $3 million House appropriation to expand the state’s nursing program, recognizing the current shortage of nurses in Georgia, and doubled to $4 million state funding of domestic violence shelters.
The Senate committee also added some spending items of its own to the mid-year budget, including $50 million for transportation infrastructure needed to accommodate the Hyundai electric vehicle manufacturing plant being built in Bryan County. The Senate added another $1 million for a community arts and education center in Lowndes County.
The accelerated projects came in the University System of Georgia budget, where $5 million in fiscal 2024 bonds to finance new equipment and infrastructure for the Georgia Research Alliance was moved into the mid-year cash budget. A $19.9 million appropriation for planning and design of a robotics training center at Ogeechee Technical College in Statesboro also was moved into the mid-year spending plan.
The mid-year budget heads next to the Senate floor for a vote, probably later this week.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.