ATLANTA – The Georgia Senate passed a $37.7 billion fiscal 2026 state budget Friday that will require some compromises with the state House of Representatives on state spending, particularly on prisons and education.
The budget, which cleared the Senate 48-7, provides $170 million in additional spending to hire more correctional officers, give the current prison staff a pay raise, and provide technology upgrades to improve security. Inadequate staffing and deteriorating infrastructure were key factors in an audit the U.S. Justice Department released last fall that criticized the state prison system for failing to protect inmates from violence.
“We’re asking (correctional officers) to do a job very few of us would be willing to do,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, told his Senate colleagues before Friday’s vote.
The $170 million the Senate version of the budget recommends for the prisons represents a middle position between the $250 million in the House version of the spending plan and the $125 million Gov. Brian Kemp requested when he presented his budget proposals in January.
That’s one compromise the House and Senate will have to work out when their respective budget negotiators meet to come up with a final version of the budget before the 2025 legislative session comes to an end next week.
Another major disagreement between the two chambers is over funding to launch Georgia’s new private-school vouchers program the Republican-controlled General Assembly approved last year. The Senate budget would fully fund the program at $141 million, the amount Kemp recommended, while the House is proposing to cut the program to $40 million.
Senate Democrats who voted against the budget bill objected to putting any money into private-school vouchers.
Sen. Nabilah Islam Parkes, D-Duluth, said funding for vouchers is coming at the cost of reducing state support of public schools.
“We are cutting programs that help kids who are struggling emotionally, economically, and academically, at a time when they need us the most, so we can spend $141 million on private-school vouchers,” she said. “Let’s call it what it is: a transfer of public money into private hands.”
But Tillery said school vouchers are needed when many Georgia students are reading below grade level. The vouchers program, which takes effect July 1, allows students in low-performing public schools to transfer to a private school.
“Kids have to be given the ability to do something better,” he said. “Parents have to be given an option to take their kids somewhere else.”
The fiscal ’26 budget also would include $302.3 million to cover student enrollment growth, fully funding Georgia’s Quality Basic Education per-pupil funding formula, and provides a $14 million increase to reduce the size of pre-kindergarten classes from an average of 22 pupils to 20. Another $18.4 million would fully fund a new literacy program by hiring 116 literacy coaches.
The Senate version of the spending plan would provide $600,000 to help the State Election Board carry out additional duties intended to let it operate more independently from the secretary of state’s office. A controversial election reform bill currently before the General Assembly would accomplish that goal of Republican legislative leaders.
The spending plan calls for funding building projects with cash instead of borrowing the money. Tillery warned that the current climate of economic uncertainty means lawmakers should get used to a smaller annual project list.
Highlights of the fiscal ’26 building package include $44.5 million to complete the renovation of the state Agricultural Building in Atlanta and $31 million for a new STEM building at the University of North Georgia in Dahlonega.