ATLANTA – The Georgia Senate overwhelmingly passed a record $40.5 billion mid-year state budget Wednesday that prioritizes disaster relief, infrastructure needs, and prisons.
The 190-page document covering state spending through June 30, which cleared the Senate 51-1, includes $750 million to help Georgians recover from what Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery called last year’s “cantankerous” weather. The Peach State suffered two hurricanes, a tornado, three days with 10 inches or more of rainfall, and two 40-day droughts.
To increase disaster relief funding from the $615 million Gov. Brian Kemp requested in the mid-year budget he presented to the General Assembly last month, the Senate cut spending in other areas. Many of those reductions were made possible by delays in filling budgeted positions or holding off on building projects that have been funded but haven’t begun construction.
“We’ve got to deal with a problem right in front of us first, and that’s storm relief,” said Tillery, R-Vidalia.
The Senate supported Kemp’s recommendation for $501 million to increase surface water supplies in Coastal Georgia to supply the Hyundai electric-vehicle manufacturing plant now under construction west of Savannah. Another $200 million is earmarked for water and sewer improvement projects elsewhere in the state.
Also on the infrastructure front, the Senate mid-year budget set aside $500 million for the state Department of Transportation’s Freight and Logistics program, a series of highway improvements aimed at speeding up the movement of freight. Another $53 million earmarked for the Georgia Transportation Infrastructure Bank would provide funding to local communities that apply for road improvement projects in their areas.
Senators also endorsed the governor’s request for an additional $50 million in school-safety grants, enough to provide every school in Georgia with nearly $70,000. School districts are being given the flexibility to spend those dollars on security improvements as they see fit.
The Senate agreed with Kemp’s proposal to hire more than 400 additional correctional officers to staff state prisons. More guards are needed to improve security inside a prison system that a federal audit criticized last fall for failing to protect inmates from widespread violence.
The Senate’s mid-year budget and a version of the spending plan the state House adopted earlier this month also would provide $30 million to design a new prison, $10 million less than the governor recommended.
Senators also zeroed out funding to replace QR codes from election ballots, choosing to redirect that money to other priorities.
Among those priorities is addressing a shortage of physicians, particularly in rural South Georgia. Senators earmarked $25 million for the Mercer University School of Medicine and the same amount for the Morehouse School of Medicine to expand their medical residency programs, with a focus on communities south of the Fall Line Freeway running from Augusta to Columbus via Macon.
“Where doctors do their residency, they are more likely to stay,” Tillery said.
Besides increasing spending in various priority areas, the Senate also put its stamp of approval on Kemp’s plan to dip into the state’s $16 billion budget surplus to bankroll a $1 billion income tax rebate for Georgia taxpayers. Single tax filers will receive $250, single filer heads of households will get $375, and married couples filing jointly will receive $500.