ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp signed a $37.7 billion fiscal 2026 state budget Friday, a spending plan that prioritizes education and prisons.
“(This) budget makes important investments to meet the needs of our growing state without growing government or adding to our long-term liabilities,” Kemp said during a signing ceremony at the Georgia Capitol.
The budget, which the General Assembly passed overwhelmingly last month, includes $300 million to fully fund the state’s Quality Basic Education K-12 student funding formula. Another $108.9 million in state grants will help local school systems pay for safety improvements on their campuses – providing each school with $47,124 – while $47.9 million is earmarked for student mental health programs.
The school safety and mental health money come in the wake of the school shooting at Apalachee High School in Barrow County last September that killed two students and two teachers.
The budget also includes more than $141 million to launch the state’s new private-school vouchers program, which will kick off in time for the coming school year.
Kemp and the legislature responded to a federal audit criticizing the state prison system for failing to protect inmates from violence by putting up $200 million to hire more correctional officers and raise the salaries of the current workforce.
More than $1.7 million will be used for additional positions and technology at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, more than $1 million will go toward two crime scene technical leaders and three digital forensic investigators. Another $1 million will pay for a new gang case management system and gang enforcement efforts statewide.
For the second year in a row, the state will fund building projects with cash instead of borrowing the money. The capital projects package includes $290 million for transportation improvements and $715 million for a host of building projects with an emphasis on K-12 school systems, universities, and technical colleges.
Kemp said the pay-as-you-go approach on capital projects will save Georgia taxpayers $150 million a year on debt service costs for the next 20 years.
In a separate letter to Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns, Kemp identified nine spending items in the budget as “non-binding” and instructed lawmakers to disregard them.
The largest of those line items would have provided just more than $600,000 to the secretary of state’s office to cover additional operating expenses incurred by the State Election Board. Kemp ordered the agency not to spend any money on new positions for the board.
“Additional personnel should not be hired by the board until the impact of the positions added in the fiscal 2025 budget has been assessed and new funds have been appropriated specifically for such purpose,” the governor wrote.
The fiscal 2026 budget will take effect July 1.