ATLANTA – The Georgia House of Representatives overwhelmingly adopted a $37.5 billon fiscal 2024 midyear budget Wednesday with a surplus-fueled $5 billion in new spending.
The midyear spending plan passed 161-2 and now moves to the state Senate.
Of the $5 billion spending increase, $2 billion would come directly from the unprecedented $16 billion in reserves the state has built up during the last several years.
“There’s much to be proud of in this budget,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin, told his House colleagues before Wednesday’s vote. “Much good can be done with it.”
Among the big-ticket spending items is $1.5 billion for transportation improvements, including $659 million for projects in the existing pipeline, $509 million for projects aimed at more efficient movement of freight, $200 million for improvements to local roads, $100 million for resurfacing projects, and $53 million in airport aid.
For the first time in memory, the proposed spending spree would let the state pay for major capital projects with cash instead of bond financing. The midyear budget allocates $450 million for a new state prison in Washington County, $178 million for a new dental school at Georgia Southern University’s Armstrong campus in Savannah, and $50 million for a new medical school at the University of Georgia in Athens.
State employees and teachers will get one-time pay supplements of $1,000, an initiative Gov. Brian Kemp announced in December to help reduce turnover in public schools and state agencies.
All of those spending increases were in the mid-year budget recommendations Kemp presented to the General Assembly last month.
But the House made some additions on its own. Hatchett said the midyear budget seeks to restore some of the spending items the governor ordered state agencies to disregard last spring when he signed the fiscal 2024 budget.
“We are the appropriators,” Hatchett declared. “We absolutely have the authority to set policy in this state.”
The House version of the midyear budget would raise per-diem reimbursement to counties housing state prison inmates from $22 per day to $24.
House budget writers also added $60 million for infrastructure improvements at the state’s psychiatric hospitals and put $10.4 million toward a new child and adolescent crisis center to be built in Savannah.
ATLANTA – Backlogs of pending court cases that built up during the pandemic are on the decline, Georgia Chief Justice Michael Boggs said Wednesday.
But shortages of prosecutors, public defenders, court reporters, and other court staff continue to plague the court system, Boggs told a joint session of the General Assembly during the annual State of the Judiciary address.
“Judges alone cannot move criminal cases without prosecutors,” he said. “Nothing can be done without court reporters.”
Boggs said an influx of federal funding through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021 has helped judicial circuits hire more staff and upgrade technology. Forty-six of the state’s 50 judicial circuits have taken advantage of ARPA funding, he said.
As a result, the backlog of cases has declined by 11% on average statewide, Boggs said.
With Georgia also suffering from a shortage of judges, Boggs urged lawmakers to pass House Bill 947, which would overhaul the system for paying superior court judges, justices of the Georgia Supreme Court, justices of the state Court of Appeals, and the judge of the Georgia State-wide Business Court.
Boggs also supported proposed legislation to require that personal information on judges, such as their addresses, be kept confidential to help protect them from growing threats to judges across the nation.
“These attacks and threats are meant to intimidate,” he said. “Georgia judges will not be threatened or intimidated into abandoning their constitutional duties.”
The chief justice also cited a revision of rules the state Supreme Court approved last fall aimed at increasing the availability of lawyers in rural communities. Under the revision, spouses of active-duty service members who are lawyers will be able to obtain provisional law licenses without taking the bar exam.
ATLANTA – Two Georgia brothers have been arrested for assaulting law enforcement office during the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol.
Cepane Sarty, 38, of Marietta, and Seth Sarty, 45, of Rockmart, are charged with the felony offense of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers during the attack, which disrupted a joint session of Congress to count the electoral votes in the 2020 presidential election.
In addition, the men faced misdemeanor charges of knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building without lawful authority, disorderly conduct in a restricted building, engaging in physical violence in a restricted building, and parading, demonstrating or picketing inside the Capitol.
According to court documents, the brothers entered the Capitol building via the Senate Wing Door at about 2:20 p.m., less than 10 minutes after the initial breach in the area. They then made their way to the Crypt and toward the Memorial Door, joining a group of rioters confronting a police line.
By 2:32 p.m., the group had broken through the police line and gained access to the House side of the building.
The men then entered the office suite of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Next, they entered the Capitol Rotunda briefly before exiting the building, only to return shortly after 3 p.m. At that point, they encountered a police line attempting to clear the area.
Body-worn camera and closed-circuit television footage showed the brothers shoving police officers and temporarily driving them back. Police then deployed a chemical riot control agent at the men, causing them to leave the Capitol through the Rotunda doors at 3:13 p.m.
The Sarty brothers were arrested on Monday in Georgia.
Since the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol, more than 1,300 people have been charged in nearly all 50 states in connection with the incident. More than 450 have been charged with the felony of assaulting or impeding law enforcement.
ATLANTA – The Georgia House of Representatives gave final passage Tuesday to legislation adding a long list of offenses ineligible for no-cash bail.
The Republican controlled House voted 97-69 along party lines to adopt a conference committee report on Senate Bill 63 worked out by House and Senate negotiators.
The ban on no-cash bail applies to both violent and non-violent crimes, from murder and rape to possession of marijuana with intent to distribute and white-collar crimes including forgery and financial transaction card fraud.
The Senate passed the conference committee report last week in a 30-17 vote, also along party lines. Most of the work on the bill was done last year, but the conference committee formed at the end of the 2023 legislative session couldn’t reach an agreement before lawmakers adjourned for the year.
“This legislation will make it clear that Georgia is not going to go down the path of other states that have (allowed) no-cash bail,” Rep. Houston Gaines, R-Athens, who carried the bill in the House, said Tuesday.
Gaines said statistics show that criminal suspects who are granted no-cash bail fail to appear in court at much higher rates than those forced to post bail.
House Democrats argued the legislation punishes people who have yet to be convicted of a crime simply for being poor. In many cases, those denied no-cash bail have been charged with low-level offenses that don’t even carry a jail sentence if they’re convicted, said Rep. Gregg Kennard, D-Lawrenceville.
Rep. Tanya Miller, D-Atlanta, accused Republican lawmakers of undermining criminal justice reforms then-GOP Gov. Nathan Deal championed during the last decade. Miller said forcing criminal suspects to remain in jail before their court date is counterproductive.
“The more time they spend in pre-trial detention increases the probability of re-arrest,” she said.
The bill’s opponents also complained about a provision in the bill that limits charitable organizations that raise money for bail from posting more than three cash bonds per year.
“We can possibly criminalize churches that raise money to get their member out of jail,” said Rep. Derrick Jackson, D-Tyrone.
Senate Bill 63 now heads to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk for his signature.
ATLANTA – The Georgia House Appropriations Committee approved Gov. Brian Kemp’s $37.5 billion fiscal 2024 midyear budget Tuesday.
With the state sitting on an unprecedented $16 billion surplus, lawmakers signed off on a $5 billion spending increase, 15.6% above the 2024 budget the General Assembly adopted last spring.
“For the first time in a number of years, agencies were able to ask for 3% enhancements,” said Rep. Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin, the committee’s chairman.
The House version of the midyear budget includes $1.1 billion in one-time capital investments for a number of projects. The list includes $450 million for a new state prison in Washington County, $178 million for a new dental school at Georgia Southern University’s Armstrong campus in Savannah, and $50 million for a new medical school at the University of Georgia in Athens.
Infrastructure improvements funded in the midyear spending plan include $250 million for low-interest loans to finance water and sewer projects, $100 million for the OneGeorgia Authority to fund rural economic development, and $23.9 million for rural workforce housing.
The House midyear budget reduced funding for several of those one-time spending items, as the committee shifted money to other priorities.
For example, House budget writers allocated $1.5 billion for transportation projects, less than the $1.9 billion Kemp recommended. The committee stuck with the governor’s request for $659 million for projects in the existing pipeline but trimmed from $641 million to $509 million the recommended funding for improvements aimed at more efficient movement of freight.
The committee steered some of those savings toward the secretary of state’s office for projects aimed at improving voter confidence in elections. The midyear budget includes $5 million for new paper ballots that no longer rely on QR codes and $110,000 to add visible watermarks to paper ballots.
House budget writers supported the governor’s recommendation for $300 million in $1,000 one-time pay supplements for 112,000 state employees and 196,000 teachers and school support staff. Additional raises are included in Kemp’s $36.1 billion fiscal 2025 budget, which the General Assembly will take up later this month.
The full House is expected to consider the midyear budget later this week.
