ATLANTA – A sure sign that Georgia’s coffers are flush with an unprecedented budget surplus is that for the first time in memory, the state plans to fund its annual list of building projects with cash instead of bonds.
The budget proposals Gov. Brian Kemp released during the first week of the 2024 legislative session call for spending more than $2 billion of the surplus on what the governor’s office described as “historic” investment in education, public safety, tax relief for Georgians, and infrastructure improvements across the Peach State.
“A strong economy and conservative fiscal management of state revenues … has led to record job growth, historic investment in communities from Bainbridge to Blue Ridge, $5 billion in tax relief, and enough funds saved to operate state government for months in an emergency, not days,” Kemp declared Thursday in his annual State of the State address to a joint session of the Georgia House and Senate.
Kemp’s $37.5 billion mid-year budget includes $1.9 billion for capital projects, all funded with cash. It’s a significantly larger pot of money than the $800 million to $1 billion the state’s annual bond package usually contains.
That capital investment doesn’t include other new spending in the governor’s budget recommendations designed to take advantage of the bulging surplus.
The list of new spending in the mid-year budget includes:
$1.5 billion for transportation improvements, including $659 million for construction projects in the state Department of Transportation’s existing pipeline and $641 million aimed at improving the movement of freight.
$500 million to reduce the Georgia Employees’ Retirement System’s debt.
$450.9 million to build a new state prison.
$400 million for technology improvements designed to increase the efficiency of the state’s workforce.
$250 million for the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority to spend on local water and sewer projects.
$178 million to design and construct a new dental school at Georgia Southern University’s Armstrong campus in Savannah.
$50 million for a new medical school at the University of Georgia.
All of those spending items involve one-time appropriations, based on the state’s policy of not using surplus revenues to create long-term obligations, according to the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget.
Another series of ongoing investments, most contained in Kemp’s $36.1 billion fiscal 2025 budget, includes $700 million in pay raises for state and university system employees and public school teachers. State and university system workers would get 4% cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs), while teachers would receive $2,500 COLAs and one-time bonuses of $1,000.
Another $205 million would go to local school districts for new school buses, $104 million would be set aside for grants to local schools for safety projects, and $66 million would restore a budget cut the General Assembly imposed on the university system last year.
The budget also would fully fund the state’s Quality Basic Education k-12 student funding formula.
Legislative Democrats say that new spending still is not enough to make up what for they see as chronic underfunding of education, health care, and housing.
Following Kemp’s State of the State address, Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler, D-Stone Mountain, criticized the governor’s decision to use the surplus primarily for short-term investments. More permanent spending commitments are needed to erase a “disparity of opportunity” confronting Georgians, she said.
“Let’s use the surplus to try to make the American dream that is out of reach for so many a reality,” Butler said.
The Republican governor will present his budget recommendations Tuesday, kicking off three days of joint hearings before the House and Senate Appropriations committees. Kemp will be speaking remotely from Davos, Switzerland, where he will travel for the second year in a row to the annual World Economic Forum.
ATLANTA – State Sen. Jason Anavitarte introduced legislation this week aimed at protecting teenagers from cyberbullying and other negative effects of social media.
Anavitarte, R-Dallas, and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who presides over the Senate, first announced they planned to target social media last summer.
“Since we announced this initiative, Senator Anavitarte and I have worked with industry and education leaders, online safety advocates, and legal experts to craft this legislation, and we will continue working with them as this process moves forward,” Jones said Friday.
“We believe Senate Bill 351 is an important step forward in protecting Georgia’s children and giving them the tools they need to be safe in their use of social media and other technologies.”
Numerous studies have found overuse of social media to pose a significant danger to young people, particularly girls, increasing their risk of suicide.
The legislation would require social media companies to take concrete steps to verify the age of their users. Existing rules requiring schools to monitor bullying would be updated to reflect the realities of modern technology.
The bill also would require the state Department of Education to develop and periodically update programs to educate students to use social media safely and require local school systems to adopt, implement, and enforce social media policies and submit them to the Georgia Board of Education for review. Districts that fail to comply would be subject to losing state funds.
“No kid should have to worry and stress about bullying and online threats,” Anavitarte said. “We will continue to promote efforts to have strong families against the poison eroding America.”
The bill has been referred to the Senate Committee on Education and Youth.
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp called on Georgia lawmakers Thursday to pass a private school vouchers bill, a perennial issue before the legislature that has failed to make it through the General Assembly.
“I believe we have run out of ‘next years,’ ” Kemp said during his annual State of the State address to a joint session of the Georgia House and Senate. “I firmly believe we can take an all-of-the-above approach to education, whether it’s public, private, homeschooling, charter or otherwise.
“It is time for all parties to get around a table and agree on the best path forward to provide our kids the best educational opportunities we can – because that’s what we were elected to do.”
The Senate passed legislation last year to provide Georgia students in low-performing schools with $6,000 scholarships to pay for private school or certain other educational costs. But the bill died in the House when a coalition of Democrats and rural Republicans joined forces to block it.
Democrats have long opposed vouchers as taking tax dollars away from public schools. Rural Republicans expressed concerns that vouchers wouldn’t help their constituents because of the scarcity of private schools in rural communities.
Kemp spent much of his 34-minute speech pitching more than $2 billion in new spending proposals aimed at taking advantage of an unprecedented budget surplus. He already had outlined most of those plans at previous news conferences and at Wednesday’s Eggs and Issues breakfast sponsored by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce.
The list includes accelerating the state income tax cut that took effect this month, pay raises for state employees and public school teachers, $104 million to enhance school safety, and an increase of $205 million in mental health spending.
The governor, a potential candidate for the U.S. Senate after his term expires in 2026, also devoted a good part of Thursday’s address to paint a picture of government in Georgia as different from its dysfunctional federal counterpart.
“Congress has become synonymous with runaway spending, bloated budgets, job-killing regulations, gridlock and partisanship, and elected representatives in both parties who are more interested in getting famous on cable news than delivering results for the American people,” he said.
“I promised to put hardworking Georgians first, fund our priorities like education, public safety, and health care, but also keep government efficient, responsible, and accountable.”
After Kemp’s remarks, legislative Democrats vowed to continue their fight against vouchers and took the governor to task for not supporting a full expansion of Georgia’s Medicaid program. While there have been conversations under the Gold Dome about fully expanding Medicaid after years of resistance by Kemp and his Republican predecessors, the governor made no mention of the issue Thursday.
“He is using his political power to block Medicaid expansion and defund public schools,” said Rep. Billy Mitchell, D-Stone Mountain, chairman the House Democratic Caucus.
As Kemp was completing his address, the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget released a $37.5 billion mid-year budget request and a $36.1 billion spending proposal for fiscal 2025. The legislature’s budget writing committees will meet for three days next week to review the two budgets.
ATLANTA – Georgia voters can expect further “tweaks” to state elections laws this year, House Speaker Jon Burns said Wednesday.
House Republican leaders will push to eliminate QR codes from the paper ballots voting machines spit out to voters after they cast their ballots and consider strengthening the powers of the State Election Board, potentially at the expense of the secretary of state, said Burns, R-Newington.
The General Assembly passed legislation in 2019 providing for a paper backup to electronic ballots, a move aimed at giving Georgians more confidence their votes are being recorded accurately. But some voters have complained that the QR codes are confusing and impose a barrier on transparency.
“We need to give voters confidence … to feel like there’s transparency when they vote,” Burns said.
The other potential change to election laws Burns talked about Wednesday would shift investigations of voter complaints of election fraud from the secretary of state’s office to the State Election Board. Burns said such a move would help make the board more independent.
The most sweeping changes in Georgia election laws occurred in 2021, following 2020 elections that saw Democrats capture both of the state’s U.S. Senate seats and Democrat Joe Biden narrowly carry the Peach State on his way to the White House.
Senate Bill 202 that year required voters seeking to cast absentee ballots to show a photo ID, a provision that already applied to in-person voting. The 2021 measure also limits the number of absentee ballot drop boxes and prohibits non-poll workers from handing out food and drinks within 150 feet of voters standing in line.
On other issues Wednesday, Burns said he remains committed to Georgia Pathways, the limited Medicaid expansion championed by Gov. Brian Kemp that took effect last summer. Enrollment has gotten off to a slow start, but Burns said the governor has added resources aimed at getting more eligible Georgians signed up.
“It’s moving in the right direction,” the speaker said.
Legislative Democrats, meanwhile, are continuing to push for full-blown Medicaid expansion, which they argue would cover more Georgians at less cost.
Burns said he is looking to House members to weigh in on Republican-backed private school vouchers, legislation that failed on the House floor last year. Democrats and some Republicans objected to taking money away from public schools to help pay for private school tuition.
“I think it’s a good issue,” Burns said. “It’s giving Georgia families access to educational opportunities that might not be in their communities.”
Burns also said he’s confident the state Senate will support a mental-health bill aimed at increasing the size of the mental-health workforce in Georgia and making it easier for people who cycle between the streets, emergency rooms and jails to get the help they need.
House Bill 520, a follow-up to major mental-health reform legislation lawmakers passed two years ago, died in the Senate at the end of last year’s session.
ATLANTA – Cobb County Commissioner Jerica Richardson isn’t daunted by U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath’s decision to seek reelection in the newly redrawn 6th Congressional District.
Richardson announced Tuesday that she still plans to run for the seat, which will pit her against McBath, D-Marietta, in May’s Democratic primary.
Richardson first indicated she would run for Congress before legislative Republicans drew a new congressional map during the General Assembly’s recent redistricting session. U.S. District Judge Steve Jones, who forced the special session by ruling in October that the 2021 congressional map violated the Voting Rights Act, upheld the new map late last month.
McBath, who has been representing the 7th Congressional District during the last two years, immediately responded to Jones’ ruling by declaring her intention to run in the 6th District this year. The redrawn 6th is much friendlier turf for a Democrat than the new 7th, which now extends north through heavily Republican Forsyth, Dawson, and Lumpkin counties as well as portions of Cherokee and Hall counties.
The new 6th District includes central and southern Fulton County, South Cobb, eastern Douglas County, and northern Fayette County.
“When asked previously about whether I would stay in this race if the maps forced any current members of the Democratic Congressional Caucus to join this race in the 6th, I answered honestly that my intention in entering this race was never about challenging a sitting Democrat,” Richardson said.
“I entered this race solely focused on delivering for the constituents of the 6th, many of whom are my current commission constituents. … I have decided that I’m going to keep surfacing the issues that voters care about, because our voters deserve to know we are listening.”
Richardson noted that Republicans in the General Assembly also have drawn her out of her commission district, the only county commissioner in Georgia to suffer that fate. Cobb County officials are vowing to appeal a ruling this week by Cobb Superior Court Judge Ann Harris upholding the legislature’s authority to draw county commission maps.
