ATLANTA – The University System of Georgia Board of Regents approved a $2.57 billion fiscal 2023 budget request Tuesday.
Although Gov. Brian Kemp has asked state agencies not to ask for more money next year, the system’s budget represents a $108.1 million increase over the current $2.46 billion spending plan.
The additional spending covers items that were exempted from the governor’s order, Tracey Cook, the system’s executive vice chancellor for strategy & fiscal affairs, told the regents Tuesday.
Those items include $99.4 million to account for growth in student enrollment, nearly $9 million for changes in employee and retiree health insurance plans and $460,569 for a slight increase in square footage at the system’s colleges and universities.
The regents also approved a capital budget request of $278.8 million. The biggest chunk of those funds – $108 million – would go toward four major building projects: $37.1 million for the first phase of modernization at the University of Georgia’s Science Hill, $30.6 million for the third phase of the expansion of Tech Square on the Georgia Tech campus, $28.8 million for the Gateway Building at Georgia Gwinnett College and $11.5 million for an academic building at the University of North Georgia’s Cumming campus.
The capital budget request also includes $70 million for major repair and rehabilitation projects and $44.1 million for smaller building projects at 11 campuses.
The operating and budget requests will be reviewed by the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget. Kemp will present his spending recommendations to the General Assembly in January.
ATLANTA – A professor at Georgia State University has received federal grants to study two coronaviruses, the school announced Monday.
Christopher Basler, director of Georgia State’s Center for Microbial Pathogenesis, will use a $387,534 grant to focus on Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and a $429,000 grant to study SARS-coV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
MERS has a much higher case fatality rate than SARS-coV-2. However, MERS also spreads less easily between infected and uninfected people.
“The goal of the MERS coronavirus study is to understand how the virus defeats the body’s innate immune response that is designed to provide rapid protection from viral infections,” Basler said. “The findings of this work should help explain why this virus is so deadly.”
The second study Basler will undertake seeks to understand how SARS-coV-2 relies on fats within an infected cell to grow and spread. The hope is that understanding what features of the cell the virus relies on will provide insight into how the virus causes disease and suggest new treatment strategies.
Early data from the study indicates the virus relies on cellular pathways that are also of interest to drug makers trying to treat cancer, diabetes and obesity.
Both grants are being underwritten by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
ATLANTA – Herschel Walker is not running for the U.S. Senate, at least for now, but he would be the strongest Republican in the race to unseat Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, according to a new poll.
Walker, a University of Georgia football icon, trailed Warnock 48% to 46% in a survey of 622 Georgia voters conducted Aug. 4 and Aug. 5 by Public Policy Polling, a North Carolina-based Democratic polling firm.
Walker fared slightly better than former Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who lost her seat to Warnock last January. She trailed Warnock 47% to 44%.
Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, the only one of the three Republicans who actually has entered the race, trailed Warnock 46% to 38%.
Black’s biggest problem, according to the poll, is lack of name recognition. When asked whether they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Black, 70% of the respondents said they didn’t know enough about him to give an answer.
Walker scored a 41% favorable response to 28% who viewed him unfavorably. Loeffler was viewed unfavorably by 47%, while 28% gave her a favorable rating.
A slight plurality of 43% approved Warnock’s job performance, to 42% who disapproved of the job he’s done in the Senate.
The poll also asked respondents to rate President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
Biden’s job performance got a thumbs down from 48% of the voters surveyed, while 46% approved of his performance. Trump received a favorable rating from 43%, while 48% viewed him unfavorably.
On the issue of COVID-19 vaccinations, 55% of respondents said they were fully vaccinated, with 4% saying they were partially vaccinated. Respondents who were not vaccinated but planning to get the vaccine accounted for 11% of those polled, while 18% said they were not planning to be vaccinated.
Eleven percent of the respondents said they weren’t sure whether or not they would get the shot.
The poll’s margin of error was plus-or-minus 3.9%.
ATLANTA – State Sen. Burt Jones has become the third candidate to enter next year’s Republican race for lieutenant governor.
Jones, R-Jackson, who runs an insurance business, filed paperwork Friday to seek the post being vacated by GOP Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who announced in May he would not run for a second term.
“Georgians deserve a proven business leader, consistent conservative, and champion for Georgia families with the courage to stand up and make our state a better place, and I’m running for lieutenant governor to do just that,” Jones said Tuesday in officially launching his candidacy.
“I’ll fight for the future of every Georgian by creating high-quality jobs and cutting taxes, reining in the cost of higher education and investing in more educational opportunities for our children, strengthening election integrity and restoring voter confidence, and standing with our men and women of law enforcement to keep our communities safe.”
Jones has been a key player during the last couple of years in the fight to legalize sports betting in Georgia, serving as chief sponsor of sports betting legislation introduced in the Senate last year.
More recently, he was among a group of Senate Republicans who asked Gov. Brian Kemp to call a special session of the General Assembly shortly after the November elections to consider changes to Georgia’s election laws.
The same group conducted hearings inside the state Capitol in December that lent ammunition to claims of election fraud spread by then-President Donald Trump and his allies, which were subsequently dismissed in the courts.
Jones, an early supporter of Trump in Georgia, and the other senators subsequently released a report calling the Nov. 3 election “chaotic” and that “any reported results must be viewed as untrustworthy.”
In January, Jones was stripped of a committee chairmanship by Duncan, who repeatedly pushed for the group to drop its election fraud claims and accept the election results as legitimate.
Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller, R-Gainesville, a Duncan ally, declared his candidacy for lieutenant governor in May and has gotten a head start on fundraising. Miller raised more than $2 million during the five weeks between entering the contest and the June 30 second-quarter reporting deadline.
The third candidate in the race is Republican activist Jeanne Seaver of Savannah. She had raised $17,432 through the end of June, according to a report filed with the Georgia Government Transparency & Campaign Finance Commission.
ATLANTA – The new state fiscal year began last month with a slight increase in tax collections, the Georgia Department of Revenue reported Friday.
The revenue agency brought in $2.16 billion in taxes in July, up just 0.4% compared to July of last year.
The slight increase resulted from a large hike in sales tax revenue coupled with a somewhat smaller decrease in individual and corporate income taxes.
With Georgia businesses much more active last month than a year ago – when the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic was more severe – net sales tax revenue in July increased by 17.2% over July 2020.
Individual income tax collections, however, fell by 9.1% last month. While income tax refunds soared by 293.8% in July, that was partially offset by a 246% increase in tax payments.
Corporate income tax receipts also fell in July by 24.9%, driven largely by a 115.5% increase in corporate tax refunds.
Georgia’s motor fuel tax collections rose by 6.4% last month compared to July 2020, reflecting a rebound in car and truck traffic to pre-pandemic levels.
