Georgia budget changes advance with pay boosts, tax rebates
ATLANTA - Georgia state lawmakers have advanced plans to boost spending in the current year by $2.7 billion, including paying state employees and teachers more.
The House Appropriations Committee approved House Bill 910 on Thursday, setting it up for a vote before the full House as early as Friday.
The measure includes $5,000 pay boosts for university and state agency employees, $2,000 bonuses to teachers and $1,000 bonuses to other K-12 workers including school bus drivers, part-time employees and cafeteria workers. It also restores $383 million to the state’s K-12 funding formula that had been cut when lawmakers feared revenue decreases at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Beyond the spending, the document also sets up $1.6 billion in state income tax rebates.
Revising the current year’s budget, which ends June 30, is an annual ritual for lawmakers. But this year is seeing a huge burst of spending, most of which Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and lawmakers want to maintain in the next budget that begins July 1. The bonuses for teachers would become permanent salary increases next year, allowing Kemp to complete the $5,000 raises he promised teachers when he ran for governor in 2018.
"This year, revenue has done things we never dreamed that it would do," said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Terry England, an Auburn Republican.
With $2.35 billion in spare cash even after filling the state’s savings account to its legal limit of $4.3 billion, the House is agreeing with Kemp’s plan to give $1.6 billion in tax rebates in April — $250 to every single person filing state income taxes, $375 to every single person heading a household and $500 to married people filing jointly.
The burst of spending comes as Kemp and lawmakers are up for election later this year.
As is typical in the midyear budget revision, lawmakers clawed back some money that agencies haven’t spent and redirected it toward other projects. Much of that money is being channeled into one-time spending that will replace money the state might have borrowed.
The House plan calls for spending $45 million this year to relocate employees from the state-owned 2 Peachtree building in downtown Atlanta to vacant office space in the Capitol complex. Officials say the 2 Peachtree building is too rundown to be worth renovating.
"The cost to update that building to current standards far exceeds the value of that building, so it’s best to get our folks moved on out of there," England said.
The state would also spend $29 million in cash to replace roofs at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, $4.6 million to replace air conditioning and roofs at the Georgia National Fairgrounds in Perry and $7 million on renovating youth detention centers statewide. All that money would have been borrowed.
The budget also shifts $10 million into educational loans for mental health and substance abuse workers that would be forgiven if they work in Georgia for a specific period of time, part of a broader push this year by Republican House Speaker David Ralston of Blue Ridge to beef up mental health services.
House leaders are supporting Kemp’s plan to spend $432 million to buy a private prison and begin building a second prison, in a plan that also includes closing several older state prisons.
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