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AJC.com > Legislature > Blog > Archives > 2007 > March > 28
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Senate, House prepare for budget battle
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Senate leaders set up what could be a lengthy fight with the House this morning by producing a mid-year budget that cuts out local projects, funding for the KIA car plant, and some of Gov. Sonny Perdue’s top priorities.
Among the casualties in the $700 million mid-year spending plan produced by the Senate is Perdue’s “Go Fish Georgia” fishing tourism program and his push for $50 million to buy land for conservation.
The Senate version of the budget that runs through June 30 includes $81 million more for the financially ailing PeachCare health insurance program for children of the working poor, and $6.2 million to keep the public defenders system afloat. It has $164 million to pay to educate the extra children who started school in Georgia last fall, $11 million in emergency funding for tornado-damaged Americus, $181 million to pay off debt on money borrowed for construction projects, and about $20 million for reserves.
What it doesn’t contain is tens of millions of dollars for other projects promoted by Perdue and House leaders.
Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah), said many of those projects would be considered when lawmakers take up the $20.2 billion budget for fiscal 2008, which begins July 1. But senators, and Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle wanted to make a statement that local projects don’t belong in a mid-year budget meant to pay for emergencies or problems that pop up during the course of a year. And Johnson said there is no guarantee those other projects will ever be funded.
“Obesity is the number one problem with health care in America. Obesity is probably the number one problem with government also,” said Johnson, who was joined at a morning news conference by several other Republican and Democratic senators.
Senate Minority Leader Robert Brown (D-Macon), said, “These priorities are the priorities we can support.”
The Senate Appropriations Committee is expected to pass the mid-year plan this afternoon. It will then go to the full Senate. After it passes, House and Senate leaders will begin hammering out their differences.
Those negotiations, crucial to programs like PeachCare that are facing funding shortfalls, may drag on because House members say they were sandbagged by the Senate. House leaders say they didn’t know the Senate would largely gut the mid-year spending bill until just after the House passed it last week.
Senators complained that the House used the mid-year budget to add local projects, known as pork, often in the districts of the chamber’s leaders. For instance, the House added nearly $6 million for local museums, $1 million for the Tour de Georgia, $125,000 for a West Georgia tourism group, $19,000 for library equipment on tony St. Simons Island, and $350,000 for a new animal hospital at Zoo Atlanta. House leaders noted that they also added money for necessities, like new state trooper cars.
The Senate budget also cuts out $13 million for Perdue’s “Go Fish Georgia” program, $50 million he wanted for land conservation, and $40 million to help get the Kia car plant in West Georgia up and running. Senate leaders said putting off the $40 million until fiscal 2008 won’t endanger the project.
“What the Senate said today is the same thing they have said for the last two weeks,” said Clelia Davis, spokeswoman for House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram). “They want to spend money in July and claim they’re fiscally conservative, but if the House spends it in March, we’re not conservative.
“It is nothing but a shell game. How does shifting the same amount of spending by 4 months make the Senate conservative and the House not conservative?”
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