Legislative leaders predict more budget cuts

By Nancy Badertscher and Ariel Hart

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Top leaders in the Georgia House and Senate predicted Tuesday that legislators could be forced early next year to cut state spending by an additional $400 million.

“We’re somewhat like a home where we’ve lost one of our incomes and yet we’re still spending at a high level,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Jack Hill (R-Reidsville) said.

“We have used the piggy bank and the money under the mattress.”

Hill and House Majority Leader Jerry Keen (R-St. Simons) appeared at a luncheon hosted by the Georgia Public Policy Foundation to discuss the state’s budget crunch and other issues facing the General Assembly when its session begins in January.

The recession has forced Gov. Sonny Perdue and lawmakers to reduce state spending by about $3 billion in a little more than a year.

Most recently, Perdue ordered $900 million in additional cuts, including three-day furloughs for teachers and state employees.

Additional cuts -- above the $900 million -- could result in additional furlough days for more than 250,000 state and school employees.

Some had earlier predicted the need to cut an extra $300 million, but revenue collections and other variables could make that number go up or down.

Keen said legislators need to look seriously at redefining the role of state government.

“We’re going to have to decide who and what we’re going to be in state government and recognize those core services we should deliver to the citizens,” he said.

Transportation ranks among the core services that Keen ranked as critical.

He said House and Senate leaders appear to have reached consensus on a bill that would allow local governments to band together to fund transportation projects with a special purpose sales tax.

Observers had raised doubts about whether legislators would vote for a new sales tax  in an election year and after two high-profile transportation funding bills have failed to pass in each of the past two years.

He said lawmakers also hope to bring to the floor for a vote next year a bill that would address transportation funding needs outside the metro areas.

Keen would not give specifics on that proposal but said extra money could be generated without raising taxes “in years where revenue growth exceeds a certain point.”

Both proposals would still have to be backed by the House, Senate and the governor, he said.

Hill told the lunch crowd that, for all the criticism that’s leveled at the federal government, the state would be in much worse shape were it not for the $3.5 billion it received in stimulus money.

In 2012, he said, “we have no one-time funds -- no stimulus funds, no nothing. We’re on our own.”