Gov. Nathan Deal Tuesday morning signed a $19.9 billion budget for the coming year that increases spending $600 million but doesn’t provide cost-of-living raises for the state’s 200,000 employees and teachers.
As in every year since the start of the Great Recession, the state budget includes spending cuts in nearly every department, from agriculture to technical colleges. At the same time, it funnels millions more into k-12 education and public health care.
The budget, for the fiscal year that begins July 1, is crucial to the lives of millions of Georgians, providing for the education of about 2 million students and health and nursing care for more than 1.6 million people. It funds road improvements and prisons, economic development initiatives and cancer research, business regulation and water and sewer projects.
The spending plan for fiscal 2014 includes $850 million in construction and renovation projects, many in metro Atlanta.
Georgia Gwinnett College avoided a major hit. Deal and the House had wanted to cut into the $16 million in annual startup money the college has been getting for several years. The Senate, which has several prominent members from Gwinnett, didn’t want any cuts. Georgia Gwinnett lobbied the issue hard, and House and Senate negotiators agreed to keep the full $16 million in the budget for the upcoming year.
The budget fills a nearly $225 million gap in the state’s Medicaid program for the poor and disabled, but cuts about $19 million in funding for Georgia’s technical colleges.
The budget adds $38 million in school equalization funding, which is designed to help “low wealth” systems. The $474 million program sends extra money to about 130 school districts, mostly rural. The largest single beneficiary, however, is Gwinnett County, the state’s biggest district, which will see a 51 percent increase in equalization funding next year.
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