Georgia budget deal includes possible lure to carmaker
This year’s legislative sessions ends this week. To see where particular bills and resolutions stand, check out The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Legislative Navigator at http://legislativenavigator.myajc.com/.
House and Senate leaders late Monday agreed to a state budget of about $21.8 billion for the upcoming fiscal year that would borrow $1.1 billion for construction projects and includes a few last-minute, unvetted surprises, per usual.
Included is money for a training center near Savannah at a site that could be used to attract an auto plant. Volvo is scouting sites to build a U.S. auto plant, and Gov. Nathan Deal has been courting the company to build in Georgia.
The money for the center would be taken from the $100 million in borrowing the state had planned to put into transit systems across Georgia. Instead, the state would borrow $75 million for transit.
Another last-minute addition, which wasn't mentioned by negotiators when they signed the plan Monday, would add three members to the state Court of Appeals at a cost, with staff, of $1.5 million. No legislation increasing the court had been considered by a House or Senate committee. Such last-minute add-ons by state leaders are a tradition in the General Assembly.
The added court slots, which are traditionally filled by gubernatorial appointees, will likely be included in a pay raise bill for top judges that's expected to be considered Tuesday by the Georgia Senate. The bill, and the budget, would increase the pay of many Superior Court judges 10 percent. Most other state employees would get 1 percent raises.
Approval of the budget for fiscal 2016, which begins July 1, clears the way for the end of the session Thursday. By law, legislators must agree to a budget before the session ends.
“I don’t know one individual in this state that this budget doesn’t touch,” House Appropriations Chairman Terry England, R-Auburn, said before signing the agreement.
Both chambers are expected to consider the full spending plan Tuesday. House and Senate leaders declined to release details of what they approved Monday.
However, Senate Appropriations Chairman Jack Hill, R-Reidsville, said under the plan, the state would borrow $1.1 billion, mostly for k-12 and college construction projects. An additional $100 million would go to replace and fix bridges.
Overall state spending would increase $900 million.
Both chambers agreed that 22,000 part-time school employees and their dependents should be able to remain on the State Health Benefit Plan, the state’s health insurance program for teachers, retirees and state workers. Deal had proposed booting part-time school bus drivers and cafeteria workers off the coverage.
But both chambers say local school districts need to come up with $103 million more in the upcoming year to pay for coverage for the so-called noncertified school employees — both part-time and full-time.
That cuts into the money Deal and lawmakers planned to send districts to fund teacher pay raises and eliminate furloughs left over from the recession. With the increased insurance costs, some systems may not be able to afford much in the way of raises.
Lawmakers say the noncertified school employees are the responsibility of local school districts, and that teachers and state employees have been subsidizing their insurance through higher premiums for years.
Doctors and other medical providers have been lobbying hard for more funding, and the budget deal includes more for Medicaid and related public health care programs.
Under the Affordable Care Act, primary care doctors got a bump in their Medicaid pay for two years as part of an effort to encourage more doctors to see patients through the state health care program for the poor and disabled. The federal government paid the full cost of the increase for the two-year period, which ended in 2014. States could then decide whether to continue the pay increase. Doctors won’t get the full amount they lost, but lawmakers added some funding to help make up the difference.
About the Author
James Salzer has covered state government and politics in Georgia since 1990. He previously covered politics and government in Texas and Florida. He specializes in government finance, budgets, taxes, campaign finance, ethics and legislative history
