Key panel approves $20.8 billion budget with more for education, local projects

A key House committee Tuesday approved a state budget for the upcoming year that puts more into local schools and construction projects and sends a message to the agency that provides health care to 650,000 teachers, state employees, retirees and their dependents.

That message: starting next year, lawmakers want the Department of Community Health to offer teachers and employees options in choosing health care providers, something they aren’t getting now.

The budget will go to the full chamber sometime later this week. If approved, as expected, it will go on to the Senate for its input. Lawmakers are trying to speed up the process this year because of earlier than usual primary elections. Gov. Nathan Deal is up for re-election, as are all 236 legislative seats.

The plan proposed by the House includes Deal’s $500 million-plus increase in school funding in the upcoming year. House Appropriations Chairman Terry England, R-Auburn, said his chamber’s top priority is for extra money to go toward increasing the number of school days in districts where they have been reduced since the start of the Great Recession.

House leaders also added tens of millions of dollars in new construction projects.

House leaders inserted language into the budget asking the Department of Community Health to add providers to the State Health Benefit Plan. The agency changed the plan last year to go with one provider and a program that increased out-of-pocket costs for teachers, employees and retirees. The aim was to save $200 million a year.