Legislature passes $19.9 billion budget for 2014

With less than four hours remaining in the session, the General Assembly on Thursday adopted a $19.9 billion budget for the upcoming fiscal year that funnels millions more into k-12 education and public health care but also imposes another round of spending cuts for many state agencies.

The new budget, which passed the House 175-1 Thursday night and the Senate 54-0 earlier in the day, doesn’t include cost-of-living raises for 200,000 teachers and state employees. They haven’t received such raises since just after the start of the Great Recession.

The budget 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, which begins July 1, includes $850 million in construction and renovation projects, many of them in metro Atlanta.

At the last minute, lawmakers added a few more local projects to the bond package, including $2.9 million to renovate a building at Ogeechee Technical College, which is represented by Senate Appropriations Chairman Jack Hill, R-Reidsville.

Meanwhile, House and Senate leaders cut a payment and annuity that was supposed to go to Lathan Rydell Word, who was wrongly convicted of an 1999 armed robbery in Columbus. A resolution supporting the $400,000 payment had been held up by the Senate before eventually passing, but the budget didn’t include the money. A similar measure died in the waning minutes of 2012 session. Budget officials said the money would be included in the midyear budget next year.

Georgia Gwinnett College avoided a major hit. Gov. Nathan 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.

While the Senate won the battle of Gwinnett College, the House was able to persuade the Senate to avoid cutting $40 million in payments to health care providers who treat the poor and disabled. It also won a small increase in payments to foster parents. And budget negotiators nixed the $10 million Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle wanted to invest in start-up companies.

The budget fills a nearly $225 million hole in the state’s Medicaid program for the poor and disabled, but cuts about $19 million in funding for Georgia’s technical colleges.

The final budget endorses Deal’s recommendation to add $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.

The budget also added back money the House had proposed cutting from a state grants paid to all private college students.

The subsidy program has been around for about 40 years and is meant to help private college students pay tuition.

“The sum total is we produced a budget that moves this state forward,” Hill said just before signing the agreement.