March
28, 2008 - We have completed 36 days of the 2008 General
Assembly session and are scheduled to conclude adjourning
sine die on Friday, April 4. This has been a short week
as we were in session only two days to allow our colleagues
in the Senate time to finish their Fiscal Year 2009 budget
work. As directed by the state Constitution, all budget
matters must begin in the House of Representatives, so the
Senate was waiting on us before they began.
One high interest bill we passed is Senate Resolution 845.
The legislation would authorize voters to decide if they
wish to approve a regional sales tax to pay for highway
improvements. It would create several regions across the
state, known as special transportation districts, where
local governments could agree to hold a referendum for voters
to approve or reject a local one-cent sales tax. There are
numerous safeguards, including opt-out provisions for counties
who do not wish to participate. The key to this resolution
is voter choice. In our version, the money collected would
be kept entirely by the region for local road projects.
The Senate version would require that 20 percent of the
sales tax proceeds go to the state Department of Transportation.
This bill will go to a conference committee to work out
the differences. We approved this bill 136-35.
The Fiscal Year 2009 budget has been discussed but I haven’t
really outlined some of the highlights of the spending bill.
First, as has been widely reported, revenue estimates for
FY 2009 will be down by $245 million. Our state’s
net growth is expected to be $635 million or 4.26%.
The biggest news in education was that we restored $90 million
to the “austerity cuts” that were in the Governor’s
budget. We also restored $1.3 million to Math Mentors –
the Superintendent’s #1 priority based on the overwhelming
success of the Science Mentor program that the House of
Representatives created to raise test scores. We also have
added $305 million across the two budgets to fund K-12 school
construction and equipment needs. We added $114 million
in additional funds to fully fund the Regents formula for
our colleges while creating a $60 million bond to start
the construction of a new dental school – the only
one in the state – to ensure an adequate supply of
dentists trained in state-of-the-art procedures.
With trauma care being one of the most important topics
here at the capitol, our budget contains $5.5 million for
equipment and $53,402,769 for distribution to aid existing
trauma hospitals. Also on the health care front, over $80
million was added as provider increases for hospital, home
health personal support, maternity, well-child care, ambulance,
pharmacists, nursing homes, therapeutic resident care and
dental services. This is for the 1.6 million Georgians receiving
Medicaid and PeachCare services. We put in $2 million for
four new Community Health Centers, which provide primary
care access in underserved areas of the state. These centers
are the best deal in health care, as the state provides
$250,000 to start-up in federally designated areas with
significant access issues and then fully funds the on-going
operations; this is for four start-ups and four existing
centers adding mental health services.
We provided just over $1 million for the Meals on Wheels
program. Funds are needed to replace federally withdrawn
funds (Paper Plate Initiative) from the Nutrition Services
Incentive Program. Meals are served in-home and congregate
places such as senior centers. This will provide over 200,000
meals to at-risk seniors and disabled persons. In the realm
of public safety, we added $20 million to continue the House’s
initiatives last year to retain and recruit public safety
officers, as well as prevent the compression of salaries
in between pay grades. This annualizes last year’s
increases for law enforcement officers in Public Safety.
Stay
tuned! There are significant differences between the House
and Senate budgets which must be resolved before next Friday. |
