Georgia House leaders on Tuesday backed 4% raises for many state workers and more money for law enforcement, education and mental health programs.
The raises are included in the spending plan for fiscal 2025 — which begins July 1 — and comes less than a week after Gov. Brian Kemp signed a midyear budget that includes $5.5 billion in extra money for things such as massive renovations on Capitol Hill, a new medical school at the University of Georgia, a new prison, and miles and miles of roads.
The midyear budget runs through June 30. The full House is expected to approve the fiscal 2025 budget on Thursday, and it will then go to the Senate for its consideration.
State tax collections have been slow for the past year, but the state is sitting on $16 billion in “rainy day” and undesignated reserves so Kemp and lawmakers have backed higher spending since the session began in January.
The state spent about $26.6 billion — excluding federal funding — in fiscal 2020, the last budget plan approved before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Last year, it was more than $32 billion. The midyear plan Kemp just signed boosted state spending to nearly $38 billion. Of that, $2 billion would come out of “undesignated” reserves.
All that matters because the money the state collects in taxes helps pay for K-12 schools, colleges, public health care, prisons, policing, business regulation, roads and a host of other services.
Under the Kemp budget plan endorsed by House leaders, state law enforcement employees would receive $3,000 raises, on top of the $6,000 increases approved last session. Child protection and placement services caseworkers in the Division of Family and Children Services would also receive $3,000 raises.
Other rank-and-file workers would receive 4% increases — up to about the first $70,000 in salary — and teachers would get $2,500 more.
More than $200 million extra would go to school districts to pay for transporting children to school, something local officials have requested for years, and $104 million would go to schools for security upgrades.
The Kemp proposal backed by the House would also include $11 million as part of a yearslong plan to cut the size of prekindergarten classes to make it easier for teachers to help students.
The House also backed hundreds of millions of dollars more for Medicaid, the state-federal health care program for the poor and disabled, including big money to increase payments to nursing home operators and other providers.
In addition, the House backed half of the spending needed for a judiciary-backed proposal to greatly increase the salaries of the state’s top judges.
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