Good problem for General Assembly – what to do with surplus | News

ATLANTA – The 2024 session of the Normal Meeting beginning Monday is anticipated to characteristic renewed debate over points lawmakers have wrestled with for years, together with non-public faculty vouchers, legalized playing, and tort reform.

What’s totally different this 12 months is that Georgia is sitting atop a $16 billion finances surplus and one other $11 billion undesignated funds. What to do with that unprecedented pile of money possible will dominate the 40 days beneath the Gold Dome.

“The state has the prospect to make an actual distinction within the lives of Georgians by investing in vital areas corresponding to youngster care, schooling, and workforce improvement,” stated Danny Kanso, senior fiscal analyst with the left-leaning Georgia Price range and Coverage Institute. “We’ve the sources to make historic investments that may profit all Georgians for generations to return.”

Nevertheless, the legislature’s Republican majorities aren’t prone to abandon a long-running popularity for fiscal frugality to fulfill state companies and curiosity teams with lengthy lists of makes use of for tax {dollars}.

“The world is stuffed with concepts for spending different folks’s cash,” stated Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia.

Then again, Tillery acknowledged the toll inflation has taken on core authorities companies.

“We’re in all probability going to should spend extra to do what the federal government must do,” he stated.

Gov. Kemp’s priorities

Gov. Brian Kemp already has recognized a few of his spending priorities. Early final month, the Republican governor introduced he’ll ask the Normal Meeting to speed up the state revenue tax lower the legislature authorised two years in the past.

The measure, which took impact initially of this month, reduces the tax price from 5.75% to five.49%. Kemp is proposing to decrease that price additional to five.39%, a stage that barring new laws wouldn’t kick in till subsequent 12 months.

Kemp additionally will ask lawmakers for funding to supply one-time pay dietary supplements of $1,000 for every of about 112,000 state workers and 196,000 lecturers and college assist employees, and to ship $45,000 to each public faculty in Georgia to strengthen campus safety.

Faculty vouchers

In the meantime, GOP legislative leaders are anticipated to mount one other bid of their perennial battle to get non-public faculty vouchers by the Normal Meeting.

Final 12 months, the Senate handed a invoice to supply Georgia college students in low-performing faculties $6,000 scholarships to pay for personal faculty or sure different academic prices. However the laws failed within the Home on the ultimate day of the 2023 session when a bunch of rural Republicans joined minority Democrats against diverting funds from public faculties in voting towards it.

The agricultural Republicans objected to the invoice as a result of there aren’t sufficient non-public faculties in rural counties to make vouchers viable in these areas.

“We maintain listening to, ‘faculty selection, faculty selection, faculty selection,’ ” stated Lisa Morgan, president of the Georgia Affiliation of Educators. “For the overwhelming majority of Georgians residing exterior the metropolitan space, that’s not an choice. … It’s disingenuous to say any voucher invoice would profit these college students.”

Tort reform

Kemp signaled final summer season throughout a speech at a Georgia Chamber of Commerce-sponsored occasion that tort reform could be one in every of his prime priorities for the 2024 Normal Meeting session.

One of many first issues Republicans did in 2005 when the GOP took management of each legislative chambers for the primary time in trendy historical past was go a invoice setting a $350,000 cap on non-economic damages in lawsuits. However the state Supreme Court docket overturned the regulation in 2010.

“The price of defending itself towards one bogus lawsuit might be sufficient to place a small enterprise out of enterprise,” stated Hunter Loggins, director of the Georgia chapter of the Nationwide Federation for Unbiased Enterprise.

Legislative Democrats have lengthy blocked main tort reform initiatives within the legislature, arguing adjustments to the system would strip away the rights of victims of automobile crashes and medical malpractice to their day in courtroom.

Legalized playing

One other problem lawmakers debate nearly yearly however have but to behave on is legalized playing. Of a number of types of playing which were proposed, supporters say sports activities betting ought to be the best to go as a result of it might be performed with out amending Georgia’s Structure, which requires two-thirds votes of the Home and Senate.

However not everybody buys that authorized argument. State Sen. Brandon Seashore, R-Alpharetta, stated he’ll introduce a constitutional modification early within the session to legalize not solely sports activities betting however on line casino playing and pari-mutuel betting on horse racing.

If it passes, the modification would land on the statewide poll in November for Georgia voters to resolve.

Seashore stated half of the state’s share of income from legalized playing beneath his proposal would go to infrastructure spending, together with freeway and bridge enhancements. Final month, Georgia Commissioner of Transportation Russell McMurry warned the state wants a major enhance in transportation funding through the coming many years to maintain folks and freight shifting on highways that in any other case will turning into more and more congested.

“They will’t spend the cash on salaries or new F150 vans,” Seashore stated of his laws.

Seashore stated the remainder of the state’s share of funding from legalized playing could be divided between psychological well being care, rural well being care, and chronically underfunded Traditionally Black Faculties and Universities (HBCUs).

Healthcare points

Legislative Republicans are also anticipated to resume efforts to repeal or not less than streamline the state’s Certificates of Want (CON) regulation governing hospital building. After years of failure on the CON entrance, GOP leaders have signaled a willingness to speak about increasing Medicaid protection in Georgia – a longstanding precedence for Democrats – in alternate for CON reform.

Below a Medicaid enlargement mannequin adopted in closely Republican Arkansas, people with incomes as much as 138% of the federal poverty line are eligible for protection. Georgia Pathways, the restricted Medicaid enlargement that took impact in Georgia final summer season, units the revenue restrict at 100% of the poverty line.

“If we’re going to have conversations about vital CON adjustments, we have to have conversations about how we’re going to get folks entry to well being care,” stated Anna Adams, govt vice chairman of exterior affairs on the Georgia Hospital Affiliation. “There’s going to be conversations about each.”