House Panel OKs $40.5B Mid-Year State Budget
Thursday, February 6th, 2025
Georgia House budget writers approved a $40.5 billion mid-year state budget Wednesday that would take advantage of a huge surplus to fund improvements to the state’s prison system and provide disaster relief to victims of Hurricane Helene.
The fiscal 2025 mid-year budget would increase state spending by $4.4 billion over the original budget the General Assembly adopted last spring. Of that increase, $2.7 billion would come out of the surplus.
Gov. Brian Kemp made the prison system and hurricane relief major priorities of the mid-year budget he presented to the legislature last month.
The House Appropriations Committee upped the ante on both, raising the number of additional correctional officers the state plans to hire from the 330 the governor recommended to more than 400 and increasing the hurricane relief package Kemp proposed by $197 million to $811 million.
The prison package follows release of a Justice Department audit last fall that accused the Georgia prison system of violating inmates’ constitutional rights by failing to protect them from widespread violence. Beefing up the system’s staffing and upgrading deteriorating prison infrastructure will require a multi-year effort, committee Chairman Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin, told his House colleagues before Wednesday’s vote.
“This is just the beginning of a costly but essential endeavor,” he said.
To help offset the cost of the increased hiring, the House version of the mid-budget calls for reducing Kemp’s request for the design and construction of new modular prison units from four to two. That would reduce the total prison package from $372 million to $333 million.
Hatchett said the hurricane relief money would help homeowners, business owners, farmers, and timber producers across a large swath of South Georgia and the eastern half of the state struck by Helene in late September recover from the devastating hurricane.
“This storm had a much larger impact than any other disaster in our history, causing generational loss, changing the landscape of our state both literally and figuratively,” he said.
Other highlights in the mid-year budget include a $1 billion one-time income tax rebate and $1.7 billion for transportation and water projects.
The transportation funding includes $530 million to help the state Department of Transportation improve roads and highways vital to the movement of freight throughout Georgia.
The water projects the governor is recommending include $500 million to increase surface water supplies in Coastal Georgia as an alternative to dipping into environmentally fragile groundwater to supply the huge Hyundai electric-vehicle manufacturing plant now under construction west of Savannah. A new water intake on the Savannah River is expected to deliver 20 million gallons a day by 2030.
The mid-year budget, which would cover state spending through June 30, fully funds Georgia’s Quality Basic Education (QBE) formula for students in grades K-12, something the state has only been able to do in recent years after building up a $16 billion surplus.
Another $50 million would go for one-time school safety grants, which Kemp announced last month. Every public school in Georgia would get $68,000 to spend as local school officials see fit.
The mid-year budget is expected to reach the House floor for a vote on Thursday.
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