Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said Wednesday he’s ready to loosen the purse strings after years of huge budget surpluses, reaped partly by holding down spending despite strong state revenue.
In a yearly memo that kicks off the state budget process, Richard Dunn, director of the Office of Planning and Budget, told state agencies they can ask for 3% increases both when the current 2024 budget is amended and when lawmakers write the 2025 budget next year. He also invited agencies to propose one-time ways to spend the state’s unallocated surplus, which could top $10 billion once the books are closed on the budget year ended June 30.
All proposals “should be targeted at initiatives that can ‘move the needle’ on program outcomes, improve customer service, or provide future improvement on how we do business or deliver services as a state,” Dunn wrote.
GEORGIA GOV. BRIAN KEMP CONTACTED BY SPECIAL COUNSEL JACK SMITH REGARDING DONALD TRUMP 2020 ELECTION PROBE
One of the Republican Kemp’s strongest powers as governor is setting the revenue estimate, an amount that state law says legislators cannot exceed when writing the state spending plan. Critics of Kemp’s fiscal policy, including the liberal-leaning Georgia Budget & Policy Institute, say he has starved state services by setting artificially low revenue estimates.
And while Kemp has dipped into surpluses to give more than $3 million in one-time income tax, property tax and fuel tax breaks, he has conspicuously avoided broader discussion of how to spend, give back or invest the remaining billions in extra cash that state government has banked in the past three years.
Most Georgia agencies took a 10% cut in the 2021 budget, when government officials feared a sharp revenue drop from the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, federal stimulus programs and inflation fueled higher income and sales tax collections. Agencies saw their budgets increase in 2022 and 2023, but mostly only to raise employee pay.
That means many programs never…
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