Become A Georgia Budget Expert: The Basics
When I’m not organizing GeorgiaPol most of my time is spent on policy education issues as the Executive Director of PolicyBEST. We focus on issues of Business Climate & Economic Development, Education, Science & Medicine, and Transportation.
In the state of Georgia, every one of these issues comes back to the budget. We have to have a balanced budget every year. We have critical needs in Education, Health Care, and Transportation. And we have to accomplish all of our goals in these areas and more while having a tax burden that keeps Georgia an attractive place to live, work, and operate a business. Thus, Georgia’s budget is at the crux of virtually every major policy decision.
As such, our Policy Analyst Zack Lindsey has prepared a series of six short videos that break down our budget process, as well as show where the funds come from and where they are spent. We’ll show the difference between revenue growth and surplus funds, how Georgia’s budget has changed over the last decade, and finally do a comparison of Georgia’s budget and tax burden to that of our neighboring states.
The goal of these videos is too provide raw numbers and facts, as a resource for you to expand your knowledge on Georgia’s budget.
In the first installment of Become a Budget Expert, we discuss the basics of the budget process. Focusing on the role the legislature and the Governor have in the process. Important highlights include:
-The budget is the sole constitutional responsibility of the state legislator
-The budget must be balanced every year
-The Governor’s Office sets the revenue estimates which determine how much the state can plan to spend
We hope you will find these videos both enjoyable and educational.
About Author
Charlie
Founder of GeorgiaPol.com; Now weekly columnist Very interested in Georgia and Georginas. Interest in politics is waning daily.
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Watched 1 basics, 2-6 marked private. Installments means wait for it ?
I can see my evil plan to build excitement is working.
To try to keep the discussions here to the topic of each video we’ll do one a day (Tomorrow, Tues-Friday).
Today’s is probably a bit basic to generate much talk here. My guess is an average GeorgiaPol reader/commenter would know what’s in this one. Videos 2 and 3 are items we’ve covered here before as well, such as sources and uses of tax dollars, but could still generate a bit of conversation. Videos 4-6 may be new to some folks, and have a bit more analysis thrown in to put the raw numbers into some perspective. Those are the ones that start framing the possibilities and limitations for policy decisions.
clever – 90 seconds is our average attention span.
Charlie, in the video of the pie chart depicting from where the funds come (starting at the 00:45 mark), there is a key (in red) shown for Federal Recovery Funds. However, there is not slice of pie shown as Federal Recovery Funds. If there are no Federal Recovery Funds to show in the pie, why is there a key for it? By the way, the four slices of the pie shown do add up to 100%.
1 Budgets must balance, but pies are optional.
2 We ran out of stimulus dollars a long time ago, and thus no more red keys.
Can I get continuing ed credits for watching these?
Health care cost is a key as well as education. We need to take real steps to tighten up in both areas, or we will all face the music. Why I have posted numerous times about real solutions to contain the cost.
You do realize we’re talking about the Georgia budget here, right? If you think the problem we have is overspending in health care, I would suggest you pay close attention to videos 3 and 6.