GA Budget Hearings Begin Today

Good morning. As Teri noted in the Morning Reads, it is budget week in Georgia. For Legislators, borrowing a phrase from yesterday, it’s a week on, not a week off. This year in particular.

To be charitable, there’s a bit of daylight between the Governor’s office and the legislature on the budget, and there are more desires to spend as well as cut taxes than the available revenue allows. This means that this year’s hearings will provide more back-and-forth between the legislators and the agency heads than we’ve seen in a few years. Spending – and cuts – will be asked to be justified. In detail. You’ll likely even see some questions on the basis of the revenue estimate itself.

Georgia’s leaders are trying not only to balance spending with revenues, but also to please bond rating agencies while also not putting the state in a position where furloughs or mid-year cuts are also necessary. …if it were easy, everyone would be doing it.

You can watch all of this from home here.

The agenda can also be found here.

Governor Kemp will lead off those appearing before the committee at approximately 9:15am today. Hearings will continue all day today, tomorrow, and Thursday, with Thursday afternoon dedicated to block grant hearings.

Temperature checks should occur early and often this week. We should get some idea of how close or how far legislators’ ideas on the budget are from the executive branch. The answer to that will tell us a lot about how the rest of this session will develop, both for length and for other non-budget legislation that will be considered.