by Maggie Lee January 19, 2022
That money comes from mainly from personal income taxes, corporate income taxes and sales taxes.
Let’s see what’s in the spending plan …
Most spending would be on education and health care; prisons do OK too.
The spending priorities and allocations here are in roughly the same proportion as with Kemp’s previous budgets.
The top item is $10.71 billion for K-12 education — that would be about 35% of all state spending.
Next, health care.
Georgia’s share of Medicare and Medicaid (including PeachCare) makes up most of the Department of Community Health’s budget. DBHDD provides support and health care to folks who have mental illnesses, addictive diseases or developmental disabilities.
Next, there’s university spending.
The University System of Georgia gets about 10% of the state budget – $3.11 billion.
Lottery scholarship money is allocated separately under the Georgia Student Finance Commission.
Then roads, bridges and other transportation.
Most of Georgia’s $2.07 billion transportation budget comes from a gas tax. And no, the state doesn’t subsidize MARTA.
Georgia would spend about as much on prisons as on debt service.
Georgia’s got a good credit rating, and it borrows money to build things like school and park buildings — or prisons.
Kemp proposes almost a billion dollars for human services.
That includes child and adult protective services, Georgia’s share of a federal cash assistance program to very poor families and payments to foster families.
“Everything else” is a lot:
Technical schools, Pre-K, the judiciary, parole supervision, the GBI, public health and many, many more things.
Next steps:
The Georgia House and Senate will come up with their own budget proposals for the fiscal year that starts July 1.
In practice, Georgia’s Republican-led legislatures and Republican governors differ little over spending. If past years are any guide, Kemp’s proposal will change a bit between now and passage — but in a budget of over $30 billion, the changes are liable to amount to rounding errors.
Questions? Tag Atlanta Civic Circle on social media and we’ll do our best to answer.
Charts and text by Maggie Lee
Have questions about state spending? Tag Atlanta Civic Circle on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram and we’ll do our best to answer.
