12:26 pm January 15, 2010, by Aaron Gould Sheinin
Gov. Sonny Perdue just released his budget proposals for the remainder of the current fiscal year and the 12 months starting July 1. The headline: pain.
Public K-12 education faces an additional 3 percent cut in the current fiscal 2010 budget, while most all other state agencies must find 8 to 9 percent to cut before June 30. All state employees, including teachers, must take three furlough days before June 30.
Perdue’s amended 2010 budget stands at $17.4 billion, down from the $18.6 billion plan he and lawmakers agreed to last year.
The 2011 budget, which takes effect July 1, is projected to be $18.2 billion.
More to come.
Update 1:40 p.m.: The good news for teachers, and all state employees, is that Perdue’s 2011 budget does not include additional furloughs.
The overall picture for K-12 education is not entirely clear, either.
For example, in both 2010 and 2011 budgets, schools overall will receive more money, largely thanks to federal stimulus funds.
But the basic funding mechanism for schools, the Quality Basic Education funding formula, shows a $450 million reduction the rest of 2010 and $527 million in cuts for 2011.
Of that $450 million in 2010, about half of it comes from the teacher furloughs (roughly $30 million a day in savings) and through increased health care costs for teachers, administration and staff, leaving about $218 million in actual programmatic cuts.
It also appears as if nearly all state employees will be paying more for health care, or already are as the governor has pushed agencies to implement cuts for the past several months as monthly revenues have plunged.
Update 1:49 p.m.: As expected, there are no tax increases in either budget, but there is at least one new source of revenue, a sort of “bed tax” charged to hospitals and a fee on managed care providers. Together those fees will raise about $345 million and will largely go to fund increased Medicaid costs.
Perdue said he is also tapping a Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority fund for more than $200 million through a series of bond market transactions.
Update 2:23 p.m.: The Department of Corrections, which some observers already consider to be at a crisis point, will see nearly $36 million of its $987 million budget cut this year and another $12 million in 2011.
Update 2:28 p.m.: In terms of state tax revenues, Perdue is estimated that individual income tax collections will increase by about $350 million in 2011 to $7.52 billion and state sales tax collections to growth about $200 million to $5.28 billion. Corporate income taxes would see a modest $5 million increase to $580 million in 2011.
Tobacco and motor fuel taxes would both see slight declines, according to Perdue’s revenue estimates.
More to come.
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I found out while on the phone with my mom this morning. I was at Whole Foods getting breakfast and she actually prefaced the news with a disclaimer of sorts: "Have you seen the front page of the paper? No, you haven't. You don't read the paper (She knows I don't read/watch the news; I think it's all bullshit, propaganda, wrought with scare tactics). Well . . . just . . . don't start cussing. You're in public." And then she told me.
Again: Wow.
Fucked up on so many levels, for so many reasons. Backwards. Maybe I'll get into it later. I'm just not in the mood now.
Davey Crockett is pissing me off, too.
I want new, nicer clothes. Not fancy or exorbitantly expensive; I've never been a big fan of wearing brands or designers. Just better-made.
Project Runway was good last night. Excited it's started again.
Headache. Always headaches.
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