Senate Appropriations Committee, March 25, 2026 Video: https://vimeo.com/1167877358 (a timestamp t plays at https://vimeo.com/1167877358#t=s) Page: https://georgiacommons.org/meetings/2026-03-25/senate-appropriations This is a machine transcript of the General Assembly's video, made by a speech-recognition model. It is not an official record and can mishear words, names, and numbers. Speakers are not identified. The video is the record: every timestamp links to the moment it plays. [0:13:51] Okay, guys, it's seven twenty-nine. If you can, uh, start making your way in here, we're gonna count for quorum. [0:14:58] Just waiting on quorum, fellas. You [0:15:23] guys are welcome to talk amongst yourselves. We're waiting on two more people before we make a quorum, so it's gonna... might be just a few minutes. [0:16:43] If there are any senators back in the hall, please come on in. We need two more senators to make quorum. [0:17:24] For those of you watching who kinda wonder what's going on, you know, our committee hear- meetings start early, sometimes six, sometimes six thirty, sometimes seven. There we go, fourteen, fifteen. We've now got a quorum. Uh, and there was another committee hearing already running this morning, public safety, so it kinda... At this time of year, as you know, it's hard to, um, get everything done within the timeframe allotted, so. We now have a quorum. Uh, guys, welcome to the Appropriations Committee meeting for today, which is the twenty-fifth of March, twenty twenty-six. [0:17:57] Gonna ask Senator Echols, if he doesn't mind, to lead us in an invocation to get us started. [0:18:02] Yeah, I'll bow with... Heavenly Father, Lord, we just thank you for today and thank you for the many blessings you've given us, Lord. Just go with us as we, um, go through this meeting and, and debate the issues of, uh, of the citizens of Georgia, Lord. We just are so thankful for a state that we live in like Georgia, where we've got so many great people, we've got so many great, uh, things here. And I just thank you, uh, for the staff that's worked hard on this budget and, uh, for the committee members who have put in a lot of extra effort to get this to where we are today. [0:18:34] In Jesus' name we pray, amen. [0:18:36] Amen. Thank you. Take a second here and remind you where you are. Th- this room was built in eighteen eighty-nine, I believe. It has served as the Supreme Court of Georgia. It's also served as the Appropriations Committee room through dozens of governors, through at least thirteen lieutenant governors, and, uh, through probably fifty-plus sessions now. And you are part of history here. You are the last hearing, appropriations hearing, that will be held in this room. As you know, we will move next year across the street to a new facility, so it's a, um, a bittersweet day in, in some ways. [0:19:12] This room has held a lot of history. It's seen a lot of Georgia's, uh, good actions and a lot of investment in our state employees, our state's public safety, our state's education. Uh, and you will now be a part of the last, uh, appropriations hearing, most likely, unless something absolutely insane happens that, that none of us wanna see, um, that you'll be a part of the last hearing to happen here today. So, uh, thank you for being a part of history. Today will be no different. We'll obviously invest today in education and public safety, in our state's retirees, among others. [0:19:45] And we have three items that we need to take care of first. The first one, I believe, is presented by Senator Burns. [0:19:59] Thank you, Chairman- [0:19:59] Correct. Get your folder. [0:20:01] Senate Resolution nine seventy-eight is the study committee that will evaluate- [0:20:06] Give me, give me a sec. [0:20:07] Now- [0:20:07] There we go. [0:20:08] Sorry, guys. [0:20:08] I don't need to start the last, uh, appropriations meeting by making you not be on the mic, so- [0:20:13] Not a problem, Mr. Chair. We'll quickly- [0:20:15] And my first boss ever, by the way, so- [0:20:17] I can't imagine [0:20:17] ... there you go. [0:20:18] Can't imagine. Uh, good morning. Um, committee, I bring you Senate Resolution nine seventy-eight. It's the study committee that's, uh, designed to evaluate how higher education is funded. We've had the same funding formula for about thirty years now. And, uh, Senator Hickman and I and others are looking forward to understanding what our options may be as the demographics of the higher education change. I'll be happy to take any questions. [0:20:43] Are there any questions for Senator Burns? All right, any- [0:20:48] Thank you. [0:20:48] Yep. Chairman Hickman? [0:20:53] We do have to pass it. [0:20:54] We do have to pass it. [0:20:55] Yes, sir. [0:20:55] So we got a motion. Yes, sir, we do have to pass it still. It might be the last day, but we still gotta pass things out of here before, before the, before they can make it to the, the Rules Committee. [0:21:03] Mr. Chairman, at the appropriate time, I'd like to make a motion to pass. [0:21:06] You got a motion from Senator Hickman. Is there a second? Second from Senator Kirkpatrick. Senator Kirkpatrick, your name tag's upside down. Any further discussion? [0:21:16] Your name tag. [0:21:17] It's early, man. [0:21:18] It's very early. [0:21:20] It's early, man. Y'all are lucky I even showed up. [0:21:24] Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. [0:21:27] Aye. [0:21:27] Opposed, nay. It passes unanimously. Congratulations, you're on to greener- [0:21:31] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [0:21:33] The next, uh, item is going to be House Bill eleven ninety-three, uh, by Representative Irwin. Uh, he and I talked earlier. There's gonna be a committee substitute, and I'm gonna present it for him out of respect for he may not know some of the changes that were made. We'll go ahead and dive into that one. It should be in any, in all of your folders. [0:21:55] Let's see. [0:22:02] We're working off of LC 49-28-47S. As you know, our, um... Got a s- quest- question in the back but I turned it back off. Our state has been addressing the issue of literacy since at least 2022. That's when the Senate bill concerning dyslexia, uh, first passed. And dyslexia screeners, we moved them into literacy screeners and, and did a lot of work there. I wanna say, first, thank you to Chairman Hickman, uh, from the fourth, who spent a lot of his time working on this very early on. [0:22:37] And then we also wanna say thanks to a lot of our friends who are in the room who picked up and adopted this. None, uh, some of them being sitting in the front above the rail and some behind, obviously, Chairwoman Irwin, uh, Chairman Dubnik, um, the first lady of the House, Ms. Dale Burns. Thank you for your work on this too. And as we've moved this issue forward, you've seen why we're addressing this. Uh, Georgia's children, only twenty-nine percent are reading on grade level in third grade. It's abysmal. We spend fourteen billion dollars on our K-twelve education system, yet our results only show twenty-nine percent of kids reading on third grade level. [0:23:11] The reason that that's incredibly problematic for our state is 'cause at the Department of Corrections, we predict our prison population twenty years out based on that third-grade reading level. It's been a huge issue at this Capitol. I've heard a lot of people talk about that there might be something caught in the House-Senate battle here. I can't disagree more. Uh, I think the Senate has worked hard on this issue. I know the House has worked hard on this issue. So any comments from the peanut gallery that this is anything more than legislative process and folks trying to work together to make things happen, uh, is not productive, and it is not helpful to the citizens of Georgia or its children who li- reside in our K-twelve schools. [0:23:55] House Bill 1193 seeks to make some improvements on the good work that the House has already placed into, uh, their House version, and I wanna present it to you now. The House draft was crafted through the hard work of many members that I've already mentioned. I told you about the House Education chairman, the Education Sub-- Appropriations Subcommittee chair, and of course, I mentioned Ms. Dale Burns, the first lady of the House. We're grateful to see the House's investment in something the Senate's championed since the dyslexia pilot in 2022. [0:24:27] You've got LC 49-28-47S before you, and I'm just gonna walk you through the different sections now. Giving you an overall twenty-five thousand foot view, I think what you could say is that the Senate's version places a lot of emphasis on the classroom. We believe that coaching, the coaching models we saw adopted in Mississippi and Alabama have worked, and the Senate doubles down this proposal. And while there are some changes, a lot of it is just in structure and organization. The Senate bill lays out in section 1.2 what we think is the Senate's main priority, which is clo- coaches in the classroom. [0:25:03] We move that to the front of the bill to stress its importance, and you'll see that we do agree with the House and think that there should be a coach at every K-three school. The Senate funds it differently, though. Rather than funding it at, in QBE as the House did, and they funded it at forty-four percent. I understand why they did that. They did that understanding that there's no chance we could pro-- they don't think we could ramp, ramp up all teachers in one year or all coaches in one year. The Senate took a different approach. We moved this out of the QBE formula, instead placing it in a non-QBE grant. [0:25:37] What that does for the local schools is it means that they do not have to cost share in this. The local five mil share of twenty percent is not going to be borne by the local school systems. The state will take on all the cost of putting these thirteen hundred and thirteen coaches in the K-twelve schools at a cost of over seventy million dollars, and you will see that reflected in the Senate budget. In section 1.3, we-- Well, in 1.2, we also lay out the requirements of being a literacy coach in a school. [0:26:12] We say that you don't need any other job responsibilities. We don't want you also to be dealing with, uh, things that come with administration or teaching in the classroom or other types of, uh, non-literacy involved programming, that we want you to spend at least seventy hours in the classroom over the requisite periods. And then we move down into section 1.3, which is our RESA coaches. You know, those are already funded at a little over eighteen million dollars. The Senate recognizes this funding, and we also, um, take and somewhat designate their duties that they look a lot like the coaches that you have in the classroom. [0:26:51] But of course, because they're RESA coordinators, that some of that, uh, lineup is a little bit different. In section 2.1, we take the State Board of Education, the Department of Education, the Governor's Office of Student Achievement, and we have them work together to select the high-quality ins, uh, instructional materials, universal screeners, and professional learning that'll be involved in this literacy program. If you move over to section 2.2, we keep a lot of the language from the House, and we also talk about, uh, the literacy coaches' endorsement procedures that will be approved by the PSC. [0:27:24] Originally, this was to be developed by the Sandra Dunagan Deal Center at the Georgia College and State University, but we understand that this might move to Georgia Southern, and we actually support this at five point five million dollars that you'll see reflected in the Senate's budget proposal later on. [0:27:40] In sections 2.4 and 2.5, the bill states that local education agencies can't use state funding on high-quality instructional material unless it's approved by the State Board of Education, and those requirements begin in the year 2030. It also states that the State Board will recommend to the General Assembly what costs should cover high-quality instructional materials for districts, and we keep that language as we saw it in the House. In sections two point six and two point seven, uh, you'll see that we sunset the Literacy Council in December tw-- uh, thirty-first of twenty twenty-six. [0:28:10] This council has done incredible good work. I've been, uh, privileged to serve on this council, and the good work has gotten us to where we are now. But one thing we do not do in government is we do not end things once they've served their role. So in this, in the Senate's bill, we end the council. We move a lot of their, um, duties that they were working on, including keeping things updated over to the Governor's Office of Student Achievement, and you'll see that reflected on about five different lines in the Senate budget later on. [0:28:41] Section two point eight is a section about accountability. Mississippi and Alabama ran their literacy programs through the Department of Education. And we're not here to beat up any agency, but we-- I do think it's fair to say that the legislature has had a difficult time at times getting the Department of Education to feel like it-- we feel like they had buy-in with this procedure and this process. Section two point eight. While we get-- while Mississippi and Alabama's model worked with the Department of Education, and we want to move back towards that model that we've seen work, we know that it will not work unless we provide accountability and oversight to the Department of Education in this process. [0:29:21] And we think that accountability and oversight should be seen at GOSA, the Governor's Office of Student Achievement, and that they should be a coordinator and a collaborator in this spot. We've talked with the Governor's Office of Student Achievement about this. They understand that role, have agreed and-- to engage in that role, and you'll see section two-- uh, two point seven-- two point eight, rather, uh, reflect that. In part three, you'll see a lot of the retention to the House's language, including when we talk about how students are promoted out of first grade. [0:29:53] We keep the first-grade screening. We add that back in, where right now you know we're screening in third grade and later grades. We also say, uh, provide a process for parental notification if their student is not ready to move from the first grade. We keep a lot of that language from the House. Again, streamline it s-slightly and put so much more focus on classroom rather than bureaucratic, uh, ties that we feel may slow down this process. [0:30:26] The Senate substitute honors the hard work of our partners across the hall, and it hones in where our focus is needed most, in the classroom. As I told you, the first section of the substitute provides school-based coaches in every K-three school. We've maintained the qualifications and job descriptions laid out by the House, but we've chosen a different funding mechanism, as I've already said. I want to stress this because I think it's important again. By moving the funding outside the QBE formula, the state ensures funds are not restricted by an allotment sheet, letting flow where coaches are hired in real time. [0:30:59] Furthermore, funding coaches outside of QBE means districts do not have to pick up the twenty percent local five mil cost share. And as I told you already, you'll see the Senate's commitment to this in our FY twenty-seven budget. We maintain our regional literacy coaches as a layer of support to our principals and school-based coaches. We maintain the existing Literacy Coach Coordinating Committee as a partnership between the Governor's Office of Student Achievement, the Department of Education, and other stakeholders that work to ensure all of our coaches are providing consistent and informed support to our teachers statewide. [0:31:35] The Senate supports the development of the literacy coach endorsement. As I told you, we think it'll likely be at Georgia Southern. And the Senate supports the opportunity to fund high-quality instructional materials. The Senate supports identification and implementation of first-rate universal screeners and of professional learning. What the Senate's proposal will not support is added layers of bureaucracy. While we honor the work of our House partners, we must also honor the work of the agencies and stakeholders who've already engaged in this effort. The substitute does not include a new task force or new committees. [0:32:08] The state should be working to clarify support for our schools rather than creating overlapping authorities that-- and entities that sow confusion. The Senate substitute also recognizes that we cannot know what's working if we upend the apple cart every two years. The General Assembly can't tell teachers that the training we required them to do last year now isn't good enough. And we can't tell school districts that the high-quality instructional material that we required them to invest in last year now has to be replaced. [0:32:38] We must be conscious of the efforts already being made when we require our schools to adopt new policies. The Senate believes the Governor's Office of Student Achievement and the Department of Education have the expertise to choose the resources that are right for our students. Following input from the Governor's Office and, and the department, the substitute encodes the relationship between these a-agencies for literacy endeavors. We recognize that schools will be looking to DOE for support, whether the General Assembly legislates it or not. [0:33:10] And rather than avoid that fact, the Senate seeks to bolster that partnership between the agencies and move everyone forward together on a unified, accountable front. [0:33:24] I want to take a moment again and thank the Literacy Council members, the school district members, the university experts, and all other stakeholders who work so hard to educate legislators and guide agencies towards the best outcome for our students. We cannot do this work without your efforts, and that's why I want to assure you that your continued input is not only expected but required by this bill. Even though the substitute will sunset the Georgia Literacy Coun-Council on Literacy by the end of the current calendar year, the council delivered our first statewide literacy plan. [0:34:01] Under this bill, the Governor's Office of Student Achievement Education agencies and stakeholders are charged with continuing to implement and update that plan into the future. I want to reiterate the Senate's focus on the classroom rather than on committees. We know who the experts are. We know what resources are needed. We need alignment rather than segmentation. And with this bill, Georgia establishes its laser focus on support for our teachers and our students in the classroom. [0:34:33] I want to ask, uh, we want to show you literacy is not easy. As you know, we've been tackling this topic for, for several years. And just to show you a graphic of sort of the flow chart that we went through with the House bill and the Senate bill, not to single one out and say one's better than the other, but it helps you understand what the Senate bill does. [0:35:10] You're going to see, can we make it any bigger? Maybe. So this is the Senate, the Senate's, the House's version rather. Let's back, uh, that's the Senate's version. [0:35:18] Yes. Yeah. [0:35:19] So that, that's the Senate's version in a flow chart and how things flow down from the governor all the way to the classroom. Income, if you look at the dark black lines, that's oversight and employment. And if you look at the dotted lines, that's advisory and coordination. For just comparison purposes, you don't have the, the other version? [0:35:38] Elena's getting it. [0:35:39] Gotcha. She's getting that one there. There's a, a different version and we'll show that and we may just wait and show it on the floor. Just the two different versions. You'll see that even the H- the Senate's plan isn't exactly a straight line like I think everyone would want. But when we compare it to some of the, the bureaucratic moves we saw in the other plan, you'll see why we tried to streamline that a, a little bit here. At this point in time, happy to take any questions or if there are no questions, we'll take a motion. [0:36:11] Got a motion by Senator Ginn. Is there a second? Second by Senator Hickman. Any further discussion? [0:36:19] All right. All those in favor say aye. [0:36:21] Aye. [0:36:21] Opposed? And it passes unanimously. Thank you. And we'll get the technical difficulties worked out for the floor. [0:36:30] The last bill on today's agenda [0:36:41] is House Bill nine seventy-four, the state's fiscal year twenty-seven budget. [0:36:51] I want to thank Speaker Burns one more time for letting me carry this bill. [0:37:04] And we'll start walking through it now. The FY twenty-seven budget is, uh, thirty-fi- thirty-eight point five billion dollars, um, and it's sitting on your desks now. It's about a six hundred million increase over last year's budget. That six hundred million dollars though actually becomes four hundred million dollars when you look at the way the governor took and trimmed back the state health benefit plan to save about two hundred million dollars in the process. Uh, the Senate budget on your desk invests in the futures of our people and of our state through investments to accelerate and create positive tomorrows in the lives of young people and in our children, through upholding livelihoods and the promise to our workers and benefits, through reaffirming a future to provide safety and security, through protecting our natural landscape and protecting its natural resources. [0:37:52] In these pages, we invest in pensions of livelihood for folks that have dedicated their lives to serving our state. We invest in education. We invest in public safety and in supporting the state process of keeping law and order. We invest in health, in rates to healthcare providers, and in pilots to continue advancing our state's fight against maternal fetal mortality. Let's pull, peel back the layers of the onion here just a little bit. In the Department of Audits, you'll see that the Senate supports a two percent salary increase to the Department of Audits personnel, mainly because of new duties that we are going to give to them surrounding school systems and school system audits. [0:38:30] At the Department of Administrative Services, the Senate's version supports funding the state's new enterprise resource program to give greater visibility and accountability in prep- preparation for zero-based budgeting. In the judicial branch, we supported the House position of state pay for district attorneys at a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. We also funded three hundred thousand dollars for new senior court judge days as we evaluate a judgeship creation formula. The current formula sets us up so that there will always be, uh, new judgeships each year. We're not sure that that's the best formula moving forward. [0:39:04] Uh, and so we're going to provide some senior judge days as we bridge this process. In the Department of Agriculture, there's no change to funding consumer protection, but we do separate out the law enforcement program for better efficiency and clarity. We also support the House increase for a new ag lab at thirty point four million dollars. In ag research, we add five hundred thousand dollars to the GTRI program for peanut research. That'll give them a base in the peanut program now of a million dollars, and we support eighty thousand dollar increase for the peanut breeder. [0:39:35] We also support eighty thousand dollars of research for the pepper weevil, um, that's beginning to blight peppers in our state and some of the, um, the non-row crop things that the senator from Macon knows what I'm talking about there. At the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, we had a huge win this year by moving out from underneath the Olmstead decision, and that affected us a lot on behavioral health. You'll see that we also try to come in here and fund some things to move us out from underneath that settlement on developmental disabilities. [0:40:06] One of the first things is we support a SAG increase, the special appointed attorney generals who work in this department. We fund increases for them here at the Department of Behavioral Health and also at the Department of Human Services. We support a two hundred thousand dollar fund transfer the, from the Department of Veteran Services to assist with cleanup for a new veteran cemetery site. And let's talk about waivers. The Senate's budget includes over twenty million dollars to fund one thousand two hundred and seventeen new NOW/COMP waivers. [0:40:37] When combined with the expected attrition, this funds all one thousand six hundred and seventy-eight individuals on the planning list ident-identified by the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities as having urgent needs, effectively serving one hundred percent of that population, and it represents over one-third of all eligible individuals currently on that waiver list. To support implementation, [0:41:07] the Senate also includes funding for twenty-six additional positions. It turns out you can't just fund the waivers, you've got to manage those waivers, and that will require twenty-six new positions at Department of Behavioral Health. These roles are intended to support eligibility processing, service coordination, and oversight, helping ensure these waivers are operationally, operationalized efficiently and translate into meaningful reductions in the planning list while improving access to services for individuals and their families in community settings. [0:41:39] This is a targeted investment that prioritizes individuals in the IDD community with the most urgent needs, supports families who rely on these waivers for access services, and ensures Georgians can receive services in their communities rather than in an institutional settings. You know, we moved out from underneath Olmstead on behavioral health. We are gonna take just as strident moves to move out from underneath Olmstead on intellectual disabilities. Not necessarily at the Department of, of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, but tangentially related, and we're gonna discuss it here. [0:42:13] The Senate's budget uses opioid funds for our RSAT programs and also for our accountability courts to handle the growth in population that we've seen there, and you'll see that reflected on several lines in the budget. At the Department of Community Affairs, the Senate funds a two million dollar study for Lake Lanier. Think it'll be combined with some local monies to possibly make that total amount would be around five million dollars. But let's talk about why that matters. Lake Lanier supplies water to roughly forty percent of all Georgians. That's their source of drinking water for forty percent of Georgians. [0:42:47] We know we've had some issues with smells up there that have led folks to believe that maybe there's some issues. Uh, it's affected not just the smell, it's affected, uh, restaurants and cooking and o- other parts of commerce. Uh, we're trying to figure out if this is related to runoff or to some other means, and so the Senate's gonna invest two million dollars with our local partners for a five million dollar study there. At the Department of Community Health, the Senate supports various rate increases in Medicaid. We support raising the primary care codes to our Medicare levels. [0:43:19] We support a twenty percent increase in dental codes, and we fully fund the ABA in-clinic codes to match in-home care rates, which was a request from almost the entire Senate. The Senate's budget also adds six point eight million dollars to the FRV formula for skilled nursing facilities for one-time adjustments, and we add one million dollars to a family medicine residency in Reve- Riverdale. The Senate's budget also restores funding for the Senate's Slot for Docs program, and we support house increases in various other graduate medical education programs across our state. [0:44:02] In the Department of Community Health, you'll see some true-ups, some reductions in some lines and some true-ups in some others, and these are usually related to the Rural Health Transformation Program. As you know, the state received a large grant from the feds to implement the Rural Health Transformation Program, and these are gonna cause some offsets in some other lines of, uh, of the budget, especially in community health. [0:44:27] The House added four million dollars to both the Morehouse and the Mercer medicine programs. The Senate supports these programs, and we have supported them over the years, but rather than adding four million dollars to their base funding, the Senate recognizes the base funding and adds two million dollars to each of these programs to increase residency programs, uh, in rural areas. Mercer's working with some folks down in Coffee County. Morehouse is working at Phoebe Putney, and we support these at a two million dollar increase to their base funds. The Senate's budget also adds one point three million dollars to home and community-based services, service providers to keep folks from possibly needing these Medicaid services to begin with. [0:45:05] At the Department of Corrections, we've seen a reduction in turnover, and we think we're beginning to get our staffing levels back to where they need to be, but we know we're not there yet. So the Senate's budget supplements correctional pay with an addu- correctional officer pay with an additional two thousand dollars, uh, to-- and we also work within that budget, not just for two thousand dollar increase for correctional officers, but also to work amongst compression in that department to make sure this additional two thousand dollars doesn't cause additional issues with compression. [0:45:36] We add to the physical health contract, but at a lesser dollar than the House and the Governor due to the LTAC facility coming online and also due to certain modular units that we're bringing in, uh, that we think are gonna clear up certain space, and the expectation of the LTAC and the mod units together, we expect a reduction in outside the wire care. At DECAL, the House, uh, the Senate supports the House position on using lottery funds for extended day funding, which will free up additional cap spots to be used by our citizens. At the Department of Economic Development, the Senate's budget promotes good governance by separating tourism into its own budget line item category, and we also support grants to local tourism offices. [0:46:18] The Department of Human Services, the Senate's budget supports a two point five million dollar increase to the BOOST program. We also add fifty-five million dollars to relieve budget pressure on out-of-home care. That's the state's foster care program. And then we start to address the SNAP error rate. The House budget included roughly eleven million dollars to address this. You know, this is something that the feds are pushing down on us that we're gonna have to do over the next few years, and quite frankly, we have an abysmal SNAP, SNAP rate we need to be working on. The Senate did not agree with the House eleven million dollars of funding, though. [0:46:50] We chose instead to accept an offer for a sh- a free state partnership with Equifax and save that money, and let's, like I mean, look, you can't get better than free. So let's, uh, run that price instead of spending the eleven million dollars, uh, at DHS that had previously been, um, um, not appropriated, but, uh, put line item to potentially go there. At the Department of Labor, the Senate supports the addition of thirty new positions in consumer service, uh, customer service rather, for audits and for agents to right-size the department. [0:47:22] We also support the funding for a call enhancement center as requested by the commissioner. At the Department of Natural Resources, feral hogs cost our state over one hundred and fifty million dollars annually in damage. And the Senate, um, and the House together have funded the feral hog program in various items. We funded it at Soul and Water, we funded it at Ag, we funded it at Department of Natural Resources. The Senate's budget this year tries to bring all that together, put it at Department of Natural Resources. [0:47:53] And we also began looking out to see who also is dealing with invasive species, uh, like we're dealing with, with feral hogs. The most close match we could find was Florida. They're dealing with a python issue down in the Everglades. And there is a vendor and a, uh, program in place there for them to combat that. What we did is see how that would work with Georgia, and we've basically adopted that Florida model, and the Senate's budget places one million dollars into implementing this Florida model to see if we can resolve our feral hog issue the same way that they are trying to resolve their python issue in the Everglades. [0:48:30] At the Department of Public Health, the Senate supports the home visiting pilot to reduce maternal mortality, and we expand it to ten more counties than the governor's original proposal, which is thirty-one counties, new counties in total. At our technical schools, navigable seem to come up a lot. Uh, the Senate supports two things, one at Department of Natural Resources and then one here. We support navigable waters and we also support navigable careers. And the Senate supports those at a total dollar amount of two million and two dollars. We fully fund the Augusta Technical College building in our TCSG program, and we restore funding for the Dual Achievement Program. [0:49:07] We restored that by using funds that the house had set aside for adult education and moved that instead back into our Dual Achievement Program. The Senate's budget also funds one half of the Central Georgia Tech Healthcare High School, which was half funded on the house side. We funded the other half, and this will be in Houston County. At our university system, the Senate's budget adds over eight million dollars for cancer, the cancer center in Augusta. I remember when this thing was created. [0:49:37] I was an intern back in two thousand and three, and I remember Senator Don Cheeks, who put a lot of work with our current chancellor and our now, our then governor to create this center and get it going in Augusta. Uh, it's done incredible work. It's done a lot of research work, and the lieutenant governor's office has made it one of their top priorities to make sure that we increase that research funding, uh, for the cancer center there in Augusta, and the Senate does so at the tune of approximately eight million dollars. We also fund a facility that we designed several years ago, but it hasn't made it onto a build yet, list yet. [0:50:12] The building at Savannah State University, the Senate's budget adds forty-two point eight million dollars to fund the facility at Savannah State. That has been a huge request of the senator from the first and a senator from the second. The Senate rejects the House proposal to reduce fund, proposed funding for the Center for Civil Thought. Uh, we add back those funds, fully funding the requested amount at the Center for Civil Thought. Through our Georgia Research Alliance, the Senate supports m- the funding to move Georgia Southern and Kennesaw State University forward in the R1 research institutions. [0:50:48] And then we took a hard look at online classes. More than thirty percent of US- USG's online credit hours are now taught online. And this isn't a bad thing, but it should be less expensive to offer classes online than it is in person. The Senate's budget alters the funding formula, making one point one hours offered online equivalent to the same funding of one point zero hours offered in person. It's not a drastic move. It simply requires ten percent more hours online to earn the same state hourly pay as an hour in person. [0:51:22] I recognize there may be some concerns about this change to the teaching formula, but it's important for us to understand that while the state has been paying the same cost per credit hour for online and in-person classes, students are typically paying more to learn at home. Tuition, yes, is typically the same for online classes, but fees decidedly are not. Online fees at our colleges range from fifty-two percent to one hundred percent of on-campus mandatory fees. And students pay this online fee in addition to the mandatory campus fees, which already include, in most instances, a technology component. [0:51:56] Fees for fully remote students on average are fifteen percent higher than traditional students, and students who take a blend of online and in-person classes face even more costs. They pay the average of sixty-five percent more in fees. At some schools, they're paying twice as much. And remember, HOPE doesn't cover these fees. Second, common sense should just tell us what I said at the beginning. Online classes should likely cost less to operate than in-person classes. So why should they be treated the same? [0:52:26] Much less, why should they cost more? The Senate's not willing to blithely follow this path, so we made our change as, uh, as I stated to you earlier. We've also set a study committee to look into this further, but sometimes the greatest encouragement in change is, is change, and, and the Senate's proposal offers this encouragement. By making this change, we ensure that schools receive roughly the same dollars to educate an in-seat student as they do an online student. And our future study will hopefully help determine what common sense has already told us. [0:52:57] At the Department of Transportation, the Senate supports road maintenance and capital projects through motor fuel funds, and we also support the House's increase of roughly ten million dollars in airport aid, but only to airports that do not use ADSB for tracking and billing purposes. The ADSB program is something that was started by the FAA to track airplane movement. It was never supposed to be a billing par-com-com-um component. There's been a issue statewide where they talk about, uh, ADSB is now being used by some airports to say, "Hey, you landed here overnight. [0:53:30] You should pay X number of dollars of landing fee." Well, if they're not there to service and staff the airport, then why should that, those folks be paying that landing fee to begin with? The issue has trickled up to a national level, and so the state decided that we would weigh in as well and say, if a airport's gonna be using ADSB for the purposes of tracking and billing, then they're not gonna be eligible for this additional funding that we're putting into the state's airport aid program. The state built the runways. The state paved the runways with federal funds. [0:54:01] The state's maintaining many times most of the runway. Um, the citizens of Georgia have already paid for this. They don't need to pay for it twice. At, uh, Veterans Services, the Senate continues to support ending veteran homelessness, and we make-- we double down on the commitment we made in the amended budget, adding an additional five million dollars, uh, to match the five million dollars that we did in the amended budget. Uh, we believe that the veterans who've served our country deserve dignity. They deserve a roof over their head. [0:54:31] And the State of Georgia, specifically the Senate, and we're sure our colleagues in the House will agree, is going to double down on that investment and make sure that those veterans are cared for when they return home after the lives that they put on the line for our nation abroad. The Senate's budget also supports quality in our Milledgeville Veterans Home and adds five million dollars to promote that quality and to make sure that all beds are funded to be open. In education, the Senate supports thirty million dollars in bonds for school safety. [0:55:02] That was supported by and added by the House. The Senate also adds thirty million dollars to the Promise Scholarship from the cut made by the House of seventy million, giving it an even base in this Promise Scholarship program of one hundred million dollars. You've heard me talk about literacy previously, but we'll run through it again. The Senate budget proposal fully supports the Senate substitute to House Bill eleven ninety-three. As I told you before, this was a Senate priority, uh, long ago. Senator Hickman carried that for us. [0:55:33] The senator from the fourth carried it for us for years. We expanded the, the literacy approach with the Literacy Council and the great work that they did, and now we're seeing that the Governor's Office of Student Achievement is transitioning into a different role now, more of a coordinator position than an oversight, a daily oversight position. The Senate's budget for literacy focuses intently on the classroom, pouring over seventy million dollars into our literacy coaches, fully funding on state funds, not local funds, one thousand three hundred and thirteen literacy coaches for our state. [0:56:08] That's elite. That's enough to have one in every single K-three school. We did not do this in QBE, as I told you, so the locals do not have to pick up twenty percent for the local five mil share. We also funded the five point five million dollar fac-- uh, research and coordinating and coaching implementation, uh, add made by the House that, again, we believe will be at Georgia Southern University. But we moved those funds out of education where the House had them originally and moved it over to USG, uh, for proper oversight. [0:56:41] This isn't some center for kids who can't read good. This is real work, and the Senate funds this work at USG to insert-- ensure our Board of Regents maintain the q-proper quality for the program. Finally, our state's retirees. You've heard from many of them, and for years they have stated that the loss of COLAs over the past decade has put them at a detrimental loss. We have heard them, and the Senate's budget proposal adds one hundred million dollars to the state's employees' retirement system into the base budget, expecting it to be there year after year to trigger additional and more consistent COLAs for our state's retirees. [0:57:34] This is a huge addition, one long requested by our state's retirees and one that meets them where they've, where they are at and brings them back to the table to tell them thank you for the years of service that they provided, not only in rooms like this, but in rest station areas, in public service areas, at the Departments of Public Health, on the side of the road with DOT, standing out in the middle of the storms, keeping our people safe, in our classrooms and elsewhere, and I believe this is one of the, the best line items that you see in the FY twenty-seven budget. [0:58:22] What you don't see in this budget is much of the frivolous spending you may see elsewhere. Things we had-- We had to clear certain things out to fund our principal priorities and investments. Our focus is on funding foundational, making foundational funding changes and things that bend the arc of outcomes so as to improve Georgians for fantastic days ahead. We did that in literacy. We've done that in public safety. We've done that in our ploy- employees' retirement, and we've done that with now comp waivers, just to name a few. [0:58:56] It is not lost on me that this is my last time to preside over this committee, and it has been truly a pleasure and a joy. The folks that you allow me to work with at the Senate Budget Office are second to none, and they're sitting on the back row. You guys stand up for a second. [0:59:37] If you knew the hours that they put into this, uh, bill, you would, uh, you'd clap three times longer. Um, their work ethic, their commitment to the people of the state, their commitment to you as senators, uh, is second to none. And I've never met a, a more awesome group of dedicated, uh, workers who understand their role and work daily to fight not just for the positions that better Georgia, but for the poti- positions that better the Senate, and you are a pleasure to work with. [1:00:12] Uh, we're the third group to touch this. You know, their folks-- our friends in the House had their bite at the apple, too. Um, again, class acts, Chairman Hatchett, um, Chairman England, the two House Appropriations chairs I've had the pleasure of working with, uh, are gentlemen. They're statesmen, and, uh, they make Georgia a better place to be. It's also been a pleasure. I've worked with two OPB directors, uh, Director Dunn and Director Kelly Farr, and both of them always put Georgia first. They put the interest of their boss, the governor, first, and they carried out his, uh, desires in a way that, um, reflected positively not only on his office but on our state as a whole. [1:00:55] I've seen the continuum serving now. This is my seventh year. When I came into office when I was vice chair in twenty seven-- in twenty nineteen, uh, when Mr. Jack Still chaired, we were already trending low on revenues. We were trending to a point where we thought our revenue and expense lines were about to clo- to cross, not terribly different from where we are now. And I tell you that to say, um, the Lord is right. When, uh, when Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes that there's nothing new under the sun, there is nothing new. [1:01:25] We simply repeat some of the old arguments and walk in a circle, and we have seen all those over the past seven years. We went from a time in twenty nineteen where revenues and expenses were about to cross to a time in twenty twenty where we were pulling fifteen percent out of the budget to a time in twenty twenty-two when we were seeing incredible growth based on inflation and federal spending and, uh, that surpassed anything we ever could have imagined to now we're back at the twenty nineteen levels again. We've come full circle in seven years. And while I don't think I ever could have filled Jack's shoes, and no one ever will fill Jack's shoes, whoever succeeds me and follows in this role will do better than I have. [1:02:04] They'll do better because of the people you saw stand on the back row, because of the people they're working with in the House and the governor's office and because of the people in front of the rail in this room who work tirelessly for their districts, for their constituents, for the issues that they know are important to our state and also overall for the health of the Senate and the health of our state as a whole. It has been an honor to serve you. Happy to take any questions, and at the right time, I think it's appropriate for us to take a motion on this bill. [1:02:36] You want to make a motion? Uh, Senator Kirkpatrick. [1:02:40] Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and we're gonna miss you as Appropriations Chair. Thanks for all the great work that you've done. The question that I have is, I may have missed this. You talked about the home visit program pilot through DPH, and I may have missed your commenting on the autism pilot expansion. [1:02:59] The-- We did not, I did not comment on that actually, Senator. I'm glad you brought that up. As you know, that's something the senator, uh, and I have worked on for years together. The au- autism-- We, we ran a pilot on autism in one district. We saw that there's, uh, six to seven times more likely for children in our foster care programs to be, um, to have autism. We don't think foster care causes autism, so that obviously shows us that the autism is leading them to be- end up in our state's foster care, and we've tried to replicate that pros- that pilot in three other regions. [1:03:30] Uh, you've got a bill on it. I've got a bill on it. I think Representative Silcox has a bill on it, and one of those are gonna make it across the finish line, we hope, by the, by the end of this year. Any other questions? Senator Ginn. [1:03:45] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, you mentioned there was thirty million dollars for school safety. I think it's probably the metal detectors going in front of the schools, and we're bonding that money. [1:03:53] Yeah. [1:03:53] With the money we got in reserves, why are we not paying cash for that? Why, why go to a bond? [1:03:58] So the governor's revenue estimate sets us up for, you know, for about three years, two or three years, we did pay cash for bonds instead. Uh, the governor's revenue estimate this year set a cap of the thirty-eight and a half billion. The-- He also set up for us to return two bonds, so we utilized the tools in our toolbox to, to fund that mechanism. It was actually funded on the House side, and we continued it on the Senate side. We didn't reduce it. [1:04:32] Um, I don't know who the fifty-second is. Number fifty-two. Is that gonna be you, Senator Orrock? [1:04:37] Uh, thank you. I'm sitting in one seat and using- [1:04:39] Gotcha [1:04:40] ... another mic. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh, and I, I just want to express my appreciation and applaud the, uh, the wisdom that was behind this decision to re- re- Re-restore the COLA, uh, put us on the right path for our retirees. You, you, uh, spoke, you know, very well about it. I agree. I think it's, I think it's a, a, a breakthrough decision and one of the most important things in the budget, and it's gonna resonate across the state to our retirees who- [1:05:11] Well, think it's an investment- [1:05:12] ...who've paid the price [1:05:12] ...again, remember, we wanna keep that fund fully funded. It- the amount of the COLA is still set by the ERS system. But by adding one hundred million dollars into it annually, we do think we should be able to trigger more regular and consistent COLAs. [1:05:26] Thank you. [1:05:28] Um, Senator Gooch. [1:05:33] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, thank you for your leadership in Appropriations. All the years you've worked and all the staff that's helped to go along with that work to produce this budget. Could you give us a real quick, um, explanation on the cuts to the university system on the online courses of hundred and twenty-three million dollars? Was there any in-input from the university system on that decision or- [1:05:55] Sure [1:05:55] ...is there a formula? Can you explain how we came up with that number? [1:05:58] Yeah, that's, that's literally what I walked through in my speech, but I'm happy to do so again. What we did is we looked at the online classes and we said one point one online hours is equivalent to one hour in person, is the, the thought was online classes should be cheaper to teach. One, you, if you wanted to, you can record it and play it years after years. In fact, I think that'd be a brilliant idea. I remember learning from Chuck Bullock at the University of Georgia. I don't know that anyone could teach Southern politics any better. They could record his, his speeches and run them in, in perpetuity. [1:06:28] So that's how we funded that. [1:06:30] I, I heard those comments and, and thank you for that. And I was wondering if the university system had the opportunity to reflect on your decision on that or how that ratio was created. [1:06:41] We asked them in-- Earlier this year, we, we sent signals to them through the pres- through the presidents that we were looking at this decision. We heard from the central office. We actually sent a direction to the central office before we got the budget, right before we got the budget, and asked for their input. They asked us instead to study the issue. We are gonna study the issue, but sometimes the best way to, um, bring an issue to the table is to, to make a change that we're gonna study. So we brought that change to the table in the process of studying. It freed up that one hundred and twenty-five million. [1:07:13] We invested those two in, in two areas. One is in the State Employees' Retirement System. That's where a hundred million of it went. The other twenty million dollars of it went to waivers to fully fund the now comp waivers. So the way we funded that is by a reduction in online classes, a class in formula. [1:07:31] Senator Hatchett. [1:07:33] At the appropriate time, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to make a motion. [1:07:35] We got a motion. Is there a second? Second. A second from Senator Ch-- Anderson. Sorry. I almost called you Senator Harbison. Sorry. Uh, Senator Harbison, since this is your last Appropriations meeting, Senator Anderson, do you mind if in the official records we reflect the second that's coming from Senator Harbison? If it doesn't, I can come up. It's been a long day. Thank you. There's a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? All those in favor, please say, "Aye." [1:08:06] Aye. [1:08:06] Opposed? And it passes unanimously. Thank you so much. We stand adjourned. Thank you for the honor of serving you for the past seven years.