SWGA Politics

The State Budget

Over the last few days, a fairly large group of people all across the State – including here in the Lee/Dougherty area – have gotten very upset over various proposed cuts in education, specifically over 4H.

The first point I want to make here is that this is political gamesmanship and nothing more. The General Assembly ordered cuts, and the Board of Regents responded with cutting programs that they knew would attract this mass public outcry in order to try to pressure the General Assembly to not force them to make these cuts. Apparently, at least some in the General Assembly are already caving.

Even before then, however, you had several lawmakers – including State Rep Austin Scott (R-Tifton, running for Governor) get pissed that the Board of Regents would consider eliminating the very popular 4H program completely as one concrete example of the gamesmanship described above. Scott took the bait hook, line, and sinker. He told the Tifton Gazette “We asked them to bring us their proposed potential budget cuts and instead, they say they want to raise tuition and eliminate 4-H.” Scott has been in the General Assembly for more than a decade, approaching a decade and a half. He has been a Chairman of a couple of different committees. He wants to be Governor. He should know better than to engage in this petty gamesmanship, and he should rise above it.

But those are side issues to me – political noise that doesn’t amount to anything substantive, and indeed hides the substantive issues that need to be discussed.

The fact of the matter is, the State is in an extreme budget crisis right now. We have spent and spent and spent when times were good and completely ignored basic economic reality that no trend is permanent, and more often the basic scientific law of equal and opposite reactions applies. In other words, for any boom there will be a corresponding bust, and for any bust there will be a corresponding boom – no matter what any individual, group, or government does.

During this budget crisis, brought on in part by extravagant spending during the good times, cuts absolutely have to be made. The only other option is to raise taxes, which is completely unacceptable. Government does too much already, and before raising taxes can be considered a viable solution, this must end.

Education, per the Governor’s FY2011 Recommended Budget (page 19 of the 422 page document), is 57% of the State budget, and I have been told various figures that anywhere from 80-97% of that is local teacher salaries. Yes, teachers work administratively for their local school system, but the bulk of their salary (in many counties, their entire salary) comes from the State. This Budget document lists the State budget as $18.1 Billion, and the State Department of Education alone is almost $7 Billion of it. The Board of Regents (which oversees Albany State, Darton, and Georgia Southwestern in Americus) is another approximately $2 Billion in the Budget, and “Education” as a policy group is more than $10 Billion in the State budget.

Outside of education, the largest expenditures are health and public safety, combining for nearly $5 Billion in the budget. In these two areas, the largest departments are the Department of Community Health and the Department of Corrections, combining for just over $3 Billion for just those two departments. Indeed, in FY2011, the Department of Community Health’s budget is bigger than the Board of Regents’.

In other words, in an $18 Billion dollar budget, $14 Billion of it is tied up in FOUR departments. Each of these four are political hot potatoes, because by and large the populace wants the services regardless of whether it is genuinely a proper role of government, yet they don’t want to pay for them to do their jobs properly as stated.

Right now, the General Assembly is debating another $1 Billion in cuts. Some solid proposals have been put out there, including Austin Scott’s proposal to sell off the fleet of airplanes owned by the State of Georgia, many of which are apparently flown as little as five hours per week. Another legislator, who chooses not to be named, has discussed the possibility of merging various departments and eliminating redundancy. Indeed, one proposal was discussed in subcommittee to combine ALL state law enforcement (GBI, State Troopers, Park Rangers, etc) into a single agency, and that is one that on first glance I think has merit.

Another idea that I’ve discussed with at least one member of the House Appropriations committee is decriminalization and taxation of marijuana. Not only would it have a dramatic cost saving to the Department of Corrections (one of the Top 4 most expensive departments in the state, as shown above), but it would also ADD a revenue stream that could potentially equal or even out pace the revenue generated from alcohol and tobacco taxes. I’ll be honest here, I think the idea stands about a snowball’s chance in Hell of even being seriously considered in a single legislator’s head, much less actually being spoken of. I think its chances of actually being introduced and passed currently sit at about the same odds of another Big Bang happening. But if we’re talking about budget constraints and what can be done about them, I seriously believe this idea should be explored and implemented.

The overall point here is simple and direct though:

There can be NO sacred cows at this time. We simply don’t have room in the budget for them. Four departments account for $14 Billion of the $18 Billion budget, and four other departments (Transportation, Student Finance Commission, Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, and Human Services) account for nearly $2.7 Billion of the remaining $4 Billion. Thus, EIGHT departments represent $16.7 Billion – nearly 93% of the budget.

Budget cuts, like splinters, are painful. But if we thrash around like a little kid over our pet project being cut, we too will only make the experience of dealing with the problem that much more painful for everyone concerned.