The Georgia Senate passed its version of the state’s midyear budget yesterday by a near-unanimous margin.
In a speech on the Senate floor, Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery, a Vidalia Republican, touted a one-time pay supplement of $1000 for state employees, and told colleagues that the budget pays cash for things that might otherwise be funded through borrowing.
"This year's budget supports our state employees with supplemental pay," Tillery told lawmakers. "Maybe not as much as some of us would have wanted. It pays things ahead of time for the future by avoiding the 40 40 year high interest and cash funds things because of our strong fiscal position, that you left us in over the past four years."
However, Senator Colton Moore, a Republican from Trenton, in Northwest Georgia, took lawmakers to task for what he characterized as excessive corporate giveaways.
"We are funding corporations with taxpayer dollars and meanwhile we are not funding the things that are the proper role of government," Moore said. "I learned in transportation committee the other day that in order to make a good standard of highways, we should pave all of our highways once every 10 years. That would be 1,800 miles of pavement a year. In the last couple of years, though, we've only done 300 miles."
The budget passed the Senate 54-1, with Moore as the lone dissenting vote.
