(The Center Square) – The Georgia Senate approved its version of the amended fiscal year 2025 budget that cut some items from the House version but added more money for hurricane relief.
The Senate added $125 million for hurricane relief in its version of the bill.
Gov. Brian Kemp asked for $615 million. The House approved an additional $197 million on top of Kemp’s request.
The largest increases in the Senate version are $50 million for the agriculture industry and $50 million for debris pickup, according to Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The Senate added $15 million to the House’s $10 million program to help residents still repairing their residences from Hurricanes Milton and Helene that blew through the state in the early fall of 2024.
“There will never be a return to normal in this area,” Tillery said. “But it will allow them to return to a sense of baseline where they can continue to be productive members for our state.”
The addition of hurricane relief money meant some cuts to the House version.
The Senate removed more than $32 million kept in the House version of the spending plan that would have been used to remove QR codes from Georgia ballots. Kemp included $47.2 million in his budget proposal.
Senate budget writers slashed $15 million from two line items designated for maintenance and repairs for the Department of Corrections.
The Senate version removed $7 million for the World Congress for public safety and infrastructure for Super Bowl 62 in 2028 and the 2031 Final Four that will be held in Atlanta. The money could be appropriated in future years, according to information on the House Budget and Research Office website.
Sen. Colton Moore, R- Trenton, was the lone no vote on the spending plan. He said the proposed tax rebates by Kemp that would give $500 to married filers and $250 to individuals could be better spent by the state.
“That certainly looks good in the headlines, but in reality our constituents might as well sign the backs of those checks and just mail them back in,” Moore said. “We’re spending $1.3 billion a year to service our debts. We are only spending a billion to give back on these $250 rebates. So if we would just pay off our debts, we wouldn’t be spending $1.3 billion each year, it would really be even more, that our constituents could keep into their pockets.”
The budget goes back to the House for consideration of the Senate’s changes.
