Recap of Week 2 at the Gold Dome
While action under Georgia’s Gold Dome is relatively quite compared to yesterday’s historic election of Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, things are off and running all the same.
The first week of the 2010 Georgia General Assembly began with the election of Representative David Ralston of Blue Ridge as the Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives. Of historic significance, Representative Jan Jones of Alpharetta was elected the first female Speaker Pro-Tem of the Georgia House. Georgia Branch, AGC congratulates both of these long-time AGC friends on their new positions.
The week concluded with changes in a number of House committee chairmanships. Click on the following links for the current committee make-ups, including their respective chairs.
-- House of Representatives Committees
-- Senate Committees
There were four major House Committee Chairmanships changes:
House Rules Committee: Earl Ehrhart replaced as Chairman by Bill Hembree who previously Chaired the Higher Education Committee
House Higher Education Committee: Bill Hembree replaced as Chairman by Len Walker
House Governmental Affairs Committee: Austin Scott (Candidate for Governor) replaced as Chairman by Mark Hamilton
House Insurance Committee: Tom Know (Candidate for Insurance Commissioner) replaced by John Meadows.
This week the General Assembly is holding joint 2010 House and Senate Appropriations Hearings. The Appropriations Committees from the House and the Senate will first hear Governor Perdue present an overview of his version of the amended FY2010 budget. The Governor’s Amended 2010 budget totals $17.4 billion, a $1.2 billion reduction from the original FY 2010 budget, and the 2011 budget stands at $18.2 billion. The Governor reported that net revenue collections for the month of December 2009 (Fiscal Year 2010) compared to December 2008 (FY09), showed a decrease of 5.8 percent. The percentage decrease year-to-date for FY10 compared to FY09 is 13.7 percent. State agency department heads will then begin making their budget proposal presentations to the joint committee later this week and then the House Appropriations Committees will then begin constructing the House version of the FY2010 amended budget.
The amended budget attempts to address our loss of state tax revenue in this down economy and our requirement to have a balanced state budget. Governor Perdue’s recommended 2011 budget does include just over $900 million in bond projects, including $168 million in construction, equipment and school buses for Georgia’s K-12 schools, $121 million in projects at our state’s universities, $44 million at technical schools, for a total of $333 million in education. The Governor also is recommending $300 million in transportation projects in the bond package as well as $68 million for the deepening of the Savannah River harbor.
AGC will continue to promote additional investment in the state budget process for our state’s infrastructure as a way to help jump start our economy insuring a tremendous return on initial investment.
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If you would like to learn more about our state's legislative process, consider attending a luncheon and visit the Capitol with AGC on February 3, 2010. Click here for more details.
