Budgeting begins with PeachCare question
January 17, 2007 at 4:43 pm by Web Editor in News
It was a perfect blending of the pomp and circumstance of earlier civilizations, and the hearty, populist overtones of American sports culture.
The doorkeeper stood at attention.
"His excellency, Gov. Sonny Perdue, awaits entry into the committee meeting," he announced.
Sen. Jack Hill, R-Reidsville, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, nodded.
Perdue appeared at the chamber entranceway and walked the goodwill gauntlet of outstretched hands. He was robust, vigorous. If he swapped his suit and tie for sweats and headset and a windbreaker with the word "coach" stenciled across the back, you could picture him on the sideline of an NFL playoff game and never do a double take. It was perhaps no accident then that football imagery would play into the governor’s set of remarks to the 2007 House and Senate Appropriations Committees in the state Capitol on Wednesday morning.
It’s a $19.3 billion budget this year, and the version legislators fingered at their desks while Perdue talked contains $711.3 million in additional funds compared with the original 2007 budget submission, according to Alan Essig, executive director of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute.
The roomful of elected officials stared up at Sonny, but you could feel the welled-up eyes of 270,000 children looking at everyone in the room. That’s because the budget "does not contain funds to replace a potential PeachCare federal funds shortfall of between $60 [million] and $80 million," Essig says. "If the federal government does not increase funding for the PeachCare program … [these] children will lose health insurance."
By not mentioning PeachCare, the governor relegated the issue to the heap of inessentials.
Acknowledging his re-election demolition of Mark Taylor in November, Perdue said Georgia voters "liked the winning fundamentals of a championship team" … a deliberate and determined championship team. The governor, who’s built his career in the executive branch and Legislature on political pragmatism, emphasized that he’s not looking for any flashy playmaking with the 2007 budget. Like coach Vince Dooley, he said, he wants to take progress in inches, or "three yards and a cloud of dust ain’t bad" as long as you keep the ball moving forward.
The Legislature has to stay focused on the main things: education, which the governor described as "the single most important factor to the prosperity of our state;" jobs; health care and the environment. Staying on education for a while, Perdue reminded the lawmakers of his plan to introduce graduation "coaches" into Georgia’s middle schools, in an effort to combat the state’s early dropout rate.
"We cannot afford to let these kids wander off into the abyss," Perdue said.
He plugged a 3-percent pay raise for Georgia’s teachers that is in the budget, and all but gauzed over a comment about "money in there for critical jobs," while giving health care no special emphasis or amplification.
Anyone hoping for a word from the governor about mass transit had to once again choke down a steady diet of Perdue road rage. Meanwhile, he wants to invest $5.1 million into Global Georgia, an economic initiative that has partnered Georgia with Kia of South Korea and South American companies in the past, and that will likely facilitate bigger deals with Asian companies in the future, the governor said.
Closer to down home, tourism is a $28 billion industry in Georgia, employing 17,000 workers and bringing in $1.3 billion in state and local taxes. Fishing is big business here, $1.5 billion worth. Perdue said he wants to attract more fishing tourists to Georgia in part by improving the water quality of the state’s reservoirs and rivers and bolstering conservation overall. To that end he said he’s committed $50 million in the budget.
He received a big hand, and the winks and handshakes abounded.
But those 270,000 kids are still out there on the ground in Georgia, searching the faces of those legislators, looking for answers.
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