The budget adopted by the Georgia Senate on Friday contains $9.8 million for improvements to airports throughout the state in the 2009 fiscal year starting July 1.
The House version contains $15 million – including $4 million earmarked for a flight building at the Paulding County Regional Airport, home county of Speaker Glenn Richardson, R-Hiram.
The difference is just one area where the two spending plans diverge and, with a week left to go in the Georgia General Assembly session, a conference committee is working to craft a compromise.
Coosa Valley Technical College received nearly $10 million in the 2008 budget to expand its Gordon County campus, so officials there aren’t looking for any surprises.
“We don’t have a capital outlay request this year, but we’re always concerned there could be budget cuts,” said CVTC President Craig McDaniel. “We have too many good things going on with our aviation program, career academy and culinary arts to withstand a cut.”
There are some other regional projects hanging in the balance, though, including a campground at the Berry College Wildlife Management Area, a campus in Catoosa County and improvements at Northwest Georgia Regional Hospital in Rome.
The Senate version contains $50,000 for a campground and trail at Berry; $2 million in bonds for a rail line between Lyerly and Coosa; and an extra $250,000 for a Northwestern Technical College campus at Bentley Place in Catoosa County. The House version omits those projects but provides $560,000 in bond money for improvements at Northwest Georgia Regional Hospital.
Both budgets set aside money to add 256 beds and 44 jobs at Hays State Prison in Trion. But the House allocated $1.8 million and the Senate set aside $1.35 million for the fast-track expansion.
Another dispute centers on how much money to provide for new reservoirs and water system improvements. The House has approved $50 million in 20-year bonds while the Senate allocated enough for the debt service on $30 million. The 2008 supplemental budget also contains more than $40 million.
State Sen. Preston Smith, R-Rome, sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee that drew up that chamber’s $21.4 billion spending plan. It addresses the state’s water, education, healthcare and transportation needs in a “sound, fiscally responsible budget that is fair and balanced,” he said.
State Rep. Katie Dempsey, R-Rome, said she is backing the House plan, which contains $35 million more to reduce austerity cuts made to school funding and $48 million less in bonded indebtedness.
For more on this report, see Sunday’s Rome News-Tribune.
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