NewsLeader - 2006 Winter

The Budget Process

  1. Each Department of state government is required by law to submit a proposed budget for the following fiscal year to the Office of Planning and Budget (referred to as OPB, the governor’s budget office) by September 1 of each year.
  2. The Governor sets a revenue estimate for state spending in the following fiscal year. Once the revenue estimate is set, that is total amount of funding that the legislature can appropriate for that fiscal year. Georgia is a “zero based budgeting state” meaning that any additions to the governor’s budget must be accompanied by a cut elsewhere in the budget.
  3. Once the review estimate is set, the governor reviews each department’s proposed budget and decides what to include in his proposal to the legislature and at what dollar amount.
  4. The budget is introduced in the House (because it is a spending measure the Constitution requires that it originate in the House of Representatives) like any other bill and it goes through the legislative process like any other bill. First it is assigned to the House Appropriations Committee.
  5. The House Appropriations Committee begins budget hearings on the 3rd Monday in January.
  6. House Appropriations Subcommittees hold hearings on specific parts of the budget (for example: House Appropriations Education Subcommittee reviews the Education portion of the budget). The House Appropriations Subcommittees make recommendations on their assigned portions of the budget to the House Appropriations Committee. The House Appropriations committee votes to pass the budget out of committee.
  7. When voted out of the House Appropriations Committee, the budget then moves to the House floor for a vote.
  8. Once the budget bill passes the House it moves to the Senate where it is assigned to the Senate Appropriations Committee, and the process begins all over again in the Senate (steps 5-6). The Senate also has budget subcommittees that make recommendations to the full Appropriations committee.
  9. When the bill passes out of the Senate Appropriations committee it goes to the Senate floor for a vote. If the Senate makes any changes in the budget (and they always do) a conference committee of three Senators and three Reps. is appointed (by the Lt. Governor in the Senate and by the Speaker in the House) to review the budget and come to an agreement on each item that has been altered by the Senate and disagreed upon by the House.
  10. Once the Budget Conferees reach an agreement on the budget, the House and Senate vote once more on final passage of the conference committee report of the budget.
  11. The budget then goes to the Governor for his signature. The Governor can veto line items placed in the budget by the legislature but he cannot add line items to the budget.

A GLMA Funding Example from the 2006 Session:

  1. The Governor did not restore any of the media center funds in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2007 budget.
  2. House Appropriations Education Sub-Committee Chair Jan Jones recommended the House restore media funds to $7,646,577, and the House passed the budget with this line item intact.
  3. Senate Appropriations changed the restored amount to $1,989,176.
  4. During meetings of the Conference Committee, the appointed Senators and Reps. decided that the amount to be restored to media centers in the FY 07 budget would be $5,106,071, increasing the FTE to $13.03.
  5. The House and Senate passed the budget on Day 40, only hours before the session adjourned.
  6. The Governor signed the budget into law without altering media funding.