Mid-year budget clears Ga. General Assembly
It includes bonuses for teachers, state workers
ATLANTA — The General Assembly gave final passage Thursday, Feb. 11, to a $26.5 billion fiscal 2021 mid-year budget that covers state spending through June 30.
The state House of Representatives passed the spending plan 165-4. The Georgia Senate then approved it unanimously less than an hour later.
While lawmakers signed off on most of the spending recommendations Gov. Brian Kemp made last month, legislative leaders worked with the governor to add $60 million to provide onetime $1,000 raises to more than 57,000 state employees earning less than $80,000 per year.
Kemp’s original mid-year budget already had earmarked $1,000 raises for Georgia teachers and school staff including cafeteria workers, custodians and resource personnel.
Front-line state workers including public health nurses, troopers, road crews and child welfare caseworkers deserve raises after stepping up during the coronavirus pandemic, said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Terry England.
“They don’t have the option to only be virtual,” said England, R-auburn. “They have to have face-to-face contact. … Their jobs aren’t glamorous. But they’re there every day.”
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery, R-vidalia, said the $1,000 bonuses will be funded by a mix of federal dollars and savings from higher Medicaid payments the federal government has been making amid the pandemic.
The mid-year budget, which
They don’t have the option to only be virtual. They have to have face-to-face contact. … Their jobs aren’t glamorous. But they’re there every day.”
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Terry England, R- Auburn
now heads to Kemp for his signature, restores $567 million of $950 million in cuts to K-12 schools the General Assembly imposed last year as state tax revenues slowed due to the economic impact of the pandemic. Another $73.6 million will go to restore cuts lawmakers made to the University System of Georgia.
The legislature also supported the governor’s recommendation for $20 million to expand broadband service in rural Georgia.
As the mid- year spending plan went through the review process, lawmakers added funds to support 10% raises for correctional officers in both the state prison and juvenile detention systems to help stem alarming turnover rates.
The final version of the mid-year budget also includes additions of $40 million to buy 520 new school buses and $11 million in bond funds repurposed to help the state Department of Public Health train workers in providing COVID-19 vaccines and vaccine reservations.
Lawmakers added $3 million to the $1 million already appropriated to help Georgia’s tourism industry recover following the pandemic. Most of the additional funds will go to the Georgia World Congress Center, which lost all of its convention business to the virus, England said.
The House and Senate also agreed to add $455,000 for domestic violence and assault centers and set aside $100,000 to help the Georgia Department of Labor deal with a huge influx of unemployment claims brought on by the pandemic. The money will be used to hire a chief labor officer to oversee claims and financial audits.
Traceroute is a command used in networking to determine the path messages travel across the network/ internet. It is a useful tool in determining when messages or pages are not getting through the network or working to find out where the problem is. Knowing where the problem is determines whether it is your problem or someone else’s responsibility.
The traceroute command is a fairly simple one to use. In Windows you will go to command prompt to run the command. The command is spelled differently on different operating systems. In Linux, the command is traceroute. In Windows, the command is tracert. The shorter version in Windows is because Windows came from DOS and DOS limited filenames and commands to eight characters. In the following examples I will do as in Windows.
The command is simply tracert and the destination. The destination can be an IP address, or it can be a URL like www.dwightwatt.com. You will enter the command as tracert 192.16.3.1 or tracert www.dwightwatt.com.
The computer sends a PING command with extra instructions to reply from every router. You will then see in the reply each router it reached (the name which often tells you whose and where) and the IP address of the router and the amount of time to get there measured in milliseconds. If it reaches the destination you will get destination reached, otherwise you will be told it timed out after a point and you can look at last router listed to know where it got.
Traceroute is a good tool for network technicians and users to have in their toolbox to find problems location.
Dwight Watt does computer work for businesses, individuals and organizations and teaches about computers at a college in Northwest Georgia. His website is www. dwightwatt.com. His email address is dwight@ dwightwatt.com.