Article submitted Sunday, Feb. 19

My colleagues and I returned to the State Capitol and went back to work on Tuesday, February 14 for our sixth week of the 2017 legislative session. By the end of week six, we completed legislative day 20, meaning we reached the half-way mark of the session. We have 20 legislative days remaining to complete our business, and “Crossover Day” is rapidly approaching. With that in mind, the House passed several key bills each legislative day this week, including one of the General Assembly’s most important pieces of legislation of this session: House Bill 44, the Fiscal Year 2018 (FY 2018) state budget.

Each year, the General Assembly is constitutionally required to pass a balanced budget, and on Friday, the House fulfilled this constitutional duty by passing House Bill 44, the Fiscal Year 2018 budget that will serve as our state’s spending guide from July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018. The FY 2018 budget is set by a revenue estimate of $24.9 billion, an increase of $1.25 billion, or 5.3 percent, over the FY 2017 budget, making it the largest budget in our state’s history.

With this record setting revenue, we are able to fund top House initiatives in the FY 2018 budget. Much like in years past, the bulk our funding, $780.2 million in HB 44, is budgeted for education to ensure that each of the nearly 1.74 million full-time equivalent students in the state, as well as Georgia’s instrumental teachers, administrators, faculty and staff, have access to the educational resources they need to thrive. First and foremost, the FY 2018 budget allocates $162 million to provide Georgia’s dedicated teachers with a 2 percent merit pay