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Hello my name is Arielle Reid in Budapest, Hungary and I would like to explain to you
today how the state of Georgia makes it's budget. Budget making is a continuous process
that involves many levels of government. Number one it involves the departments and agencies
of the state itself. Number two it involves the general assembly which is comprised of
the House of Representatives and the Senate. Number three it involves the Governor, now
there are four phases to making a budget and all the departments, and the agencies, the
Governor, the general assembly participate in this process to give us the final results
which is the state budget. So phase number one is this submission to the office of planning
and budget which is directly responsible and accountable to the Governor of the budget
requests. So departments, agencies make their funding requests in the first, on the first
of September, sorry. For the physical year that begins the following July first. So long
before the formal requests are made, the Governor his office, members of the general assembly
are already beginning to talk to various departments and agencies about their projects, about their
policy goals, the things they want to accomplish for the upcoming year, in preparation for
this formal submission. Now number two is, the second step sorry, is the spending recommendations
that are made to the general assembly by the Governor. The Governor collects these formal
requests and with a team of analysts, analyzes them for cost benefit, analysis, making sure
that the expenditure make sense, making sure that the budget will eventually be balanced
at the end. And makes a formal recommendation to the general assembly, remember that the
general assembly is comprised of the House of Representatives and the Senate, on what
he sees, what he or she sees as the best budget for the upcoming year. Now the general assembly
has it's own budget office, joint, it's called the legislative budget office which after
the Governor makes his or her formal recommendations, goes through the recommendations and the general
assembly makes it's own recommendations to various other committees that report to the
Senate and that reports to the House of Representatives on the recommendations that the Governor has
made. Once the general assembly has made these recommendations, the House of Representative
passes what it calls an approbation bill. Now what an approbation bill does is turns
the recommendations of the Governor, the recommendations that the House of Representatives has made
on the Governor's recommendation into a formal bill, almost like a pre-law. Because the budget
like any other law, has to go through the same stages before it becomes active and has
to be ratified by the Governor. So once the general assembly, once the House of Representatives
passes an approbation bill, the bill is sent to the Senate. Now the Senate goes through
the same steps that the House of Representatives does. It has it's own committees that go through
the recommendations of the Governor. It has it's committees go through the recommendations
of the House of Representatives and the Senate, votes on it's modifications of the approbation
bill. Now the goal is to get an approbation bill in the House of Representatives and the
Senate that are as similar as possible. Because that way the Governor based on their recommendations
has only to sign the approbation bill to make it become law. So once the Senate has accepted
and votes on the House's approbation bill, if there are no modifications, the bill then
goes to the Governor who signs it into law. Now the Governor has forty days to make his
recommendations and send it back to the general assembly or the approbation bill becomes law
by itself. And this is generally the process that the state goes through to create it's
budget.