All you need to know about Georgia’s economic development strategy, on the same sheet of newsprint

On the morning of December 10th , The Atlanta Journal-Constitution featured a column by Maureen Downey, its longtime education writer, lamenting the Georgia state government’s inability to come up with sufficient funding for public education.

“Seven state blue-ribbon commissions have pondered Georgia’s outdated 1985 Quality Basic Education funding formula over the past three decades,” she wrote, “but all backed away from major revisions.”

Downey’s story ran at the top of Page 9, which was the front page of the paper’s News Section. Flip over to Page 10 and you’d find – literally on the backside of Downey’s piece – a story by reporter Zachary Hansen headlined: “Turning Georgia fields of dreams into factories”.

Hansen detailed an announcement by Governor Brian Kemp to plow $15 million into economic development initiatives in a half-dozen rural Georgia counties and three small towns. The bulk of the funds — $9 million – would go to help county development authorities “accelerate development of industrial sites.” The remaining $6 million was earmarked to help build housing for local workforces.

“When we talk to companies,” Kemp said, “the first question they ask is if we have the workforce. The second is if we have the sites.”

I won’t presume to speak for Downey, but I doubt she’d be surprised that Kemp skipped right past the first question business prospects ask him and went straight to the second.

My point with all this? That on the front and back of a single sheet of newsprint you can learn just about all you need to know to understand Georgia’s strategy when it comes to economic development: Throw millions at luring businesses to Georgia, not so much at educating future generations of workers.

Toward the end of her piece, Downey recounted a handful of failed efforts at boosting education funding. Former Governor Sonny Perdue (now chancellor of the University System of Georgia) created a school funding task force in 2004 and charged it with “lifting education in Georgia from basic to excellent,” she wrote. “Several years and 75 public hearings later, Perdue’s Investing in Educational Excellence Commission disbanded without recommending a new funding formula because of the high cost of ‘excellent.’”

Perdue’s successor in the governor’s office, Nathan Deal, fared little better, Downey wrote. A committee Deal established “sidestepped its mission to figure out how much was necessary to educate Georgia students for college and career readiness,” she wrote. “It ended up rerouting some existing education dollars rather than calling for additional spending.”

For what it’s worth, we appear to be getting about what we pay for when it comes to education. A 2023 Education Law Center report cited by Downey ranks Georgia 36th in the nation in per-pupil funding and 33rd in what it calls “funding effort” – education funding as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). Based on my analysis of recently published data from the Census Bureau, we rank 34 th nationally for educational attainment (more about this in a future column).

If Georgia’s leaders get the vapors over boosting public education spending, they suffer no such squeamishness when it comes to throwing hundreds of millions – indeed, billions – of dollars in tax breaks at existing businesses willing to establish operations in Georgia.

Nailing down just how much Georgia’s state and local governments spend luring businesses to the state can be a little tricky. The tax incentives granted to electric vehicle manufacturers Hyundai and Rivian in the last few years total more than $3.5 billion, based on various published reports. Georgia’s film tax credit sucked more than $1 billion out of the state treasury in 2022 alone.

All those credits may well have been worthwhile. The film tax credit no doubt helped establish Georgia as a major center for film production and spawned a significant film industry in the state (although it’s worth noting that some economists now argue the film credit should no longer be necessary). The Hyundai and Rivian wins (along with decisions by multiple battery manufacturers to locate in Georgia) hold the potential to establish Georgia as a major national player in the EV business.

Those tax credits and others also no doubt contribute to the state’s claim to being No. 1 state for business (per the trade publication Area Development) that Governor Kemp and his fellow Republicans like to brag about.

Oddly, they don’t beat their chests about the state ranking 34th for educational attainment.

Charles Hayslett is the author of the long-running troubleingodscountry.com blog.  He is also the Scholar in Residence at the Center for Middle Georgia Studies at Middle Georgia State University.  The views expressed in his columns are his own and are not necessarily those of the Center or the University.