Diesel Fuel Tab for Buses Up 45 Percent

By James Salzer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Jan. 18–Higher oil prices have driven up the cost of providing diesel fuel for school buses 45 percent in the past year, state School Superintendent Kathy Cox told legislative budget writers Tuesday.

That, in turn, has prompted Gov. Sonny Perdue to promise to give school systems an extra $10 million over the next 1 1/2 years to at least partially make up for the rising costs, Cox said in a joint House and Senate budget hearing.

“They are taking money from instruction to fuel buses,” Cox told lawmakers during the first of two days of hearings on the midyear and fiscal 2007 budgets proposed by Perdue. “It [$10 million] is probably not enough, but it will help.”

The Department of Education’s budget plan calls for sending school systems $166.5 million to pay for student transportation during the upcoming fiscal year, which begins July 1. That’s up from $151.8 million a year ago.

The cost of fuel alone has increased 45 percent, Cox said.

Perdue also wants lawmakers to provide 1,000 new school buses for systems by borrowing $50 million in 10-year bonds.

Education isn’t the only area seeing rising costs because of fuel increases. For instance, Perdue is including an extra $8 million in the Department of Corrections budget next year for increased utilities costs at prisons.

Earlier Tuesday, Perdue opened the budget hearings by crowing about the improved condition of state finances, noting that most of the extra money he was proposing to spend would go into schools and roads. Those are popular areas for lawmakers, especially in an election year, when lawmakers love to tell voters about what they’ve brought home to their districts.

“I think you’re taking a lot of road money back home, taking a lot of education back home for school construction, and we’ve tried to work with our legislative partners in putting this money all over Georgia where all of our citizens live,” Perdue said.

The budget hearings continue today.

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