Changes coming to budget process?

Dave Williams in the Gwinnett Daily Post reports:

Meeting with reporters recently, Majority Leader Jerry Keen said House GOP budget writers may decide to hold off considering proposed capital projects until the spending plan reaches a conference committee with the Senate, the last step before lawmakers adopt the budget.

Lawmakers could take that step unilaterally. The other change that’s under consideration, breaking out state spending on primary and secondary education into a separate bill to be taken up apart from the rest of the budget, would require a constitutional amendment.

The idea of waiting until the conference committee meets to take up capital projects is modeled after an approach the legislature already has begun taking with so-called “special projects,” the local grants lawmakers insert into the budget each year that critics deride as “pork” projects.