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Georgia state employees would enjoy more consistent cost of living increases under the state Senate’s version of the budget for next year.

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday approved its amendments to the Fiscal Year 2027 budget that starts in July, adding $100 million to the state employee retirement system.

That was among the biggest changes from the state House’s version of the $38.5 billion budget.

“I believe this is one of the best line items that you see,” said Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Democrats agreed with that and other parts of the Senate budget, contributing their votes for unanimous passage of House Bill 974.

“I think it’s a breakthrough decision and one of the most important things in the budget,” Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, said of the pension funding.

Gov. Brian Kemp capped expenditures at $38.5 billion, so the Senate had to cut elsewhere to pay for the pension increase. Among their targets was online education at public colleges and universities, where they extracted $125 million from the higher education funding formula.

Online programs should cost less to operate, Tillery said, so the Senate budget funds them at a slightly lower ratio than in-person classes. Each 1.1 hour of online class time would earn the equivalent of an hour in person.

Another big change by the Senate also affects education.

The Senate overhauled the funding method for a signature initiative of both chambers this legislative session: teaching the state’s youngest students how to read.

The Senate agreed with the House’s plan to pay for about 1,300 literacy coaches in schools with kindergarten through third grade classrooms.

But the Senate opted to pay for the program with a grant of $70 million.

The House had wanted to pay for it by building it into the K-12 education funding formula that guides the recurring annual budgeting for schools. Tillery said the House budget had allocated less than half the necessary money because it assumed it would take more than a year to hire all the coaches.

The Senate also found $11 million by deleting the House plan to hire more staffers to confirm food stamp enrollees are eligible. Georgia has one of the highest “error” rates in the country. That can mean loss of federal funding, so lawmakers hope to get it down.

Tillery said the Senate would accept an offer from Equifax to do the work for free.

The budget must now get a vote on the Senate floor, before heading back to the House for consideration of the amendments.