Cooper budget: $1.4 billion in COVID-19 spending

State lawmakers come into session Tuesday and have been developing their funding priorities as well. The House, Senate and Governor's Office will have to mesh those plans in the coming days, but Cooper said Friday that General Assembly leaders have seen all of his proposals, many of which were based on their input.

Cooper also said the House's proposals spend a bit more than his and that the Senate's spend a little less, but "I think we all want to go in the same direction."

Next week's session will deal with COVID-19 issues and primarily spend money kicked down by Congress in one of its stimulus bills. But Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger said Friday that he's asked Cooper to find 1 percent cuts in every state agency to prepare the state for budget issues in the longer term.

That should save the state $250 million, Berger's office said. The state expects a $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion revenue hit over the next two years from lost sales taxes and other impacts.

Berger also said Friday that his chamber won't try to override Cooper's veto of the full state budget, which is still pending from last year, keeping a lower carryover budget in place instead from two years ago.

"Our state's financial outlook is in a vastly different place than it was before this pandemic hit," Berger said in a news release.

The state got $2 billion last week in federal funds, and those dollars come with rules that largely require them to be spent on COVID-19 response. Cooper's budget office said the plan is to maximize the federal dollars next week and hold on, for now, to more flexible state reserves built up over the last several years.

His proposal also holds off on spending about $600 million in federal COVID-19 funding, and the state expects to get another $1.5 billion from the feds in the next week or so.

The coming budget deal will likely only take the state through June 30, though, the end of this fiscal year. State Treasurer Dale Folwell has said he's investing the federal money in the mean time in low-risk, interest-bearing funds.

Cooper's proposal includes $243 million for a range of needs in K-12 schools, including remote learning resources and summer programs for K-3 students who were already performing below grade level. The governor announced Friday that schools won't come back into session this school year for in-class learning, though remote classes will continue.

Cooper called the proposal "a strong investment to respond to this unprecedented crisis."