MOULTRIE — When state legislators gather Monday to begin their 40-day session the overriding issue will be a budget hole that tops $1 billion, lawmakers who represent Colquitt County say.

Following closely for the state Legislature are voting on a tax overhaul recommendation, and taking shoring up a shortfall in lottery scholarship funds. And a slew of immigration measures likely will be forthcoming.

With estimates of the budget shortfall as high as $2 billion, it is a certainty that education, which accounts for more than half of state expenditures, will feel the budget ax. In previous years education has largely been spared the severity of cuts with which other state agencies have been hit.

Colquitt County School System already is preparing for the inevitable cuts, Schools Superintendent Leonard McCoy said.

“I really do dread the likely decisions that we will face,” he said, noting that 68 percent of the system’s funding comes from the state. “We’ll once again make every effort to make sure the money is used where cuts have the least amount of impact on classroom instruction.”

Knowing the condition of the economy and that federal stimulus will dry up at the end of the current fiscal year June 30, the system has been planning for this eventuality. McCoy would not give any specifics of cuts that have been identified to date but did note that personnel accounts for 85 percent of the budget.

“Whenever you have to make significant cuts, that’s where you have to look first,” he said. Raising the education property tax rate is “not even something that’s on the radar.”

State Rep. Ed Rynders, R-Leesburg, whose district includes a small portion of Colquitt County, also said raising taxes at the state level is not the way to approach the issue.

“I do not believe the way we pull our way out of a downturn is to pull money out of the people’s pockets,” he said.

None of the legislators contacted — Rynders; state Reps. Jay Powell, R-Camilla, and Penny Houston, R-Nashville; and state Sen. John Bulloch, R-Ochlocknee — identified specific cuts. Everything is on the table, they said, and education will not be spared.

All also said they are awaiting incoming Gov. Nathan Deal’s budget plan, which is scheduled for release next week.

“There’s no way, with it being such a large part of the budget, you can cut other things and leave education unscathed,” Powell said. “I don’t know to what extent [it will be cut].”

One bright spot is that state revenues have increased by 7 percent over last year, which could reduce the amount of budget cuts required to balance the budget, Houston said.

All also said they are withholding comment on the tax panel’s recommendations. The Special Council on Tax Reform and Fairness for Georgians released some of its recommendations Friday, which was after the lawmakers were contacted for this story.

Those recommendations include reimposing the 4 percent sales tax on groceries, lowering personal and business income taxes and a steep increase in the state’s tobacco tax. The panel said the changes would not increase revenues.

The Legislature is required to vote on the proposal as-is with no changes.

“Georgia’s tax laws haven’t been updated since, I think, 1932,” Houston said. “Since then we’ve added exemption after exemption. I think a lot of special-interest tax rates will be done away with.”

Legislators need to look at exemptions granted in the past to determine whether they are producing the intended benefits, Powell said.

“Certainly there needs to be an analysis of the tax credits, the exemptions that are in the code now and whether they’re doing what was intended,” he said.

Although Georgia Lottery revenues have grown, HOPE Scholarship spending is up partially due to surging college tuition costs. Some of the proposals for dealing with the shortfall include eliminating the scholarship for students who are required to take remedial courses, implementing an income requirement that would disqualify wealthier families and increasing the grade point average for students to qualify.

“I’m not sure those address the heart of the problem, which is tuition increases put a tremendous strain on HOPE dollars,” Rynders said. “For example, last year there was a 15 percent tuition increase. HOPE can’t continue to absorb those increases.”

One potential solution is tying HOPE to the rate of inflation, not the rate of tuition hikes, Rynders said.

“As we have cut the Board of Regents, the university system, instead of making cuts they’ve bypassed that by increasing tuition,” Bulloch said.

He suggested that instead of awarding the scholarships on a yearly basis that they be given by semester. That way students who do not maintain the required grade point average do not continue receiving state money.

“We’ve got to protect HOPE,” Bulloch said. “We want to keep our brightest students here and not going to college in other states.”

Through the history of the program, 48 percent of students lose the scholarship after the first year due to academic performance, Houston said.

The lawmakers expect that immigration reform will be a contentious issue. Bulloch and Houston said that they are concerned about the potential impact legislation would have on farmers.

“The concern I have is there are some people who have suggested a penalty to the employers,” Bulloch said. “When you look at agriculture and the amount of seasonal labor we have to have, and the type of labor we have to have, they need labor 12 months out of the year.

“There’s some thoughts out there that if we eliminate every worker out there who is illegal that would create jobs for American workers. What we’re being told is that there aren’t American workers for those jobs.”

Bulloch and Houston said they agree with Georgia Farm Bureau’s stance that immigration is a federal issue.

“We need something to make it easy to get a work permit because we depend on them,” Houston said. “When vegetables are ready to be cropped, you need somebody to do it. We depend on them for a labor force.”

Rynders said that legislation should prohibit people in the country without documentation from receiving government benefits.

“We need to get Americans working,” he said. “That would contribute to the tax base and that’s how we get out of this economy.”

Powell said that putting the onus on employers to ensure workers are not here illegally likely will be part of legislation.

“If you approach it from the employers’ standpoint, you can have an impact,” he said. “As for what kind of burden that would put on employers, I don’t know. We certainly don’t want to put anyone out of business, but there has to be some balance.”