How do you save $4 billion? State hearings held this week imply the answer will be “painfully.”

The state of Georgia could lose $4 billion in taxes over 15 months, according to a report cited by the Atlanta Journal Constitution last month. Gov. Brian Kemp has ordered all state agencies to submit spending proposals with 14% cuts to their budgets. 

What does a 14% cut look like? Take your salary, cut it into 20 pieces and throw three of them away. That’s actually 15%, but close enough. How would you make ends meet if 3/20 of your paycheck disappeared? What would you cut out?

None of the cuts the state is discussing will actually happen until the Legislature approves a budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1 — but budget writers are going to have to get their savings from somewhere and these are department heads’ recommendations on where that should be.

Among the ideas that have been put forth:

• Preschool teachers would either take furloughs or a pay cut. State-paid education days would decline from 180 per year to 167.

• The Department of Agriculture would close five farmers markets, including the ones in Cordele and Thomasville. Its Georgia Grown marketing program would also skip the Georgia National Fair in Perry and the Sunbelt Ag Expo here in Moultrie. Food inspectors — not meat inspectors, but any others — would be reduced.

• Accountability courts across the state would take a $4.3 million hit. Colquitt County’s accountability court directs drug suspects into treatment programs instead of jails.

• The Department of Corrections would close six prisons. The only one mentioned by name is Autry State Prison in Pelham.

• The Georgia State Patrol — which just dismissed an entire trooper class for cheating — would forgo another class until 2022. Counting attrition and department-wide furloughs that will mean fewer state troopers on the highways.

Last August — back before the coronavirus — Kemp ordered department heads to cut 4% from their budgets for the remainder of the current fiscal year and an additional 6% for the fiscal year starting July 1. Early figures were indicating a budget shortfall.

Then came the virus, the state of emergency and the stay-at-home orders. Businesses closed or reduced operations to curbside. Workers were laid off. Consumers bought necessities and not much else.

The state gets money from three main sources: income tax, sales tax and property tax. Obviously people who are laid off won’t pay as much income tax because they don’t have the income. If people don’t buy stuff, they don’t pay sales tax. And we’ll have to wait until late this year or early next year to see if the default rate on property taxes rises because people don’t have the money to pay them.

Many lawmakers are hoping things won’t be as bad as last month’s report indicated that they could be.

“Hopefully, closer to the end, we will have a better fix on the actual revenue numbers and actually have a better understanding of the revenue we have coming in and, hopefully, we won’t have to see cuts as draconian as what we’re looking at here,” state Sen. Ellis Black, R-Valdosta, said.

We hope that too. Many local people depend on the very programs that are on the chopping block. Some for services, some for jobs.

The coronavirus is everywhere. Its economic fallout will be too.