The purpose of taxes is to fund government and its services. We hope our elected representatives are wise and conscientious over how they spend that money, although we are disappointed from time to time.

The Observer and its sister newspapers spoke with legislators last month about the beginning of the General Assembly on Monday, and almost to a person they said the biggest issue facing them this session will be the budget. Honestly, they say that almost every year we ask them, but this year it is particularly true.

When Brian Kemp ran for governor in 2018, he promised a pay raise for teachers. He was elected, and the 2019 General Assembly approved a $3,000 raise with the 2020 assembly to consider an additional $2,000 raise.

In August, mere months after the first raise was approved, Kemp requested state agencies cut their budgets by 4% in the fiscal year that had started only a month before and an additional 6% the following fiscal year. Some economic factors looked pretty good, according to media reports from the time, but state tax revenues were lower than expected and some economists were predicting a recession.

Some proposals that were leaked called for ending or cutting back popular programs or services that many people use. Some pundits figured that was the department heads’ way of getting legislators to protect them from the cuts. They may have been right, but if these programs actually are important to the wellbeing of our state, they should be protected.

As the General Assembly begins to convene, lawmakers will be faced with multiple questions, including whether to provide the second raise to teachers that Kemp promised during the campaign, how to address the governor’s call for funding cuts, and whether to lower income taxes.

Wait, what?

Every department of the state government is proposing immediate 4% spending cuts — and planning for deeper cuts next year — but the legislature will also have to consider the second part of a two-phase plan to lower state income taxes.

Two years ago, lawmakers voted to reduce the state’s income tax for the first time since the 1930s, from 6% to 5.75%, and the legislation they passed then called for another vote this year on cutting the tax rate to 5.5%. That was actually a good idea because while it pushed the state toward lower taxes, it gave the legislature a chance to consider the current economic conditions before enacting the second part.

Those current economic conditions include the governor’s proposed budget cuts and all the factors that went into them. If the state’s tax revenues are so short as to require those cuts, perhaps we shouldn’t reduce them further by lowering income tax rates. And perhaps now isn’t a good time for the second wave of teacher raises.

Or perhaps leaving more money in tax payers’ pockets (and teachers more than most) will stave off the recession the economists predicted.

Let us all hope for profound wisdom from our legislators as they consider all the sides of these questions.