Senate Finance staff brief committee on HB2 changes, IT project reauthorizations and budget adjustment authority

Staff to the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday summarized House amendments to the fiscal-2026 budget bill and pointed members to a companion spreadsheet of budget-adjustment authorities.

The briefing, given during the committee’s review of House Bill 2 materials, identified several information-technology items that differ from the Legislative Finance Committee’s earlier recommendations. Staff said the House Appropriations and Finance Committee (HAFC) removed one line because the Department of Finance and Administration (DFA) had already expended the appropriation, reauthorized roughly $16 million in remaining spending authority for a child support enforcement replacement project, and added a $5.6 million spending authority for a Taxation and Revenue Department (TRD) project that was not in the LFC recommendation.

Why it matters: the committee was asked to weigh whether HAFC’s reauthorization of an older project made sense, and whether newly added BAR amounts are sufficient to complete projects in the current appropriation window.

Staff said HAFC reauthorized remaining spending authority for a child support enforcement replacement that has been in progress since 2014; LFC staff had recommended abandoning the project and not reauthorizing additional authority.

Staff also noted increases or one-time additions elsewhere in the IT section: an increase to $1,000,000 (from $500,000) for an early childhood IT project tied to the FIT program, a $2,000,000 addition for phase 2 of an intelligence-led policing project in the Department of Public Safety and a $4,000,000 one-time increase for a higher-education consortium effort to install an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system shared across community colleges.

Committee members asked how much of these IT costs are one-time implementation expenses versus ongoing maintenance that would appear in operating budgets; staff repeatedly emphasized that several changes were one-time implementation costs and that recurring maintenance would appear in agencies’ operating budgets.

Staff also reviewed the budget adjustment authority (BAR) table included with House Bill 2. They explained the bill includes broad transfer authority among line items, but DFA’s guidance will limit approvals at the start of the fiscal year absent strong technical reasons. Staff summarized specific BAR items that drew questions in the hearing, including BAR for transportation line-item transparency (debt service, heavy maintenance), additional BAR for the patient compensation fund under the Office of Superintendent of Insurance to accommodate uncertain payouts, and an increase in BAR for General Services to cover unanticipated liability payouts.

Committee members asked staff to gather and present consolidated CYFD (Children, Youth and Families Department) supplemental, efficiency and IT requests in a single tracking sheet so the committee can see total requests rather than hunting across multiple spreadsheets. Members also pressed staff for more transparency on transportation transfers and vacancy-savings use, and whether district-level control limits are needed to prevent in- department reallocation that does not reflect legislative intent.

Where the briefing left off: staff flagged that some BAR requests are intended to be temporary fixes or pass-throughs and suggested the committee consider placing limits or earmarks in House Bill 2 where the Legislature wants to retain tighter control.

Ending: the committee did not take votes on these housekeeping items during the briefing; staff said they will supply follow-up detail (total CYFD IT requests, the provenance of the $5.6 million TRD request, and a breakdown of the general liability and reserve language) to support members’ decisions during bill-markup.