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Senate Finance committee adopts CS for supplemental appropriations; staff flags $81.1M FY25 deficit
Summary
The Senate Finance Committee adopted a committee substitute for supplemental appropriations (CS for HB/SB 59) as its working document after a staff presentation outlining a pre-existing $81.1 million FY2025 deficit and roughly $539 million in total supplemental requests across fund types.
The Senate Finance Committee on March (date not specified) adopted a committee substitute for a supplemental appropriations package to be used as the committee’s working document.
Pete Eklund, staff to Senator Hopin and the Senate Finance Committee, told members the package is an omnibus supplemental that includes both operating and capital items and incorporates the administration’s requests. "There's already an $81,100,000 deficit," Eklund said, referring to the FY2025 post-transfer position before the bill’s new appropriations are applied. He told the committee the committee substitute proposes roughly $111,400,000 of unrestricted general fund spending in FY25 and about $288,100,000 in federal appropriations, most of which — he said — is for Medicaid (about $215,000,000).
The document in committee materials also shows a negative $24,000,000 change in designated general funds that Eklund said is mostly tied to how the University of Alaska categorizes receipts. He described other-fund increases of about $163,500,000, again largely related to university budget reclassifications, and estimated the total of the supplemental package at roughly $539,000,000.
Eklund detailed several line-item changes from the governor’s original request. The committee substitute reduces the Alaska Vocational Technical Center request for electrician and plumber training to $660,000 (from the governor’s larger figure), removes a $1,600,000 increment for VPSO positions that lacked prior legislative approval, and switches a requested $6,500,000 Alaska Marine Highway System capital maintenance appropriation from the Marine Highway System Fund to unrestricted general funds to avoid a projected FY26 shortfall in the Marine Highway Fund. He said the CS increases the governor’s fire-suppression request by $3,000,000 because of an early fire season and replaces a questioned FY21 reappropriation used for SNAP penalty-related spending with unrestricted general funds.
Eklund said the bill contains $29,000,000 for the disaster relief fund (including a change of a $3,000,000 reappropriation to UGF) and that requests for Department of Corrections standby-pay increments were restructured into three appropriations to mirror the FY26 budget structure. "The only other changes in the bill were technical," he said.
On the bill’s fiscal mechanism, Eklund explained the CBR language would accommodate the roughly $81.1 million deficit and the new appropriations to leave the state with about $7,500,000 of headroom for additional supplementals that might arise before the end of session; he estimated the overall CBR draw in the bill at approximately $200,000,000 depending on final revenues.
After the presentation, committee members raised no questions and Chairman Stedman removed his objection to adoption; the CS was adopted as the committee’s working document by unanimous consent and set aside for further deliberation.
The committee did not take a roll-call vote when adopting the CS; the action was recorded as adoption by unanimous consent and the item will return for further consideration in later meetings.
