Conference committee advances FY26 budget items, leaves several decisions unresolved

Members of the conference committee on the FY26 budget reviewed a color‑coded reconciliation sheet and agreed on a number of funding moves and position changes while leaving other items open for later negotiation, staff said.

The committee relied on a single reconciliation spreadsheet with a new conference‑committee column. Emily Burns, staff member, said the sheet uses green to indicate items the committee believes are agreed, purple for unresolved language or amounts and white where the House and Senate matched. "The green cells are ones that we believe we're pretty sure you've agreed to," Burns said. "Anything that's in purple, is outstanding, that needs to be reconciled before we close this."

Why it matters: the conference committee’s choices determine which items are funded in the budget base versus one‑time appropriations and set the bottom line the legislature will have available for other bills and contingency spending.

Key agreed items cited by staff included moving several positions between the legislature and Legislative Council, reducing the appropriation for urban search and rescue to $450,000 while keeping it in the base, shifting the child care fund treatment to reflect special‑fund appropriations rather than general fund transfers, and carrying some defender general training costs and assigned counsel costs as described on the sheets. Committee staff also said the conference proposal assumes an identified transfer into the cash fund that drives the bottom‑line balance.

Several areas remain unsettled. Items shown in purple on the sheet include language and amounts for some base appropriations, and an orange cell flagged tobacco‑fund decisions for a pregnancy smoking cessation program. Committee members repeatedly left questions open about whether specific program money should be one‑time or base funding, and whether limited‑service positions should be funded into the base or as one‑time extensions.

On revenue treatment, staff said the telephone‑tax extension that has been considered in the Budget Adjustment Act was recorded as a one‑time revenue source for the budget construct; the committee noted the timing and legal status of that tax extension determine whether the money should be treated as base or one‑time. The committee also carried an additional $3 million of projected cannabis receipts in the revenue picture for FY26.

Next steps: staff and conferees scheduled follow‑up work and briefings to reconcile purple items and finalize the cash‑fund transfer and contingency list. The group planned to reconvene later in the day to try to close remaining items.