Joint Budget Committee denies most Treasury staffing requests, partially funds technology, delays Secure Savings enforcement and moves to end recovery pilot

The Joint Budget Committee voted this week on a package of Department of the Treasury budget requests that included staffing, technology, and program enforcement items.

Llewellyn Lowe, JBC staff, told the committee she was not recommending the Treasury's staffing requests and proposed pausing department growth after nearly doubling the workforce over six years. "I'm recommending right now that we pause growth of this department," Lowe said, describing requests that would have added 8.5 FTE and $1.1 million in total funds (including $752,100 General Fund and $374,880 cash funds). The committee adopted staff's recommendation to deny the administration and unclaimed-property staffing requests (R1 and R2). That motion passed 5–1.

The committee split decisions on technology and related costs. Lowe recommended limited funding for parts of the technology requests (R4 and R5) rather than full approval. She proposed $44,050 General Fund and $316,704 cash funds (from the Unclaimed Property Trust Fund) to address priority technology and related expenses, while declining larger items such as Debtbook software and Bloomberg Port. Committee members agreed to fund cybersecurity penetration testing and IT asset replacement and maintenance, and to deny or defer several enhancement purchases. A motion to approve staff recommendations for cybersecurity testing and IT asset management passed 6–0. For R5 (unclaimed property division technology and related expenses), the committee approved staff…