FWP asks legislature to approve fleet, aircraft and maintenance proprietary rates and explains "modified positions" accounting

Lena Havron, chief financial officer for Fish, Wildlife & Parks, told the Legislative Finance Committee that the department operates proprietary programs for its vehicle fleet, aircraft and maintenance functions and that the committee and ultimately the Legislature must approve the maximum rates those programs can charge.

Why it matters: Proprietary rates are the billing rates FWP uses to recover costs for agency vehicles, aircraft and maintenance work; approving higher maximum rates affects how much agency programs pay for those services and how much revenue flows into the proprietary accounts that support maintenance staff and equipment.

Key points from the presentation: Havron said FWP runs about 638 vehicles and the fleet logs more than 6.6 million miles annually. The agency requested rates and a corresponding base-rate increase in program 9 so programs that use fleet resources have authority in HB2 to pay the new rates. For aircraft, Havron said single-engine fixed-wing aircraft and one helicopter are in the fleet and that aircraft rates and the related decision packages will be discussed by the wildlife program. For maintenance, she told the committee the maintenance proprietary program now contains positions moved from HB2 in the prior session and that the program's efficiency has allowed FWP to do more work on properties; she said the rate decreased from the prior session but the program will be used to fund additional maintenance hours requested by divisions.

On modified positions: Rob explained that "modified positions" are temporary positions entered into payroll funded by authorized (non-PB) funding. He said agencies commonly budget operations funding that is then used to pay modified positions; because modified positions are not included in the position snapshot used to set base personal services, they do not automatically produce permanent PBs for the next biennium. Rob illustrated with numbers: if $1 million is appropriated and the agency spends $800,000 as personal services for modified positions that $800,000 does not become a permanent PB in the next snapshot but the $200,000 unspent becomes part of the base.

Committee follow-up: Members asked for the proprietary-rate tables in the FWP budget book (c11-c15) and for clarification of which FTE were moved into the proprietary maintenance program last session and how many remain in HB2.