Legislative staff outline $82.2 million department budget and options to address shortfall

Legislative Council Director Natalie Castle presented the Executive Committee of the Legislative Council with an overview of the legislative department budget, timelines for decision-making and options to address an anticipated shortfall.

Castle told members the department's total appropriations for the current fiscal year are about $82.2 million, of which roughly $80.4 million is general fund. She said the legislative appropriations bill accounted for approximately $73.6 million and the long bill appropriated about $7.7 million. "Seventy-eight percent of the entire legislative department budget is salary," Castle said, noting that statutory or constitutional requirements drive a number of operating costs and that significant reductions would most likely require personnel changes or statutory change.

Castle walked through the decision calendar for the spring session and urged the committee to consider several options to close a budget gap: reducing the number of funded interim (letter/resolution) committees; postponing or phasing in a per-diem increase adopted in recent legislation; budgeting for fewer special-session days; reverting some legislative cash fund balances to the general fund; reducing the rule book appropriation; or cutting staff or operating costs. She provided budgeted-cost illustrations for each option and highlighted timing dependencies with the Joint Budget Committee and common policy compensation decisions.

On long-bill items, Castle recommended reducing the two-year appropriation for the Blue Book from $6.0 million to $4.0 million while keeping distribution and accessibility requirements in place. She also recommended increasing the property tax audit study appropriation from about $752,000 to $852,000 to fully fund a new vendor's proposed scope; Mark Carey, legislative council staff's chief school finance officer, was present and identified as the point of contact for technical questions about the study. Castle proposed lowering the school finance cost-of-living study appropriation to $200,000 for the next cycle by deferring an expensive shopping-patterns component of the work.

Joint Budget Committee staff director Greg Harper told the committee that compensation decisions often change during the budget process and urged contingency planning. "Compensation decisions tend to change multiple times throughout the process," Harper said, and the joint budget committee will recommend contingencies to allow adjustments if needed.

Castle emphasized process and timeline: many decision-item presentations will take place at weekly executive-committee meetings in advance of a final adoption target tied to the introduced legislative appropriations bill on Friday, Feb. 21. She said some decision items will be presented, then given at least one week for members to consider before a recorded vote; other long-bill appropriations and agency budgets will be presented by the four nonpartisan agencies in subsequent meetings.

No final committee vote on the budget was recorded at this meeting; the presentation served as a formal briefing and request for future decisions.

Members asked specific budget questions about line-item detail, contracted services (print shop, IT, audit contracts), member compensation, per-diem treatment for metro vs. non-metro members, and timing of health-insurance contract rebids. Castle and Harper confirmed that some items (for example, the Blue Book appropriation and the property tax audit contract) will require committee decisions later in the calendar and that the executive committee retains authority to modify earlier assumptions if the broader budget environment changes.