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Appropriations Committee shifts FTE funding process, instructs members not to include equity pools in initial budget bills
Summary
Committee leadership told members the new and vacant FTE funding pool will be placed inside each agency budget rather than centrally with OMB, that equity funding requests should not be included in initial budget bills for 11 agencies, and that a 3% salary increase will apply to both new and existing FTEs in the first half of the biennium.
Chairman Beckettall used committee time to brief members on several procedural budget changes and scheduling notes for the current session. He said the committee will place new and vacant FTE funding directly into each agency’s budget rather than holding the funding centrally with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Agencies will be required to report to Legislative Council fiscal staff and to OMB when they access those funds.
Beckettall said the change is intended to remove paperwork and red tape that accompanied the prior approach, in which agencies had to request funding from a centralized OMB pool. He instructed members that if they see language on the green (and possibly purple) budget sheets giving agencies authority to increase or decrease authorized FTE levels, they should bring those sections to the committee’s attention because the committee does not want to grant that authority in the first half of the biennium.
He also said the committee does not want to include any equity funding pools in the budget bills this session. Eleven agency budgets, Beckettall said, have "extra equity consideration requests" on the sheets and members should not add those requests back into final budget bills.
On salary considerations he said the recommended 3% increase for the first half will apply to both new and existing FTEs; under prior guidance the 3% applied only to existing FTEs. The chair said the change is intended to simplify budgeting so that new positions are treated the same as existing positions for the first half of the biennium.
A committee member asked whether agencies can use money tied to unfilled positions for other purposes if they do not fill the positions. The chair replied that the money remains in a pool for unfilled positions and agencies must come in and request the funds when they have a position to fill; it is not automatically available for other uses.
Beckettall also informed members that a scheduled 9 a.m. hearing was canceled, that Department of Transportation and Highway Patrol hearings are scheduled for the afternoon, and that the purple, blue and green budget "sheets" are arriving to committee rooms and can be used for committee work.
He repeatedly directed members with technical questions to ask the fiscal analysts assigned to their committee rooms.
The committee did not take any formal votes on these procedural items during the reported portion of the transcript; the briefing summarized administrative changes that will affect how agency budgets are presented and handled during the session.
