Legislative staff detail three technical corrections to current fiscal year budgets

Janet Jessup, a budget and policy analyst with Legislative Services, told the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee on the record that staff had prepared technical corrections to fiscal year 2025 budget entries and walked members through a yellow packet distributed at the meeting.

The corrections included three items. First, Jessup said the Department of Commerce’s broadband program was created after reappropriation authority was granted; FY2025 broadband monies were reappropriated into the Commerce program rather than the broadband program. Jessup said the transfer between the two Commerce tables nets to zero because the money is being moved between programs within the same agency so the broadband costs can be tracked in the new program.

Second, Jessup described a drafting error affecting a $2,000,000 transfer to the CAFO Improvement Fund. She said the bill’s language referenced the Department of Environmental Quality general fund rather than directing a transfer from the state general fund, which meant the intended transfer into the CAFO fund was not executed. Jessup said the correction would “make the agency whole and replace those DEQ general fund monies that were transferred to the CAFO fund.”

Third, Jessup said two Department of Health and Welfare programs — substance abuse treatment and prevention and physical health services — had monies appropriated to trustee and benefit payments for contracts that should be recorded as operating expenditures. Because the agency’s bill included language restricting transfers out of trustee and benefit payments, Jessup said the Legislature must move those amounts; the two actions are net-zero moves between expenditure categories so payments to third parties are accounted for as operating expenditures.

Chairman Groh thanked Jessup and legislative staff for the review and said the items would be voted on the following day as technical corrections.