House committee probes midyear IT billings after Agency of Digital Services charges surface

Members of the House Energy and Digital Infrastructure Committee spent much of their Jan. 17 afternoon meeting examining midyear information‑technology billings tied to the FY2025 Budget Adjustment Act, focusing on charges from the Agency of Digital Services (ADS) that are showing up as unanticipated adjustments in several departments.

The committee heard from Representative Jim Harrison of the House Appropriations Committee, who explained the billing model ADS uses and why post‑fiscal‑year invoicing can create midyear budget surprises. "They're like a law firm. They track billable hours and they charge those," Harrison said, describing ADS's practice of estimating and later reconciling actual hours and costs after the fiscal year ends. He added that charges appear concentrated in the Agency of Human Services and cautioned that AHS is a large part of state spending: "AHS is basically half of our state general fund budget."

Why it matters: midyear adjustments in the Budget Adjustment Act (BAA) must be covered from existing appropriations and can force midyear cuts or other…