OMB outlines Government Operations budget, highlights procurement overhaul and staffing changes

The director of the Office of Management and Budget told the House appropriations subcommittee that OMB’s Government Operations Division budget centers on supporting state agencies through shared services, facilities, fiscal management, human resources and risk management.

"The mission is to provide innovative leadership and support to state government," Director Joe Morrissette said as he walked committee members through the office’s organizational chart and staffing needs.

Morrissette said the division currently has 103 filled positions and seven special-funded vacancies, and reviewed personnel counts by division: shared services (19 FTEs), facility management (39 FTEs), human resources (12 FTEs) and risk management (4 FTEs). He described two new facility-management hires — a construction manager and a lease manager —authorized in the last session and intended to save money on leases and construction projects by using centralized procurement expertise.

OMB officials described several projects and operating results the committee should note. Sherry Neese, director of the Shared Services Division, said staff recently reprocured board-management licensing and a law-enforcement Taser contract and are completing a long-running procurement system replacement to retire a more-than-20-year-old procurement system. Joe Goplin, director of the Fiscal Management Division, told the committee the state’s purchasing-card program generated a $3.1 million rebate to the general fund in the last fiscal year by aggregating volume across agencies and political subdivisions.

Morrissette said OMB manages central payroll processing for many small agencies and supports payroll and accounting through the PeopleSoft system; he also described a travel-and-expense automation rollout that is live in roughly 20 agencies and is available for other branches to adopt. Molly Harrington, OMB’s chief people officer, described work on a unified set of HR policies and a new enterprise FMLA administration system OMB has acquired and is making available centrally.

On facilities, Morrissette credited a combination of hybrid work arrangements and active space management with reducing leased space across state government by about 33% in the last four years, producing savings he estimated at more than $1.5 million annually. He said OMB’s surplus-property program has transferred about $15 million in federal surplus property to local entities and that risk management handles roughly 12,000 incident reports annually.

Committee members asked for follow-ups. Representative members requested OMB provide details about whether surplus legislative chairs remain available; Morrissette said he would find out and report back. Harrington also offered to share the compensation analysis and target-market data the HR team used when agencies raised pay-equity requests.

The presentation included several budget requests tied to operations: funding for the procurement system replacement, continued investment in space reconfiguration to reduce off-site leases, modest ongoing support for the enterprise FMLA system, and maintenance costs tied to the travel-and-expense automation.

OMB staff repeatedly framed many of the functions as shared or fee-supported services that are intended to reduce duplication across state agencies. Morrissette asked the committee for continued support for those shared services as tools to lower total costs and improve efficiency across state government.

Provenance: OMB’s presentation and the committee’s questions are documented in the committee transcript starting with Morrissette’s opening at s=418.37 and concluding before outside testifiers at s=3942.50.