Legislative staff outline technical corrections to FY2025 budgets including broadband, CAFO and health payments

My name is Janet Jessup. I'm a budget and policy analyst with legislative services. That statement opened a briefing to the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee on technical corrections to fiscal year 2025 budget documents.

Legislative analysts told the committee the packet on members’ desks (the "yellow packet") contains three net-zero corrections intended to align appropriations with program structure and statutory spending categories.

The most detailed correction moves reappropriated broadband dollars from the Department of Commerce’s commerce program into a newly created broadband program to improve transparency and oversight of broadband spending. Jessup said the funds were reappropriated into the commerce program in error in FY2025 and that moving them ‘‘nets to 0’’ between the two program tables.

Jessup also described a drafting error around a $2,000,000 transfer to the CAFO (confined animal feeding operations) improvement fund. She said the bill language named the "DEQ general fund" in a way that caused the appropriation to be taken from the Department of Environmental Quality general fund bucket rather than from the general fund as intended. The correction on the yellow packet would replace the DEQ general fund dollars the agency ceded to the CAFO fund so the agency is made whole.

Finally, staff described two adjustments within the Department of Health and Welfare moving monies from trustee-and-benefit payments to operating expenditures because the payments are third-party contract payments and therefore belong in operating categories. Jessup said those actions also net to zero and that the agency’s bill language restricted its ability to make the reclassification without legislative action.

Committee members asked clarifying questions and were told the items are technical corrections the committee will vote on the following day. No committee vote on these specific corrections was recorded in the transcript excerpt.

The presentation closed with committee leaders thanking staff for the workload and noting the committee would vote on the corrections at a later session.