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JFAC staff outlines program‑maintenance bills, schedule and decision scope
Summary
Division of Budget Policy Analysis manager Keith Bybee walked JFAC through the structure of 10 program‑maintenance appropriation bills, what they include (benefit cost adjustments, contract inflation, SWCAP, CEC) and what will be reserved for enhancement bills; staff emphasized the committee can still alter bases after initial actions.
Keith Bybee, Division Manager of Budget Policy Analysis, presented JFAC with the office’s approach to program maintenance bills, the items those bills will include and the schedule for hearings and decisions.
Bybee said the maintenance work is organized into 10 functional appropriation bills that group similar agencies together but keep separate the judicial branch and statewide elected officials from the rest of general government. He said program maintenance will incorporate the budget “building blocks” from the prior year’s baseline and the items between benchmark 4 and benchmark 5 in the legislative budget manual: personnel and benefit cost adjustments (including CEC), contract inflation, statewide cost allocation (SWCAP) and other routine adjustments.
Bybee described the separation between "program maintenance" and "enhancement" bills: replacement items (including IT replacement requests), population forecast adjustments (formerly called nondiscretionary items), annualizations and new requests will be considered in enhancement bills rather than in program maintenance. He said that approach is intended to give the committee time and transparency to weigh higher‑growth items such as Medicaid and public‑schools forecast adjustments.
On schedule and process, Bybee told JFAC members the staff plans an initial walkthrough of proposed adjustments in advance; hearings on the adjustments are scheduled for mid‑week with decision making set for the Friday of that week (committee referenced Wednesday and Friday next week for hearings and decisions). He also noted the committee may still increase or decrease bases after program maintenance decisions, citing prior examples when the committee reallocated programs (for example, separating an office for oversight).
Bybee and committee members clarified how decision units will be assigned to program maintenance versus enhancement bills, that IT replacement requests are being broken out separately to allow greater visibility, and that some agency‑level differences (e.g., PERSI adjustments, attorney general cost allocations, lease inflators) will show up at the agency level within the common maintenance framework.
Bybee closed by reminding members that program maintenance decisions set a baseline but do not prevent later adjustments during the appropriation work.
A direct quote from Bybee: "Simply because you've set a program maintenance budget doesn't preclude you from adding things or subtracting things from those program maintenance budgets."
