JFAC approves technical corrections and program‑maintenance budgets for dozens of state programs

The Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee on Friday approved technical corrections to existing appropriations and enacted program‑maintenance budgets covering nearly every major state agency, from the Legislative Branch to Health and Human Services.

Committee action fixed fund coding errors and moved base dollars into the correct programs, approved routine maintenance budgets and full‑time‑equivalent caps, and adopted standard carryover and reporting language used annually across agency appropriation bills.

Why it matters: the votes set the baseline appropriations the Legislature will use when drafting appropriation bills. Several of the fixes change where money is tracked (for example, moving prior reappropriations into a broadband account), which affects transparency and how the Legislature monitors grant and federal fund spend going into the next budget cycle.

The committee took its first votes on a set of technical corrections identified in a yellow handout from Legislative Services. Janet Jessup, budget and policy analyst with Legislative Services Office, told the committee that last year’s decision to add the broadband office to the Department of Commerce occurred after reappropriation was recorded, so the money landed in the Commerce program instead of the broadband office. “This action would remove the monies that were reappropriated to the commerce, commerce program, and then also add them back into the broadband office so they can be tracked for transparency moving forward,” Jessup said.

Committee members moved and passed two corrective motions to (1) reduce reappropriated funds from the Department of Commerce program and (2) add the same amount to the broadband program; both motions carried unanimously on roll call.

Other corrections approved included a $2,000,000 transfer to make the Department of Environmental Quality’s appropriation whole after a General Fund/transfer coding error and a pair of reclassification moves in the Department of Health and Welfare that shifted trustee/benefit payments into operating expenditure categories where contract payments are recorded.

The committee then advanced program‑maintenance budgets — the “base plus statewide decisions” budgets the Legislature uses as a starting point for the 2026 budget cycle — for the Legislative Branch, the Judicial Branch, constitutional officers, public safety agencies, general government, economic development functional agencies, natural resources, the State Board of Education (and its related institutions), public schools and Health &…