Legislative staff outline technical FY2025 budget corrections for commerce, DEQ and health programs

Janet Jessup, a budget and policy analyst with Legislative Services, told the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee on Friday that staff had identified three technical corrections to fiscal year 2025 appropriations contained in a yellow packet provided to members.

The most detailed correction involves the Department of Commerce. Jessup said the broadband program, created last year to improve oversight of state broadband spending, did not receive reappropriated funds in fiscal 2025 as intended; instead the dollars were left in the Commerce program. “We’re taking the money out of one program and placing it in the other so that those broadband costs can continue to be tracked,” Jessup said, adding the two table changes net to zero.

Jessup also described a drafting error in a bill that affected a $2 million transfer to the CAFO improvement fund, a dedicated fund for confined animal feeding operation improvements. She said the bill’s language referenced the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) general fund bucket in a way that prevented the intended transfer from the state general fund into the CAFO fund; as a result DEQ’s own general fund balance was used and other DEQ general fund obligations were effectively reduced. The correction being proposed would “make the agency whole and replace those DEQ general fund monies that were transferred to the CAFO fund,” Jessup said.

A third correction would reclassify expenditures within the Department of Health and Welfare. Jessup said two programs — the substance abuse treatment and prevention program and the physical health services program — had monies budgeted to trustee and benefit payments but, because the dollars go to third parties under contract, they should be coded as operating expenditures. The committee was told the change also nets to zero and is needed because language in the Health and Welfare bill constrained the agency’s ability to move funds between those categories on its own.

Committee chair Chairman Groh thanked staff and noted the corrections were technical in nature. He and staff said the items would be before the committee for formal votes the next day. No formal action on these corrections was recorded in the transcript from the meeting referenced here.

The packet authors said analysts Alex and Brooke are also available to answer follow-up questions about the corrections, and Jessup invited members to direct any later questions to legislative staff.