Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Budget Hearing Process topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Budget staff outlines new hearing format, consolidated fund analysis and SharePoint materials
Summary
Legislative budget analysts described a shortened, focused hearing format and new budget pages that include consolidated fund analysis, five-year trends, organizational staffing details and SharePoint navigation to make agency materials and audits easier to find.
Janet Jessup, budget and policy analyst with the Legislative Services Office, gave the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee a walkthrough of the hearing format, the content members will see on budget slides and how to find materials in the committee's SharePoint repository.
"Consolidated fund analysis was a new table that we introduced last year," Jessup said, describing a slide that shows each agency's dedicated funds, beginning balances and year-over-year changes.
What members will see
Jessup said each agency presentation will include an organizational chart with full-time personnel (FTP) counts and a five-year trend of appropriations and expenditures; a breakout of expenditures by account categories (personnel costs, operating expenditures, trustee and benefit payments, and capital outlay); and a budget-enhancement lookback showing ongoing and one-time changes in the recent cycle.
She noted that personnel-cost (PC) percentages can reflect vacancy patterns, retirements, or hiring changes and that one-time salary-related payouts (for example leave cash-outs) are not included as ongoing personnel costs. Committee members were advised to ask analysts about unusually high or low PC rates when preparing work-group recommendations.
Dedicated funds, fiscal source book and navigation
Jessup showed the committee the fiscal source book entries that accompany each budget and explained that dedicated funds are restricted to statutory uses. She demonstrated the committee SharePoint setup: each agency folder contains the legislative budget book pages, LSO slides, agency slides and hearing follow-up documents; sorting by page number or last-modified date helps members find recent additions. She also pointed members to a new "Audits" tab on the legislative budget website for quick access to audit summaries and links.
Hearing logistics
Committee co-chairs reiterated that morning JFAC sessions will be condensed to about 90 minutes for budget presentations and work-group time, and they asked members to be punctual and to notify staff in advance if they must step away for other committee business.
Ending
Jessup offered to show navigation on the committee's SharePoint after the meeting and said printed copies of key tables are available for members who prefer paper. Committee chairs thanked staff for streamlining materials and urged members to rely on the new pages during budget deliberations.
