Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the State Revenues topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
House applies 5% administrative assessment to many dedicated funds; regulated agencies and LBA flagged small and uneven impacts
Summary
The House included a 5% administrative assessment on certain dedicated funds in HB 2; agency witnesses told the Senate Finance Committee the charge would produce only small amounts in some dedicated accounts and raised legal and implementation questions.
The House put a 5% administrative assessment on certain dedicated funds into its version of HB 2 to generate additional general-fund revenue. The Legislative Budget Assistant's office provided the committee with a long list of dedicated funds and a "negative list" of accounts that would be exempt.
Several agency witnesses said the measure's impact varies by fund. Amelia Galderi, the state banking commissioner, told the committee that the Consumer Credit Division's dedicated fund historically recorded very small surpluses and that applying a 5% charge to the historical inflows would have generated only a few thousand dollars annually in many years. "If you look at our Dedicated Funds Report, last year there was no revenue coming into that fund," Galderi said; "over the course of five years, you would have only recouped $160,000." She said her office uses surpluses in that fund to reduce per‑diem regulatory fees for small consumer-credit entities and that automatic sweeps could reduce that flexibility.
Committee members and the Legislative Budget Assistant said they expect to field public comments during hearings and to ask legal counsel and DAS for implementation details (for example, how the 5% assessment would apply to funds that include federal dollars or funds with statutory restrictions). In several cases House members exempted funds by statute or listed them on a negative list; committee staff said the House exempted many accounts from the sweep but that a few hundred dedicated funds remain subject to the assessment.
Senators asked LBA and DAS to prepare legal and operational clarifications about which accounts are subject to the sweep and how the charge would be assessed and collected before the Senate takes action.
