Ways and Means staff brief committee on House Bill 2007; staff walk members through new budget summaries and major adjustments

Staff from the Kansas Legislative Research Department (KLRD) briefed the Ways and Means Committee on the content and structure of new budget-summary documents and walked members through House Bill 2,007, the House appropriations adjustments to the state budget.

Shirley Morrow, director of the Kansas Legislative Research Department, opened the briefing by explaining how to read the new budget summaries, which show 2024 actuals, the 2025 revised estimates, agency requests for 2026 and the legislative starting point for 2026. "What we're calling now the budget summaries, not the budget," Morrow said, asking members to use the narrative descriptions and numbered line items in the packet to reconcile apparent deletions that in some cases represent transfers to colleges and universities rather than permanent cuts.

Dylan Deer, fiscal analyst with KLRD, gave the committee a fiscal overview of House Bill 2,007, saying the bill reflects both large deletions from initial agency requests and partial restorations by the House Appropriations Committee. Deer summarized revenue and expenditure adjustments in HB 2,007, noting that the House LBC deleted roughly $290 million and $1.1 billion in two line items from agency requests and then added back about $165.3 million for FY2025 and $194.8 million for FY2026. He described the LBC profiles as planning documents, saying, "these profiles are planning documents only," and emphasized they do not assume recessions or major…