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Committee on Legal Services approves Office of Legislative Legal Services budget, sends package to Executive Committee
Summary
Members unanimously approved a combined OLLS and OLWR budget request totaling $11,690,950 for fiscal 2025–26, a 3.1% increase driven mainly by personnel costs, PERA contributions and higher publishing expenses; the committee asked staff to study outside-counsel hourly rates.
The Committee on Legal Services on Feb. 7 approved the Office of Legislative Legal Services (OLLS) budget for fiscal 2025–26 and forwarded it to the Executive Committee.
Director Ed Dechecho told the committee the OLLS request totals $11,255,494 from the general fund, a $298,440 (2.7%) increase from the prior year. The Office of Legislative Workplace Relations (OLWR) budget request is $435,457, a $49,640 (12.9%) increase; together the two requests total $11,690,950, about a 3.1% increase overall.
Dechecho said personal services dominate the request, accounting for roughly 87% of the OLLS budget (about $9.7 million), and that wage and benefit common policies — including a 2.5% across-the-board increase and a 0.6% step-like increase — produce a cascading rise in PERA, Medicare and paid-family-leave costs. "The employer will pay" a larger share of rising health-care costs under the common policy, he said, explaining a roughly…
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