House finance subcommittee advances DCCED FY27 operating budget with technical fund-source changes

Rep. Elise Galvin, chair of the House Finance Subcommittee for the Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development, called the committee to order and presented a proposed budget action (BA) report for the department, which members moved out of subcommittee without objection.

Legislative staff member David Jang walked members through the BA report, telling the panel the subcommittee’s recommendations show totals of $17,956,000 in unrestricted general funds (UGF), $69,779,200 in designated general funds (DGF), $66,784,100 in other funds and $42,673,800 in federal receipts. Jang said the BA contains 19 items by allocation and three changes from the governor’s request; most are technical adjustments.

Jang described a key fund-source adjustment in item 10: instead of replacing $4,200,000 of professional licensing receipts, the subcommittee replaced $2,100,000. The change reduces the proposed shift of investigation funding between receipt accounts; the chair modified part of the request to use UGF for $2.1 million.

“[T]his corrects a technical error in the wordage,” Jang said about wording tied to the Alaska Broadband Office’s receipts, explaining that capital improvement project (CIP) receipts collected through the broadband office’s federal indirect cost allocation plan can be carried forward and appear in the office’s operating budget.

Rob Carpenter, legislative fiscal analyst, clarified the effect of item 10: the BA adds $2,100,000 of UGF to four investigations, which he said will reduce the burden on professional licensees. Carpenter said he could not predict whether fees for any particular licensee would rise or fall, but that the BA change relieves part of the cost that otherwise would have rested on the professional licensing fund.

The subcommittee also accepted item 12, keeping a flat budget for the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation for FY27 as a one-time item, and approved shifting the fund source for Railbelt Transmission Organization (RTO) setup costs from UGF to Alaska Energy Authority receipts starting in FY27. Item 15 included a request for $1,306,200 UGF as temporary stopgap funding to support AEA’s RTO administrative and legal costs until an open access transmission tariff is approved.

Co-chair Mears moved the FY27 operating budget for DCCED from subcommittee with the subcommittee recommendations and narrative and authorized the Legislative Finance Division to make technical or conforming changes; Chair Galvin asked for objections and, seeing none, the BA report was moved from the subcommittee. The meeting adjourned at 12:55 p.m.

The BA report will be accompanied by subcommittee narrative and Legislative Finance Division reports as the item proceeds through the House Finance process.