Appropriations panel distributes prioritization spreadsheets, flags $230 million in above‑GovRec requests

The House Committee on Appropriations met March 11 to begin a prioritization exercise for requests that exceed the governor's recommended budget for fiscal year 2027. The chair opened the session and said members would vote on several bills later in the day while spending the morning on the spreadsheet-driven ranking process.

Staff distributed an Excel scoring sheet and printed copies and walked members through six funding categories the committee will use: the governor's one-time appropriations, department and agency requests above GovRec, advocate general fund requests, legislator requests, committee-letter requests, and bills. The staff member said, "We're just under $230,000,000 for request above government," and emphasized that the figure excludes bills, which are moving rapidly and will be handled separately.

The spreadsheets mark duplicate requests in gray so that identical proposals do not double-count in the subtotal. Staff explained that the grayed cells indicate duplicated numeric requests across multiple submission channels, but committees' endorsements or opposition still appear so members may evaluate an item on its merits even if its dollars are not counted more than once.

Members asked for clarifications about whether large items shown on other tables (for example, a $15,000,000 complex) were general-fund items; staff clarified some items are financed from non‑general‑fund sources and therefore fall outside the general-fund prioritization exercise. Staff also noted some items the governor listed as one-time are being proposed to move into base funding, and those should be considered during the exercise.

Staff flagged items potentially implicated for Global Commitment and noted that where preliminary splits between gross and general fund exist they are included in the sheets, but final verification of those splits will come from the Joint Fiscal Office once the committee identifies priorities. An updated bill table, including minute bills, will be circulated after lunch; bills remain the most fluid bucket as crossover approaches.

The committee discussed differing ranking systems used by policy committees (tier 1, tier 2, tier 3) and agreed to ask committee chairs later in the week to narrow lists to their highest-priority items as needed. The panel recessed for lunch and planned to reconvene at 1:15 p.m. to begin bill hearings and votes.