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Joint Fiscal Office walks Senate through 2027 budget tradeoffs; senators flag vacancy savings and fund shifts
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Summary
The Joint Fiscal Office distributed an updated spreadsheet showing house vs senate budget choices and walked senators through major items: a roughly tens‑of‑millions gap, ADS billing changes that increase general fund costs, vacancy savings concerns, and multiple technical fund shifts and positions to review.
Emily Fern of the Joint Fiscal Office presented an updated budget spreadsheet to the Senate Appropriations Committee and walked members through house and senate columns, line items and technical changes.
"This is the sheet you went through yesterday with updates to get the double counts out, all that stuff," Fern said, distributing the materials and explaining senators would need to decide which house additions to accept or reject to resolve the bottom line.
Key items JFO highlighted included changes to the Agency of Digital Services (lines 5–7) that reflect reallocation of costs and a net roughly $15 million increase in general fund needs tied to technology billing and the CIT fund; a House‑added tax department position (line 8) tied to an anticipated education transformation implementation; and multiple technical shifts moving special fund activity into the general fund (for example, cannabis control board appropriations).
Committee members flagged that vacancy savings assumptions appear aggressive in several agencies, including county‑related offices; members said setting vacancy savings to zero is not realistic and asked JFO to revisit the assumption. Senators also discussed reserves and statutory formulas that will change based on FY2026 totals and noted that removing one‑time items or moving money between funds will alter the final stabilization reserve requirement.
Other topics surfaced during the walkthrough: OPEB investment consulting costs proposed to move to pension funds (H.567), additional DEC positions for blood safety, base funding restores (for elder care and higher education increments), and a House action that removed rulemaking authority for a proposed fishing access fee; members said the House had asked agencies to return with reports and that the Senate had mixed views.
JFO committed to fill in the senate column, highlight lines senators asked questions about and return to the committee with a revised sheet and a short break was taken to allow staff work before resuming work on one‑time items.
No formal votes were recorded in the hearing; the session focused on staff briefing and identification of follow‑up work for conference negotiations.
