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Senate Appropriations Committee reviews four budget amendments including $3M for town highways and corrections fixes
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Summary
The Senate Appropriations Committee reviewed four amendments April 28: moving a $3 million transportation pilot into the one‑time budget for town highways, correcting duplicate $500,000 correctional facility lines and specifying a sprinkler upgrade, clarifying homelessness continuum appropriations and adding municipal transportation fund language to statute.
The Senate Appropriations Committee on April 28 considered four amendments to the budget bill, including a proposal to move a $3 million transportation special‑fund grant for town highways into the budget's one‑time appropriations.
Staff briefed the committee on the first amendment, which would relocate a private special fund appropriation currently in the transportation bill into a one‑time section of the budget and create a $3,000,000 pilot special fund appropriation to the Agency of Transportation to provide additional grants through the general state aid town‑highways program.
A second amendment corrected drafting errors in the cash‑fund appropriation section. Staff said that a $500,000 appropriation intended for a sprinkler‑system upgrade at the Newport Northern State Correctional Facility had been omitted from the Senate copy, and an identical $500,000 maintenance line for the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility had been duplicated. The amendment replaces the mistaken language and inserts the correct appropriation for the sprinkler upgrade.
A third amendment clarifies budget language for the homelessness response continuum. Staff explained the proposal would restate a $21,180,000 one‑time appropriation and $701,100, and would also confirm that approximately $61,450,000 appearing in specified budget sections is for the same continuum purposes; it would permit remaining spending authority at the end of fiscal 2027 to be carried forward for those purposes.
The fourth amendment adds three sections from the transportation bill to statutory language to place the local option municipal transportation special fund in statute, define deposits of excess local option tax revenue and provide for transfers of three‑quarters of excess amounts to local option municipal transportation special funds.
Committee members raised technical drafting questions — including wording differences ('nor' versus 'or') and whether moving some transportation appropriations into the budget affects inflationary calculations used for town highway aid. Staff said they would consult counsel and provide updated, printed amendment language.
For process, staff agreed to add committee member names to the amendment as requested and to provide a fresh printed copy for the record. The committee agreed to report the amendment language and proceed with preparing the committee report.
The discussion was procedural and technical; no expenditure totals beyond those described above were adopted in committee beyond agreement to report the amendment language. The committee adjourned to return later to two remaining bills.
