Budget - Setting the record straight

While it was technically transmittal break, the legislature was still chugging along. Members of Appropriations met and held hearings on all of the sections of the state budget (HB2). The Legislature gets updates on the state’s revenue estimate every month. We organize the schedule for the state budget so that as it reaches each step of the process, we get another revenue update and gain a clearer picture of what the revenue is going to look like as we put the budget together.

It’s easier to build a budget up than it is to cut a budget down so as the budget comes to Appropriations, it is as low as we are comfortable having it so that we can make sure that we are staying within the updated revenue estimate to keep on track. Then it will pass out of the House and the budget will move to the Senate, where they will get another update to the revenue estimate and we will see how much more room we have as we inch our way towards our goals.

As it stands right now, the budget is in a really good place. We walked into the session with an overall plan to refill and repair the damage caused by the special session in Health and Human Services and Higher Education, creating a structurally sound budget that takes care of our essential services without requiring a tax increase. That is exactly where we are at. We have caught the Health and Human Service and Education budgets back up to where they would have been had the special session never taken place.

I read a couple of stories about FTE (full time employee positions) in Health and Human services. The department has 2,950 total employee positions, with 400 of them being vacant at any given time. Even as a position is vacant, the vacant position still has funding in every budget. We took about 100 of those positions that had been vacant for more than a year (more than two years in most cases), and the money that comes with them (about $8.8 million worth) and moved that money to child care services within the department and provider rate increases to help folks who take care of our seniors. The department came in to the committee hearing and claimed that somehow removing a position that had been vacant for years would be a cut in services.

That is not how any of this works and the department knows it. They just have an obligation to come in and defend their budget. I don’t hold that against them because it is their job, but to be clear, not only is there no cut to services or the Department of Health and Human Services in this budget, there is a $129 million increase.

So, the budget is right where it should be at this point in the process. It will pass out of Appropriations (with a couple adjustments) and begin to make its way to the House Floor next week. After the budget is out of committee, our next big push will be all the infrastructure bills.