by: Sarah Hudacek, AOF Policy Associate
Budget season is here again! If you haven’t started preparing for the marathon 6-month process yet, it’s not too late. Here’s everything you need to know about the process and how to prepare.
Blue Book
It all starts with the Governor’s budget proposal. The Governor must release his executive budget proposal by January 31st, also called the Blue Book. The Blue Book is an extensive report of the Governor’s recommended policies, programs and appropriations to be included in the operating budget for Fiscal Years 2024-2025. The Blue Book is formulated using budget requests from each executive agency that were submitted to the Governor in the fall.
Red Books
To accompany the release of the Blue Book, the Legislative Service Commission prepares deep-dives into the budget recommendations for each executive agency, known as Red Books.
House of Representatives
The budget process always begins in the House of Representatives, with the budget expected to be introduced by the Chair of the House Finance Committee by February 14th. Notably, standing committees in the House have not yet been assigned, meaning the legislators who will be undertaking the budget process in Finance Committee (including the Finance Chair) are still unknown. In the Senate, Senator Matt Dolan is returning as Finance Committee chair. In the House, however, former Finance Chair, Representative Scott Oelslager, has been appointed as Speaker Pro Tempore of the House. With this leadership assignment, Oelslager is out of the running for Finance Chair. The division between factions of the Republican party in the House makes predicting committee assignments even more difficult.
Typically, the House will assign Finance sub-committees to focus on specific topics of the budget. Budget committee assignments are up to the discretion of the Speaker of the House, though, and it’s possible that the Speaker will choose a different approach other than sub-committees. However, as a best practice, these subcommittees will begin with budget hearings in early February, including testimony from agency directors on the Governor’s recommendations, as well as opportunities for community stakeholders to testify on the as-introduced budget.
Following weeks of testimony, each sub-committee will submit a report to the full Finance Committee with its recommendations. Based on these recommendations, the Finance Committee will introduce an amended version of the budget, known as a Substitute Bill, or sub-bill. At each step of the process, the legislature can change anything from the Governor’s recommended budget, including adding, removing, expanding, reducing or altering existing items in the Executive budget.
Additional weeks of testimony will be heard on the sub-bill. The Finance Committee will draft additional changes to the bill based on that testimony and on comments from stakeholders in legislative meetings and will introduce an omnibus amendment - one sweeping addition that includes dozens of changes to the bill which are adopted all at once.
Typically, once the omnibus amendment is approved by the Finance Committee, the committee will then quickly vote on moving the bill out of committee and to the House floor, without additional opportunities for public input. Amendments on the House floor can be offered, but typically most amendments added to the budget are done in the committee process. Once approved, the bill moves to the Senate to repeat the same process.
At every step along the way - the as-introduced version, sub-bill, House-passed version, etc. - LSC will release updated comparison documents, or comp docs, comparing every line item of the budget against the different versions.
Spring Break
Typically, between the passage of the budget in the House and the bill’s introduction in the Senate, the legislature takes a week-long spring break, likely sometime around late March or early April.
Senate
The Senate process closely mirrors the process in the House. In the 2021 budget process, Senate President Matt Huffman opted to forgo the typical sub-committee process, and instead tasked Senate standing committees with hearing budget testimony on their assigned topics and submitting recommendations to the Senate Finance Committee. President Huffman has yet to announce if the same process will be followed this year.
Concurrence
Once the Senate passes its version of the budget, the bill is sent to the House of Representatives for a concurrence vote on the Senate’s changes - which are typically extensive. Without exception, the House will reject the Senate’s changes, which will trigger a referral to conference committee.
Conference Committee
An equal number of Representatives and Senators will be assigned to the conference committee, and this committee’s work will happen largely behind closed doors. The conference committee does not accept public testimony and will work privately to reconcile changes between the two versions before releasing a final version of the budget, which is then quickly approved by both the House and Senate and sent to the Governor for his signature.
Because parts of the process, such as conference committee, are not open to public input, it’s even more important to be vocal in your advocacy throughout the preceding process and to meet with legislators from your district and members of the committees focusing on the issues you work on to ensure your message is heard prior to non-public budget decisions.
Governor’s Desk
The Governor must sign the final budget by July 1st, when the next state fiscal year begins. Because the budget is an appropriations bill, the Governor can line-item veto any item in the budget. The Governor cannot, however, add or alter existing budget provisions - only approve or deny them.
There is typically limited time for advocacy on line-item vetoes after the final budget has passed the legislature. It’s vital to be informed on the current version of the budget and speak out against harmful provisions as soon as possible, as things move very quickly in this process.
Green Books
Following the end of the entire budget process, LSC will study the passed budget and produce Green Books, which are deep-dives into the impact of the budget on each executive agency. Green Books are typically released in October or November of budget years.
Preparing
If you haven’t yet, the time to start preparing for the budget is now! Check out this great blog from our partners at The Center for Community Solutions for a five step to-do list to get started.