Meetings
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[Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Scott, you can come over. Are we on live yet? Okay. Good afternoon, everybody. Morning still or some folks. This is the House Appropriations Committee. Today is January 16. We are here to hear from Scott Moore, who's the Director of Legislative Operations. So our panelists
[Scott Moore (Legislative Finance Manager, Joint Fiscal Office)]: are The legislative finance manager.
[Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Okay, thank you very much.
[Scott Moore (Legislative Finance Manager, Joint Fiscal Office)]: For the record, Scott Moore joined fiscal office, legislative finance manager, although I have lots of interim experience with director of operations from my profession.
[Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: I know you do, okay. And the purpose you are here today is, we have an item in the budget adjustment related to your office. Correct,
[Scott Moore (Legislative Finance Manager, Joint Fiscal Office)]: yes. So I gave Autumn a memo earlier, which was passed out and it's also posted on your webpage. It's a short memo. Essentially, what we need to do is, I think, Rinne Laroche came in earlier this week and spoke you about legislative operations, talking about how we had moved positions around. We took the committee assistance from underneath the umbrella of legislative operations and put them underneath legislative council, things of that nature. So effectively, what we need to do for the budget is to move the money to pay for the people because the people have moved. So what this short memo basically says is, in the legislative budget, not the whole grant, but the general assembly's line item, which on the memo you can see is section B 126, we need to take out $836,667 split that up, and move some of that to legislative council and some of that to the joint fiscal office. Effectively, it's a net neutral. If you look in the big bill, the budget for the legislature is $26,044,703 After this change, the budget in the big bill will be $26,044,703 Change items. Of So effectively, the personnel for all the committee assistance, they're getting paid right now through the budget of Legg Council. The Legg Council wasn't budgeted that money to pay for the committee assistance of the FY '26 bill, because we didn't know that was going to happen. So now that's happened. We're just having the money follow the people.
[Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Second half of the year then?
[Scott Moore (Legislative Finance Manager, Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes. And what will happen is there were some other positions that were paid for from the first of the fiscal year, from July. So what will happen is we'll make this budget adjustment in the budget, and then on the back end, we'll also make general transactions to move the expenses that happened. For instance, the committee assistance had a week of training in December. Expense cost to the legislature will also need to move to reg council. From the back end, you'll see me doing lots of journals back and forth to make sure, now that the budget is where it should be, the expenses go right by now. So it's more work in the back end, but it's all just mechanical. There's nothing exciting about this, quite frankly. It's just having the money meet the people.
[Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: The money in the right place because the people have moved.
[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Right. And
[Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: who has this budget? Lynn? That's my budget. Oh, it's yours. Okay. Great. Any questions from anybody about that? We heard the description from Britain about why they wanted to make the change. We all approve that, and we put the language into, or we will put the language into the budget adjustment that affects that thing. So this is not in our spreadsheet? Correct.
[Scott Moore (Legislative Finance Manager, Joint Fiscal Office)]: The minus 7% that spreadsheet is the governor recommend.
[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Okay. So this is stuff that you're just doing It's in a legislative recommendable pool.
[Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Do we add this too, or do we have language for this?
[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Does it just
[Scott Moore (Legislative Finance Manager, Joint Fiscal Office)]: For the actual language For the transfer. It fits in the chat for me. So I don't know if it's
[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: get Grady to do. Would have done it. I'll update this. Yeah. Okay. And
[Scott Moore (Legislative Finance Manager, Joint Fiscal Office)]: you'll be back for twenty seven, right? FY '27, exactly. And then just as a quick preview of the FY '27 budget, when we look at year to year comparisons for percentages, I prepared the percentages based upon two ways to show you if we hadn't made any of these legislative operations changes, our percentages are increasing 3% or 4%. But since we do, the legislative council budget looks like it's going up 19.8%, which is a shocker. But it's not really, it's just comparing the correct FY '26 to the correct FY '27. So right now, it looks a little odd because there's that disparity in twenty four million to twenty five million, which is a much bigger percentage change than it really is. It's just a matter
[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: of moving the people and moving the money.
[Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Any other questions? Tom, do you have any further
[Scott Moore (Legislative Finance Manager, Joint Fiscal Office)]: questions? No, this is really one of the most cut
[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: and dry budgets in the portfolio. Seems like it. Well,
[Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: thank you for coming in and explaining to us.
[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Thank you. It's my pleasure. I'm happy to report
[Scott Moore (Legislative Finance Manager, Joint Fiscal Office)]: I think all of you have done your expenses for the day. I'm pretty sure it's a load. I'm excited about that. Almost. Almost. Okay.
[Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: You need my password.
[Scott Moore (Legislative Finance Manager, Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah. I can be of any more help on expenses or salaries or budgets, please don't hesitate to reach out.
[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Thank you very much. Thank you for all your help with our assistance. Additional
[Scott Moore (Legislative Finance Manager, Joint Fiscal Office)]: responsibility about this time.
[Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: I just want to remind the committee that in Room 11 at noon there's a refresher on '73 the education bill which was that two fifty four page whatever bill that we did last year And everybody knows there are lots of different parts to it and reports coming back and forth and that sort of thing. And so concerns about making modifications to it. So having a good baseline of what we actually did last year, think is a good help. So just a reminder that that will be by pledge counsel in Maryland. And we are meeting at 01:00 in Student 11 as well, right? Joint with Ways and Means, I presume, to get perhaps a more in-depth review from the state economists,
[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: or
[Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: I guess just the legislative economist, just about what they just presented. So that will be at 01:00 here. No, I'm sorry, in Room 11.
[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Yes, Dave. Madam Vice Chair, I told the chair yesterday, she has much on her mind, I'll be leaving at noon, but I'll be able to watch, I believe, the Room 11 presentation on education on YouTube. And I was told I could watch the 01:00 on YouTube. Do you know Autumn, if that's correct?
[Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, can send you the link.
[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: Oh, beautiful, thank you. Anyways, just wanted to let you know, might have an opportunity to catch a ride home tonight. I'm gonna take it. It's fair.
[Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Just want
[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: more Yeah,
[Scott Moore (Legislative Finance Manager, Joint Fiscal Office)]: I'll just
[Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: send the committee anything we need to
[Scott Moore (Legislative Finance Manager, Joint Fiscal Office)]: Well, you didn't catch that
[Thomas Stevens (Member)]: right, David, you'd be here all weekend. You go off to this. Get up to Waterbury. Getting to Waterbury, that's the hell. It is. It's a must. Okay.
[Scott Moore (Legislative Finance Manager, Joint Fiscal Office)]: Everybody,
[Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: enjoy your lunch or whatever you