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[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Walk us through this very complicated Good morning again. We're back of House Appropriations Wednesday, 04/29/2026. We now have during fiscal office Ted here to go over the fiscal notes to the library. That's 2 32.
[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I appreciate your patience. My computer decided to die while I was waiting for team's message. So I was having a technology detox there for a second. Now I'm back.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: It wasn't long enough,
[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I'm sure. It's never long enough. It's true. Okay, so I'm going to try and talk and pull up the fiscal note at the same time, but as the chair mentioned, is not terribly involved. The bill, as it originally started and came out of Senate education, had a specific percentage allocation of the cannabis sales tax to the Department of Libraries. As that bill made it through the process, there was a rather wholesome discussion about whether the Agency of Education should, would be required to transfer a certain amount of sales tax revenue to the Department of Libraries and it ended up as a May. And so that is the main fiscal impact of the bill is that there could be two potential, rather than all the money going to the universal and summer and after school and summer special funds, a certain amount could end up at the Department of Libraries. There was I'm sure you heard the testimony, some concern about the length and complexity of the application for those funds, although the Department of Libraries currently would be a theoretical applicant for those funds and none have applied. I think they identified the barriers to those applications. These other pieces in the bill There is a Repeal of an audiovisual revolving fund. I will say there is a number of us, both the AOA and the JFO, have gone down the rabbit hole to try and figure out whether that fund had any money in it, etcetera. We have not been able to find any evidence of that fund, so we are assuming that it is closed out with $0 in it. But that has been a bit of a it certainly has not been active recently to the extent we can sort it out.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: List of special funds.
[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: It is not on the list of it's not on the Not special
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: in special funds. No. And so the administration can't find it anywhere in their minds and administration. I
[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: know I shouldn't be speculating, but sometimes it's an analogous situation that happens is sometimes in agencies, have a fund outlined. EDA has certain funds that are outlined in statute, but it's not a state special fund. The best I can figure is it's some version of that. And then finally, we checked in, there is language in the bill that would allow libraries to be recipients of $30,000 early education grants through 16 DSA 4041. We checked in with the agency of education. The grants are voluntary and they are not currently making any grants through this program. And so even though this would expand the statutory public and we don't anticipate a change of practice. That is the fiscal note. I remembered most of it. But it jogged my memory out of the active pieces once I got it pulled up.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Yeah, just have one question. There's a reference on the second page under section three, second paragraph, to awardees and program track, receive funding for three and a half years. Centers, you'll receive funding for five years. What is a center? Because I couldn't find a reference to a center before that. So a center would be
[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: are certain through CDD regulations, are certain after school centers. It's like a site. And so it's more involved than a program. Given
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: to an after school entity?
[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: An after school entity, yeah. So it would be As far as my understanding, I don't know the exact maybe I should rather than speaking before I know the full details. It's my assumption that a site or a center is more than a specific program. So thinking through within the context of this bill, a library might have an after school program, but they're not an after school center. They're a library. And that would be the type of distinction we're thinking about here. But I will, if I mess that up, I will send a clarification to you all. Any
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: other questions about this? Yes, ref ref. Introduce yourself. Hey, representative from
[Rep. Jana Brown (Richmond, House Education)]: Richmond House Education. Ted, do you know back when the audiovisual revolving fund was active at some time in the past, how did money flow into it? It looks like it was something libraries would assess to users who are receiving materials.
[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: As far as I've understand and what I've heard and walked through was that it was connected to postage. So if the library paid for some amount of postage for someone to get a material through interlibrary loan, they might ask that patron to reimburse them for the postage. So again, leading to this fund not having a lot of money, if it was primarily dealing in postage coming in and out, particularly a number of years ago, it can't be a large amount of money.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: Any
[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: other questions?
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: All right, we will vote on this on Thursday. We have it on our calendar yet? Maybe Well, I think we can vote on it after we hear the budget on Thursday. It's not going to take very long. I want us to focus on the budget first. So maybe we'll do that at 11:30 or something. Thank you, Ted. Appreciate it. Thank you, Rev Brown, for coming in. And we are good to go on that. So, Katie, I think is that all we have for today? Yes. Okay. The floor is going to go fairly lengthy today, not that's Fairly lengthy. I mean, until 03:30, I think. Soon and a half hours. So we're starting into that end of session, not as bad as the Senate who did defer most of their business till today because the budget went for a long time. I imagine they'll be deferring business till tomorrow as well. But they're going to vote out the budget this They're starting at eleven, I think. So they'll be voting out the budget. There's one amendment I saw on that. They're also looking at miscellaneous tax. There are some amendments on that. I was trying to read it on my cell phone. I have to read it on the computer. Was complicated. The big miscellaneous tax, the yield bill, and the budget are the things they're going to get out of the Senate. So there'll be some committees of conference getting started probably next week. And the adjournment pool ends tomorrow at 04:00, so you put in your guests. Tom, he gets it? He's not the emoji. I don't want to kiss myself.
[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I didn't
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: pick
[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: it could put
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: it in August, yeah.
[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Mean, I'll off live.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations)]: We're about to go off live. And so we'll be live again tomorrow at 09:30.