House budget chairman on the governor’s spending plan and House budget priorites

Governor Eric Greietens (R) has released his $27.6-billion proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2018.  It has gone to the House of Representatives, which will now prepare its own spending plan starting with Greitens’.

House Budget Committee Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick (R) said he anticipated the governor would make significant cuts in spending, primarily to make room for growth in Medicaid and to deal with a drop in revenue.

Greitens did just that, proposing reductions including $159-million in state aid to the state’s colleges and universities, $52-million in aid for in-home care and nursing home care, and $31-million to K-12 schools’ transportation.

Fitzpatrick said he agrees, generally, with the governor’s budget approach, but will look to make some changes.

“We will look at some of the things the governor’s done in education.  I’m glad that he was able to hold the foundation formula [for state aid to K-12 education] flat in his budget but we’ll look at if there’s a way for us to increase that appropriation while maintaining the overall level of appropriations that the governor and the legislature had previously agreed to,” said Fitzpatrick.

“We’ll also look at some of the decisions that were made in the social services budget and try to get a first-hand account of what those cuts will mean,” said Fitzpatrick.  “I’m on board with what the governor’s saying in that we do need to rein in spending in social services, so I’m glad that he proposed some big ideas, but we’ll just look and see if we can actually implement those or not.”

As for the governor’s proposed reductions to higher education, Fitzpatrick said those could have gone much deeper if the governor hadn’t spread reductions out across the budget as he did.  He believes the governor still recommended, “a pretty sizable amount of money,” for those institutions.

“Higher education is one of the largest discretionary items in the budget,” said Fitzpatrick.  “I agree with a lot of what the governor said.  Higher education institutions aren’t the most efficient institutions when you compare them to a lot of other things that we do.  They’re expensive institutions to maintain, but one of the things about a higher education institution is that they have many other sources of revenue besides just state appropriations.  I think that if I were governor I would have probably focused the cuts in a similar fashion as he did in higher ed.”

Fitzpatrick said the legislature will look for places it can save some money that could be applied to other needs and priorities.

One would be the facilities maintenance reserve fund.  The legislature is required under the Constitution to pump money into that to pay for maintenance and repair of state buildings.

“There is some money in that fund already.  The governor had proposed transferring the full amount that the legislature is required to authorize.  We’re going to look at the condition of that fund – the amount of money that’s in it, the obligations that are expected to be incurred by that fund over the next year – to see if we really need to transfer that full amount this year, in such a tough budget year,” said Fitzpatrick.

He said House budget planners will also look closely at the state’s retirement plan, the Missouri State Employee’s Retirement System.  MOSERS had requested an increase in the state contribution rate to the pension system.  The legislature will consider whether that is necessary.

Fitzpatrick still wants to spend some time on two of his personal budget priorities.  He told House Communications after he was named budget chair that he wants to fully fund the K-12 foundation formula, increase pay for state employees, and accelerate repayment of the state’s debt on bonds.  He doesn’t expect, now, to address the latter of the three, but will give the other two consideration.

“We’re going to look at updated numbers on what it would take to fund the [K-12 education] formula.  I think that number has come down some because there has been less growth in average daily attendance in the state than had been anticipated,” said Fitzpatrick.  “We’re going to look at that and if it’s something that we can do with some of the potential savings in some of the other areas that I mentioned then that will be probably priority number one.”

“The other I would say equal priority if not greater priority than that would be, from my perspective as a legislator from a rural district – and there are a lot of rural legislators – would be to restore the general revenue cuts to the K-12 transportation appropriation,” said Fitzpatrick.  “One of the things that the governor recommended was removing all the general revenue from that line and I understand why he did it, because like I said there were a lot of tough decisions to make, but as far as what our priorities are I think that the General Assembly’s going to probably put a higher priority on that particular item.”

Fitzpatrick said it seems unlikely the House will find a way to pay for a proposed increase in pay for state employees, but said he would not take the issue, “off the table yet.”

He said he is pleased that Governor Greitens’ proposal would leave some money available for expenses that come up during the fiscal year and are often paid for in what is called a, “supplemental budget.”

“I agree with his budgeting strategy of not spending every last dollar because we’ve always had a supplemental since I’ve been here,” said Fitzpatrick.

House appropriations committees have already been holding hearings and continue to do so.  Fitzpatrick said he will soon meet with each of those committees’ chairpersons to see what their recommendations are.

He is confident the delay in receiving Governor Greitens’ budget proposal, compared to when the legislature received a governor’s proposal in recent years, will not keep the legislature from preparing its budget proposal by the May 5 deadline.