Tag: Fiscal Year 2019 budget

House budget reject Greitens’ administration plan to expedite tax refund payments

House budget leaders are rejecting Governor Eric Greitens’ (R) plan to use a line of credit to help pay for getting tax refunds out to Missourians.

House Budget Committee Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick (left) and the committee’s ranking Democrat, Representative Kip Kendrick (photos; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Under the administration’s plan the state would seek a line of credit of up to $250-million.  That would be used to help the state get refunds out faster and would be paid off by the time the fiscal year ends at the end of June.  The loan would have come from MoHEFA, the Missouri health and Educational Facilities Authority, which typically helps finance buildings projects for colleges and universities.

House Budget Committee Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick (R-Shell Knob) considered the idea since it was first presented to him, but has since cooled on it.

“I personally didn’t love it at first, the first time I heard it, and the more I thought about it the more it wasn’t something I thought we should do, so the House is not going to do it,” said Fitzpatrick.

Both Fitzpatrick and the top Democrat on the budget committee, Representative Kip Kendrick (D-Columbia), also question the constitutionality of that plan.

“One of my biggest concerns about the whole thing is we have a process in place already to make sure we can pay refunds.  The idea that we can pull from MoHEFA, and the explanation that taking this $250-million line of credit is the same thing as providing funding for Mizzou Arena – that’s a false equivalency.  It’s not.  The “F” in MoHEFA stands for facilities,” said Kendrick.

“The nature by which they wanted to do it was to use a quasi-governmental agency to borrow off budget and then use state appropriations to pay off through that quasi-governmental entity those loans,” Fitzpatrick said.  “It was creative but it isn’t something that I feel real comfortable with on the constitutionality issue.”

Senate leaders have also reportedly rejected the loan idea.

Asked whether the legislature needs to reevaluate how refunds are disbursed in order get them out faster, and with the state paying less interest on delayed refunds, Fitzpatrick said let’s wait and see.

“Like two years ago we had a 15-percent year-over-year increase in refund expenditures.  It went up like $200-million in one year and … we didn’t anticipate that.  When you have something like that – that kind of growth in refunds – it can create some cash flow problems, especially right at the end of the fiscal year,” said Fitzpatrick.  “If we have a good year of growth and we can get our General Revenue Fund cash balance in a better situation, and we don’t have an explosion in refunds … I think we ought to be able to get ourselves in a better situation where we’re paying refunds in a timely fashion.”

The House Budget Committee this week began going over Greitens’ budget proposal.  Over the coming months the House and Senate will craft a legislative spending plan that will be sent to Greitens before the end of the session in May.

House budget leaders discuss Greitens’ plan to cut college, university funding

After legislators began going through Governor Eric Greitens’ (R) budget proposal many began expressing concern over his proposal to cut money from Missouri’s colleges and universities.

Representatives Kip Kendrick and Scott Fitzpatrick (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

The Governor proposed a 7.7-percent reduction to higher education.  Coupled with money frozen in the state budget that took effect July 1, 2017, that would be a 10-percent cut overall.

House Budget Committee Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick (R-Shell Knob) said that would amount to a reduction of about $68-million.  Higher education funding is also shifting to being based on performance, which could mean additional decreases for some institutions.

“I haven’t heard any rumblings from any institutions about, ‘If this happens, we’re closing,’ but I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility,” said Fitzpatrick.  “I don’t anticipate that all of those reductions will stand in the budget.  I think that we’ll probably try to recover some of that, but I think that the institutions – some more than others – are going to have a difficult time with it.”

Fitzpatrick and the budget committee are just beginning the process that over the next couple of months will see countless changes made to the governor’s budget proposal to morph it into the legislature’s own state spending plan.  He is sure efforts will be made along the way to restore at least some higher education funding.

“It’ll depend on what things we find in the budget that we think we can reduce or any other revenue source that we’re not currently considering that could become available through the process, which usually happens in some way shape or form,” said Fitzpatrick.

Legislators in both parties and in both chambers are expressing intent to propose more funding to colleges and universities than the governor proposed, so it seems likely the 10-percent reduction will not stand.  Still the leading Democrat on the House Budget Committee, Representative Kip Kendrick (Columbia), said he’s alarmed at the governor’s proposal.

“This is a time when we’re at full employment.  That’s what scares me the most is the economy’s doing well, yet we’re seeing such tremendous cuts to public higher education across the State of Missouri.  I’m very concerned about what it’s going to mean for our state,” said Kendrick.  “I think that this is a very concerning trend that we’ve been seeing … what happens in the next [economic] downturn?  What’s that going to mean for higher education at that time?”

As for other provisions in the governor’s plan, neither Fitzpatrick nor Kendrick are supportive of a plan to take out a line of credit to pay for the state to get tax refunds out to Missourians faster.  Both also want to retain or improve on the governor’s proposal to increase pay by $650 to state employees making less than $50,000 a year, but say only time will tell what form any state employee pay hike could take.