Committee approves drafting of bill to clarify interim supplemental and overexpenditure procedures

Craig Harper (GBC staff) and Pierce Lively (Office of Legislative Legal Services) presented a draft bill to clarify the interim supplemental process and to allow the committee to approve an interim supplemental request when a federal funding lapse is "reasonably likely to occur" while the General Assembly is not in session. The draft also includes language to permit introducing an appropriation for less than the full amount of an overexpenditure authority when departments later report they needed less than originally authorized.

Lively raised two technical questions for the committee to consider: whether overexpenditure authority granted under the interim process should end at a defined point, and whether restrictions placed by the controller for the next fiscal year should be lifted to the extent a supplemental appropriation is enacted. Members discussed possible downstream effects and whether a department could be unfairly penalized if an overexpenditure was partly unspent; Lively noted the restriction can act as a legislative recourse if the legislature disagrees with executive spending decisions.

Representative Brown asked whether there should be a contingency tying the introduced appropriation to the department's actual expenditures; staff explained timing complications can make that difficult in typical scenarios. The committee moved the draft forward with the two drafting questions answered "yes" and approved introduction 6-0. The bill will be introduced with the supplemental package and sponsors in both houses were identified.