State budget director says $261 million was double‑counted; governor, director urge treating it as one‑time cushion

State Budget Director Dan Hogg told the House Budget Committee that he had made a calculation error in the FY27 balance sheet that double‑counted one‑time spending and overstated the budget’s outlays.

“I made a calculation error in putting a budget out last week,” Hogg said, adding: “This was a $261,000,000 error that I made.” He told the committee the mistake came from not removing a manual balance‑sheet adjustment that accounted for spending that appears in FY27 but should have been excluded from FY26 reporting. Hogg said the $261 million is composed of about $186 million of disaster spending and $75 million tied to Senate Bill 1 allocations.

Hogg and committee members agreed the money is effectively one‑time funding and should not be counted on to support ongoing operating costs. “This does leave us more money on the bottom line, which is good,” Hogg said, but he warned that using it for recurring items would worsen FY28’s structural imbalance between ongoing revenues and ongoing expenditures.

Several lawmakers asked whether the governor would support leaving the funds on the bottom line rather than approving new recurring spending. Hogg said the administration’s public recommendation is to treat the discovered funds as a cushion and not to appropriate them for ongoing items, and that he would inform the senate committee the following day.

Committee members pressed for more process controls after the disclosure. Hogg said the error was found by House staffer Glenn Fitzgerald after staff shared the OA numbers with legislative staff; Hogg said OA is reviewing processes to prevent a recurrence.

The committee did not take any formal vote on the matter during the hearing. The director’s disclosure prompted follow‑up requests from several members for a fuller reconciliation and for written documentation of the source and composition of the $261 million.