JBC votes to repeal Capital Complex Master Plan Implementation Fund, freeing $2.5M annually

The Joint Budget Committee voted March 17 to direct staff to include a repeal of the Capital Complex Master Plan Implementation Fund (CCMPIF) within an existing bill draft, a change staff said would free roughly $2.5 million in ongoing general fund resources.

Andrea Ewell, Joint Veto Committee staff, explained the 2015 statute that created the CCMPIF had allowed a stream of roughly $2.5 million annually — the residual between COP payments for National Western Center financing and an earlier $20 million payment — to flow into the fund. For several years, staff said, those sums had been transferred into a broader Capital Complex Renovation Fund and then spent. Repeal, Ewell said, would remove the automatic required transfer and leave the dollars available for general fund balancing unless the CDC requested otherwise.

Vice Chair Bridges moved to "take the money" and repeal the CCMPIF in the bill previously authorized for capital complex repeals. The motion passed on a vote of 5 to 0 with Representative Taggart excused.

What happens next: staff will draft the statutory repeal language to be folded into the already‑authorized bill and return with the draft language for further committee review.