May 1, 2026 · Appropriations · 906 words · 5 speakers · 24 segments
. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. House appropriations will come to order. Ms. Pope, please call the roll.
Representative Basenecker. Here. Garcia Sander. Present. Gilchrist. Here. Joseph. Excuse, I guess. Soper. Here. Taggart. Here. Tatone. Still here. Velasco. Here. Zokai. Here. Madam Vice Chair. Here. Mr. Chair. Here.
All right, committee, we have one bill. Senate Bill 149. Sponsors, we are the, we, no, we are not. I don't know what I'm talking about. Okay, do we have questions for our, yeah, I'm gonna need more coffee. Do we have questions for our bill sponsors?
I have a question.
Okay, Representative Toton.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was looking at the fiscal note and noticing on, I think, page 13, mentioning a lot of contract staff and contract beds, and that goes out quite a bit into the future. And I was wondering, you know, is there anything in the bill that might be there, or maybe I missed, that would kind of get us more on a path to have to set up something where we won have to have that reliance on the contract beds and the contract staff I imagine that would cost a lot more money than doing it with state resources
Madam Speaker. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Representative. It's an excellent question. You will see, and I'm sorry I'm not finding the exact line, but we do talk about constructing as well as contracting new beds, Particularly in the immediate future, we will need to contract those new beds as we build capacity. And I do want to invite our Joint Budget Committee members to speak to this as well. There was, through the budgeting process, a $30 million set aside for the work that we need to do to harden facilities for some of the population that we are talking about in this legislation. and that we anticipate, you will have seen in the fiscal note, we're estimating roughly 46 individuals will fall into this category and need the additional services. So that is what is right now driving our fiscal note. We anticipate that over time we will be able to have more available state beds as we do some of this construction and hardening. But in the meantime, there is also a need for contracting.
Additional questions? All right. Seeing none. Sponsors, we have a couple of amendments. I understand you have an amendment, L080. Would you like the committee to move that?
Madam Speaker. Yes, Mr. Chair. Our canary, I should pause for just a moment. I do want to acknowledge that this canary arrived on your desks today. My deep gratitude to Emily Pope, who did a brilliant job moving through our request in Amendment L080. You will see on pages 2 and 3 an overview of what the amendment does. I'm happy to walk through or speak to any of those points specifically if the committee requests. But yes, we want L080 and J003 to run hearing committee, not J002.
Great. Thank you very much. Madam Vice Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move L080 to Senate Bill 149.
Second. Seconded by Representative Soper. Are there any objections to L080? Seeing none, L080 has passed.
Madam Vice Chair. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move J-003 to House Bill, sorry, Senate Bill 149.
Oh, seconded by Representative Zocay. Are there any objections to J-003? Seeing none, J-003 is passed. Additional amendments, sponsors? Additional amendments, committee? Seeing none the amendment phase is closed Any additional comments Sponsors committee Madam Vice Chair
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would just extend my gratitude to the speaker and the minority leader and Ms. Pope and everyone who has put so much time and effort into trying to come up with a solution and a solve for the failures of our current system. I do have tremendous anxieties about the budgetary impacts that these policies are going to have. And there's just a lot of unknown here. And I very much appreciate the removal of the over-expenditure authority and appreciate the introduction of the 1331 process instead. I hope those two weeks are enough time to give adequate analysis from our staff for the JBC to be able to make really well-informed decisions when one of these comes through, which I anticipate it will.
Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Madam Vice Chair, would you move the bill for us please?
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move Senate Bill 149 as amended to the Committee of the Whole.
Seconded by Representative Titone. Ms. Pope, would you please call the roll? Oh, I'm sorry. I want to note for the record that Representative Joseph has joined us.
Representative Spaceenecker. Yes. Garcia Sander. Yes. Gilchrist. Yes. Joseph. Yes. Soper. Yes. Taggart. Yes. Tatone. Yes. Velasco. Yes. Zocay. Yes. Madam Vice Chair. Yes. Mr. Chair. Yes.
That passes unanimously. Thank you both sponsors. We'll see you on the floor in a minute. And I do want to also give my extreme gratitude and thanks to our JBC staff and particularly
Ms. Pope for her work.
And I want to miss Ross for her amazing work, hundreds of pages and drafting, and Mr. Carpenter and everybody else who has worked on this. But thank you for this. This is a tour de force, so thank you all. House appropriations is adjourned. There you go.
Thank you.
Thank you.