The Joint Senate Local Government & Housing and House Transportation, Housing & Local Government committees heard the Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) SMART Act presentation on the governor's FY27 budget proposal, which seeks to close an $850 million state budget gap through cuts including a $10 million severance tax transfer from local governments, elimination of a child care facility development grant, and a $110 million diversion of Proposition 123 affordable housing funds. No votes were taken; the hearing was informational, but sharp disagreements emerged over cuts to rural county funding, the equity impact on mobile home park residents, and whether DOLA's proposed savings are consistent with its stated program priorities.
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Representative Chris Richardson stated the transfer amounts to 'robbing Peter to pay Paul,' said it would have a 'huge impact' on rural counties, and reported hearing concerns from 'the other six counties I represent,' directing DOLA and the JBC to identify equivalent savings through elimination of county mandates instead. Eric Bergman defended the transfer as necessary given the $850 million shortfall, but acknowledged 'I don't like it. I hate it,' noting the Energy Mineral Impact Fund was already cut almost $17 million the prior year.
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“Last year we had about a billion dollars of gap to close. We did that. We delivered a balanced budget. HR1 was passed that immediately erased about a billion dollars of revenue to the state. And then we all found ourselves back in a special session to work on closing that budget gap. We will have to do the remainder of that closing through the supplemental process. But yet again, we are now in a place where we are closing an $850 million gap.”
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Sign in to subscribeCome to order. Mr. Gravy, please call the roll. Senators and representatives basley. Excused. Ball. Excused. Basenecker. Brooks. Present. Jackson. Lindsay. Here. Linste. Liston. Here. Wynn. President pascal phillips. Yes. Rich. Here. Richardson. On your right, snyder. Yo. Stuart. Here. Sukla. Here. Velasco. Weinberg. Exum. Madam Chair, Here. Thank you very much everyone for joining us. And let the record reflect Pascal Jackson and Exum are in fact present. And we begin our SMART act hearing as we like to do, hearing from the Joint Budget Committee. Who would like to lead us up? Madam Chair? Sirota. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to sort of give a sort of overview here before I turn it over to Representative Brown to share the portion of the budget that you have departmental oversight over. I just, and this is probably, I don't know if it's your second or third of these meetings at this point, so perhaps I'm a broken record. But I just want to frame this and remind you of the purpose that this meeting serves. We are fulfilling our joint rule 25 obligation and we come here before you to have a conversation about the governor's budget…
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