North Dakota’s Budget Director said the Burgum Administration is still planning to give state agencies budget guidelines by the end of April.
The agencies use those guidelines as they prepare their budgets for the 2021-2023 biennium. Those budget requests are sent to the Governor’s office.
State OMB director Joe Morrissette told the Legislature’s Budget Section state agencies have a statutory deadline for submitting their budget requests. That’s the middle of July.
"As you're aware, we can extend that, if we need to, for certain agencies," Morrissette said. "But it's not practical to extend it to all agencies, because we have a limited amount of time to do our wok on the Governor's budget recommendation to you."
The budget is presented to lawmakers during their organizational session in December.
Morrissette called it a very "fluid situation," based on the COVID-19 virus and the low oil prices. He said OMB is working with the state’s financial consultant, Moody’s Analytics, to look at their estimates for general fund revenue and oil tax collections.
"As we look around and see businesses that are closed now, or were closed in the month of March, we don't have any data to estimate the impact of that, until we have the sales tax returns filed at the end of April," Morrissette said. "That's a little bit of our dilemma."
Morrissette said the estimates have to be based on speculation.
"We're doing the best that we can," Morrissette said.
