Some state lawmakers – and state budget officials – say there’s a misunderstanding about the state’s $1.6 billion dollar ending fund balance.
That’s the amount of money that’s left in the state treasury after all the appropriated dollars have been spent.
Sen. Terry Wanzek (R-Jamestown) says lawmakers and the state budget office knew that money would be there at the end – so there was no surprise.
“It's not like 'we have $1.6 billion laying out there that, shazam, just showed up and we didn't know about it," Wanzek said at a meeting of the Legislature's interim Government Finance Committee. "I can't believe how many people I've had come up to me and say, 'Why didn't you do this or that? You had that $1.6 billion laying around.' And I said, 'We already spent that.'”
State budget director Pam Sharp says Wanzek is correct.
“We knew about that when we did our preliminary budget forecast last summer," Sharp told the committee. "Every chance I got to talk to the media, I explained that to them to, that we were fully aware of that, and had been for a year. And it was built into the budget."
Sharp says the money was appropriated for the 2013-2015 biennium.
