While in the dog days of summer, the part-time Legislature is still making important decisions with taxpayer dollars.
At this week’s Executive Board meeting, budgets for legislative research and a legislative audit through 2027 were solidified.
The E-Board budget subcommittee heard from the Department of Legislative Audit and Legislative Research Council, or LRC, Tuesday.
John McCollough is the director of the LRC.
“Our base budget is about $9.5 million, that’s about .38 percent of the entire state budget,” McCollough said.
That total includes lawmaker salaries and reimbursements. In total removing those salaries, the LRC generally operates on about $5.9 million according to McCollough.
Ultimately, he requested a small increase to the organizational budget for that exact reason.
“We are requesting a no-change budget except for the addition of $81,000 to pay for what we’re projecting as an increase in legislator salaries," McCollough said. "State law requires us to pay the salaries of legislators, so this additional money would give us the ability to not dip into our current budget to pay for that increase.”
Alongside that is another smaller request to replace damaged equipment in the LRC office.
On the other side of the coin is Russell Olson, the state auditor general. He says considering retirements, there is no change needed for the department to function at full efficiency.
“Requesting no increase, but I do want to point out a couple of things," Olson said. "As you can see with this budget request 91 percent of our budget is people, it’s auditors, it’s professionals that I have to have to do this. Really, most of the contractual services and the supplies are what’s necessary for my professionals to do their job.”
Both budget requests were approved unanimously.