Yesterday (April 15) the Senate Ways and Means Committee passed its version of an operating budget for the 2011–13 biennium. Amendments increased total NGFS+ appropriations for the biennium by $17 million compared to the committee Chair’s proposal. Of the $17 million net increase, $7 million was the result of technical amendments correcting errors in the Chair-proposed bill and $10 million was the result of substantive policy changes. With the greater spending, total reserves at the end of the biennium are projected to be $721 million.

The largest policy changes involved funding of public schools, where the committee rejected the Chair’s proposal to base funding to school districts on average daily attendance rather than the number of students enrolled. (In the press, the Chair’s proposal had been called “a tax on truancy.”) To offset the cost of this change ($95 million), the committee saved $92 million through revisions to the school bus replacement program. (The revised program makes payments to school districts at the time new buses are purchased rather than as existing buses are depreciated.)