Today is the first day of budget-setting in the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, so the joint committee has gathered for its usual early-morning work session to prepare. Agency budgets to be set today include the departments or divisions of Finance, Building Safety, Lottery, Hispanic Commission, Endowment Fund Investment Board, Energy Resources, PUC and the state Department of Environmental Quality.

Among those, the Office of Energy Resources gets no state general funds, instead operating mostly with federal funds from the U.S. Department of Energy. Finance, Building Safety, the state lottery, the endowment board and the PUC also receive no state general funds, operating solely with dedicated funds including fees and receipts. The governor's budget recommendation for the state lottery includes an accounting change that makes the bottom-line appropriation appear to drop in half, but actually it doesn't change; instead, the portion of the budget that pays gaming supplier vendor fees is shifted to the continuously appropriated part of the lottery's budget, rather than the regular appropriation; that gives the lottery more flexibility to impose performance measures in its contract with the vendor.

DEQ will be the first significant general-fund agency budget set this year. The DEQ's budget request for next year is almost $1.5 million less than its general-fund appropriation was in 2001, though its workload has grown significantly since then; the agency's state funding has dropped $4 million since 2009. For next year, the agency has requested permanently tapping the state's dedicated water pollution control fund to pay for annual water quality monitoring. Last year, amid budget cuts, all funding was cut for the Pend Oreille Lakes Commission and the Bear Lake Regional Commission.