Big day in the budget committee…

As the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee enters its second week of agency budget-setting, there’s been little news thus far, but there will be today: Both the K-12 public schools budget, the single largest slice of the state general fund budget, and major pieces of the budget for the state Department of Health & Welfare, the state’s largest agency, including Medicaid, and are up for setting today.

Agency budgets set last week largely were approved on near-unanimous votes, and stuck closely to Gov. Butch Otter’s recommendation. The one big variation was about $3 million less in the special programs budget, but that’s the amount for the adult completers scholarship, about which germane committees still are debating. If that is approved, a trailer appropriation would add the funding later.