Note: This year IFF rated maintenance bills according to a more refined system. This is an enhancement bill, and will be rated as a standalone bill. IFF will only consider enhancement line items in these ratings. This means that FTP reductions passed in maintenance legislation will not be evaluated here, among other things.

Bill Description: House Bill 868 is an enhancement of $2,599,400 and 0.00 new full-time positions for PERSI for fiscal year 2027. This legislation appropriates a total of $13,675,700 and 81 full-time positions to the agency.

Rating: -1 

Does this budget incur any wasteful spending among discretionary funds, including new line items? Conversely, does this budget contain any provisions that serve to reduce spending where possible (i.e. base reductions, debt reconciliation, etc.)?

This legislation authorizes onetime spending for PERSI of $2,599,400, adding additional expenditures after last year’s (FY26) onetime spending of $3,628,500. Onetime spending is often even more volatile than ongoing, which is to be expected due to the onetime expenses generally being utilized for projects or capital outlay. This also calls for special scrutiny and discernment.

While some of these outlays, such as the Pension Software Update ($2,000,000 DF) are in year five of procurement and represent sunk costs, others are not. Also authorized are expenditures for disaster planning ($227,300 DF) for the retirement system. This is unwarranted and wasteful spending, especially so in a deficit year.

(-1)