Deciphering the Budget

by Tom Yamachika, President, Tax Foundation Hawaii

One of the most important and consequential bills considered in any legislative session, including this one, is the budget bill.  This year’s budget bill is House Bill 1800.  Reading the bill, however, is not for the faint of heart.  There is a kind of code used in the budget bills, making it (we suppose) efficient for those who are actively working with it, but tough for the rest of us to understand.

Here is one of the budget bill entries: 

This one is for a program in the Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity, abbreviated AGR.  Each department has a three-letter abbreviation, and a list of all of them is at the beginning of the bill.  The specific program is Animal Disease Control, which is coded AGR132.

The two columns of numbers are for the two years in the fiscal biennium, namely fiscal years 2025 and 2026.  In an even-numbered year like this one, changes, denoted by text that is bracketed and stricken through for deletions and underscored text for added material, are usually in the second column only.  The changes are made to last year’s appropriations bill, so text and numbers that are neither underlined nor bracketed are from the 2025 appropriations act.

The numbers with decimals, such as 25.68*, are position ceilings.  This program is allowed 25.68 full-time equivalent positions, with the asterisk (*) denoting that they are permanent positions.  A pound sign (#) is used for temporary positions.
The line following the position count is the monetary appropriation, in this case $3,119,582 with the “A” following the number meaning that it is a general fund appropriation.  The 25.68 full-time equivalent position count is being funded by this general fund appropriation.  

The next line is an appropriation for the same program but with a different means of financing, this time “B” funds or special funds.  (A table with the different codes for means of financing appears at the beginning of the bill.)
The next couple of lines show an appropriation of “P” funds, other federal funds, which fund temporary position(s) of one full-time equivalent.

Finally, we see a $7 million appropriation for “C” funds, general obligation bond funds, but only for fiscal year 2025.  But this appropriation is listed under AGS, the Department of Accounting and General Services, instead.  That’s because DAGS usually handles construction projects; further down in the bill you will see that it is for construction for improvements to the animal industry facility in Halawa.

If you think all of this is confusing, you’re absolutely right.  Fortunately, the Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice has put together a tool to make sense of it all.  The Appleseed Center also publishes the Hawaii Budget Primer which further explains the budgeting processes and the different kinds of appropriations that appear in the budget.

Understanding the budget is your right as a taxpayer.  It’s (mostly) your money, after all.