General Assembly conference committee members struck a compromise agreement July 22 on the state’s $15 billion spending plan for FY2026-27. For weeks, House and Senate conferees had been working diligently to iron out differences between their two versions of the budget, with main points of contention centering around how much to spend on community projects and how much property tax relief to offer seniors.
The Forestry Commission fared very well this year: approximately 84% of our FY2026-27 budget request was funded, including important investments in wildfire response, information technology and conservation education, while our $20 million conservation need was addressed through the Conservation Bank.
- $300,000 for Bolstering Wildfire Response (recurring + 1 FTE) – partial funding
- $2,000,000 for SEAT contract (non-recurring) – fully funded
- $260,000 for Information Technology (recurring) – fully funded
- $560,000 for Information Technology (non-recurring) – fully funded
- $75,000 for Bolstering Conservation Education – fully funded
- $3,195,000 of the $7,685,000 requested
- *also includes $7 million in additional federal authority
This generally aligns with the allocation the Commission received in the Senate version of the budget. The one notable exception is that the $370,000 recurring funding for our requested conservation program positions (2 FTEs) was not funded in the budget compromise.
SCFC leadership is now preparing the agency’s FY2027-budget request, details of which will be shared in a future issue of Tree Country.