Although they approved funding levels equal to last year, nine legislative appropriations subcommittees plan to fight for a share of the approximately $324 million in new funding this year.

So far, no subcommittee has been told how much, if any, of that new money each will be given to fund desired new or expanded projects. Instead, the subcommittees were simply told to draft a budget using last year's funding levels — referred to as "base budgets" — and to rank their new funding requests on a priority list.

Both the base budgets and priority lists were approved Monday afternoon by the subcommittees.

Those new requests could include relatively minimal expenditures to cover the cost of a new employee or multimillion dollar proposals for new buildings or roads. All committees worked differently, with some approving extensive lists, others focusing on a few big-ticket items and some looking for a lot of one-time funding.

For instance, the Executive Offices and Criminal Justice Appropriations Subcommittee approved an extensive list of one-time funding requests to increase jail space or allow overworked agencies to regain ground lost during the recent lean budget years. Included on the list is last-minute funding of $146,000 in both one-time and ongoing funding, as well as an additional $31,000 for overtime costs, to enable the Bureau of Criminal Investigation to keep pace with background checks for state employees, especially teachers.

As highlighted in news reports over the weekend, those background checks were lagging approximately five months behind.

Other subcommittees, such as the Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee, approved much more ambitious priority lists, especially in terms of ongoing funding. That subcommittee on Monday was unanimous in saying it will try to get much more than the estimated $23 million available for public higher education. Committee members recommended trying for at least $65 million in ongoing and one-time funds for salaries, fuel and power, nursing and engineering initiatives, grants and scholarships.

The single-largest budget will be from the Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee, whose base budgets is $2.1 billion — almost a quarter of the overall state budget. Despite the size of that budget, the subcommittee actually approved everything last Friday, identifying its top priority as $37.7 million more for enrollment growth, plus $642,000 to pay for unexpected growth in the current school year.