Representative Craig Hedlund explained House changes to Senate Bill 2,323 in Appropriations. The amendment redirects 1 percent of the state share of the gross production tax so that $50 million per biennium (about $25 million per year) would deposit into the energy impact grant fund, which supports three designated hub cities, Hedlund said.

Hedlund said the House Finance and Tax Committee increased the deposit from the Senate proposal (which had included $40 million per biennium) to $50 million and extended the deposit for the next two biennia. He said the committee also made small adjustments to the distribution percentages among the three hub cities to reflect updated impact information and to account for the flow of funds through related "buckets" in statute; those changes required a corresponding adjustment to the SIF (state infrastructure fund) allocation.

A committee member asked whether the change creates new money before the other statutory buckets, and Hedlund replied the deposit comes from the total pot and can change how money flows, but the lower statutory buckets (for airports, prairie-dog mitigation and similar items) remain unchanged in how they are enumerated in statute. Hedlund pointed the committee to the bill's page 17 where the bucket allocations are enumerated and said the governor's budget assumptions already reflected some of the flows.

Ending: Representative Hedlund said materials (charts showing bucket flows) would be distributed to committee members for further review. No vote on the bill was recorded in this transcript.