2026 Regular Session - Day 45 - HB 647 | Rep. Shawn McPherson

Mr. Speaker, would you have the clerk report House, uh, Committee Sub 1? Clerk, please report. House Committee Substitute 1 to House Bill 647. General McMillan, move adoption. Motion is for the adoption of House Committee Substitute 1. Is there any discussion of the Committee Substitute? Seeing none, those in favor signify by voting aye. Aye. Those opposed, nay. House Committee Substitute 1 is adopted. General McMillan. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So, House Bill 647 is a third iteration of a grants program that we started back in 2023. And we stood up then, not having any appropriation of money for that, just standing it up. In 2024, then, we stood it up again and appropriated $200 million to that program. That is targeting a federal program that had about a trillion dollars that were coming down. And this program then would allow for us to work with our ad districts to work on getting these grants to come down. And then we would help fund our portion of the match. To date, we have had 387 grants through this program, 93 counties, 95 cities, and 50 non-profits have received funding through this. We have just about run out of the $200 million. But of that $200 million, we've brought grants down totaling about just a little over $1 billion, about a 7X, a little over a 7X. For every $1 we spent, we've got $7.20. I think that's a pretty good investment, pretty good return on our investment. So, with this, we will stand this up again. This is not the funding mechanism. The funding mechanism will have to be done in a one-time appropriations. But this does stand up the program. The changes that this does make, in our original bill, we had a qualifying through the counties based on population and population changes. And based on how much population you have, the ones with more rural areas paid a 1, 2, 3, and 4, 5% match. This changes that to a 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10% match, which is still really good dollars on your investment. If there are no questions, I would ask for passage of House Bill 647 as amended by House Committee Sub 1.