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VI. Budgets

Guide to Financial Operations

VI.2.B Policies/Laws

VI. Budgets
Guide to Financial Operations

Full Segregations

Effective October 1, 2015, all appropriations will be fully segregated. There are two kinds of segregations within SFS – available and reserve. Any amount budgeted as available can be used for expenditures or the encumbering of purchase requisitions and/or purchase orders. Any amount in the reserve is not available for any type of financial transaction. Only DOB can authorize segregating budget amounts to the reserve. The sum of the available and any reserve segregations will total the appropriation amount.

During conversion, any amount not yet segregated in appropriations enacted in 2014-15 and prior will be converted into a reserve segregation. Appropriations enacted in the 2015-16 budget will be fully segregated as available.

Generate Parent Functionality

Effective October 1, 2015, SFS will begin using the ‘generate parent’ functionality as a system default. This functionality requires that parent and child budgets be aligned and all budgetary transactions originate at the child budget level, thereby allowing the system to roll-up the impacts to the parent budget level.

Within SFS there are two parent/child budget relationships which will use this functionality:

  • Appropriation (KK_APPROP) and Segregation (KK_SEG) and
  • Project Parent (KK_PRJP) and Project Child (KK_PRJC).

By using the generate parent functionality, State Agencies will no longer use Budget Journals against the appropriation (KK_APPROP) or segregations (KK_SEG) ledgers. Only Budget Transfers or InterUnit Budget Transfer journals are permissible for these ledgers.

For more information on the use of Budget Transfers or InterUnit Budget Transfer journals, see Section 3.A – Budget Transfers Overview of this Chapter.

For more information on Project Budgets, see Section 5 – Project Budgets of this Chapter.

Although DOB and OSC will, as a general rule, fully segregate as available all new appropriations at the start of the fiscal year, at DOB’s discretion, they may selectively limit a portion of the Segregation budget by moving a portion between the available and reserve segregations.

State Statutes impacting appropriation control

There are many state statutes that govern appropriations and how or when state funds are spent.

  • State Finance Law (SFL) §24, also known as “Budget Reform” Legislation, requires further itemization of the Executive Budget and prohibited lump sum appropriation for non-Federal state operations, Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and the Environmental Protection Fund.
  • New York State Constitution - Article 7 §7 - provides that no money shall ever be paid out of the state treasury or any of its funds, or any of the funds under its management, except in pursuance of an appropriation by law; the maximum life of an appropriation is two years and every such law making a new appropriation or continuing or reviving an appropriation, shall distinctly specify the sum appropriated, and the object or purpose to which it is to be applied; and it shall not be sufficient for such law to refer to any other law to fix such sum.
  • State Finance Law §40 provides for Liability Periods, Appropriation Periods and Lapse dates.
  • State Finance Law §49 governs the segregation of lump sum appropriations.
  • State Finance Law §93 governs capital projects appropriations.
  • The authority to segregate funding is derived from various sections of State Finance Law as well as the preamble to the budget bills.

Guide to Financial Operations

REV. 09/15/2015