Senate Bill 2206 Summary

• Transitions funding responsibility for county social services from counties to the state beginning January 1, 2016, transferring foster care, subsidized adoption, therapeutic foster care medical assistance, elderly and disabled services, family preservation, electronic benefits transfers, and computer processing costs to the Department of Human Services.

• Establishes a new state-paid economic assistance and social service pilot program (Chapter 50-34) that distributes formula payments to service areas based on case-month data and baseline funding amounts calculated from 2015 expenditures, beginning January 2018.

• Appropriates $160.7 million ($134.7 million from social services finance fund and $26 million from general fund) to the Department of Human Services for the biennium beginning July 1, 2017 through June 30, 2019 for the pilot program.

• Creates a credit against payments in lieu of taxes for centrally assessed transmission and electric distribution companies, calculated as a fraction based on total formula payments divided by statewide property tax levied in the prior year.

• Suspends county human services levy authority (Chapters 50-03, 50-06.2-05) and repeals the state-paid property tax relief credit (Section 57-20-07.2), with various sections having different effective dates through 2020.