To:       Agency Directors

            Legislative Coordinators

            Budget Directors

            Budget Staff

From:  George Naughton, Administrator

            Budget & Management

The Department of Administrative Services will hold the 2011-13 Budget Kickoff meeting on Wednesday, March 17^th at Cascade Hall of the Oregon State Fairgrounds.  We will be doing things a little differently this cycle with the Budget Kickoff meeting and we wanted to update you on those changes.

First, we will post the 2011-13 Budget Instructions to the BAM web page and provide a link to agency budget staff sometime during the first week of March.  Budget development has already begun for agency budget staff, and the budget instructions will provide further direction for deadlines that will be coming during the month of March.  It will be important for agency budget staff to look through the budget instructions prior to the Budget Kickoff meeting to ensure that important deadlines in March are not missed.

Second, the Budget Kickoff meeting itself will be less about budget process specifics and more about the larger context for policy issues that will go into budget development.  To make sure that all agency staff are given the same contextual information, we will only hold one session of the Budget Kickoff meeting this year.  We have moved the location to the State Fairgrounds to accommodate the larger crowd, and the meeting will start at 8:30 am.  The agenda is as follows:

8:30-9:00       Opening Remarks by the Governor and Chief of Staff

9:00-10:00     Public Opinion Overview by Adam Davis, Partner with Davis, Hibbitts & Midghall, Inc.

10:00-11:00   Economic and Revenue Overview with Tom Potiowsky

11:00-12:00   Budget Picture for 2011-13 and Beyond with George Naughton

The next biennium will be a challenging period for state government, and we are hoping that this higher level conversation will help inform agency policy decisions as you prepare your Agency Request budgets for 2011-13.  If you have any questions, please contact your Budget and Management analyst.

Directions to Cascade Hall can be found at the following links:

http://www.oregonstateexpo.org/contact_us/maps_directions

http://www.oregonstateexpo.org/plan_an_event/map_of_expo_grounds