Money In
Money Out
Where the rest goes
The operating budget above is one of four General Fund acts. It uses most of what Delaware is allowed to appropriate, and these three acts claim what is left. They are shown here for context and are not editable, because they were passed as separate bills.
Together these three come to $534.7M, more than the $483.7M of room. That is the dark line on the bar above. The reason it clears the ceiling is narrower than it looks. The supplemental and the grants-in-aid act are counted against the limit, and together with the operating budget they come to $7,242.4M, which fits under the $7,480.5M cap with $238.1M to spare. Only the Bond Bill sits outside it. Under 29 Del. C. § 6532 an act approved under Article VIII, Section 3 of the state constitution is not counted as an appropriation for this purpose, and Section 3 is the provision governing borrowing and the creation of debt, which is what the Bond Bill does. The grants-in-aid act also passes by three-fourths, but for a different reason: Article VIII, Section 4 requires that margin for appropriations to counties, municipalities and corporations, which is what its payments to fire companies and nonprofits are. That vote threshold does not exempt it from the cap.
How the scale works
Delaware cannot appropriate everything it collects. The Constitution caps appropriations at 98 percent of projected revenue plus whatever cash was left unspent last year. That cap is the real constraint, and it is the one this tool enforces.
Unencumbered cash carried in from FY2026 + $408.8M
= 100% appropriation limit $7,633.2M
× 0.98 = 98% appropriation limit $7,480.5M
Operating budget, SB 335 − $6,996.8M
= Room under the cap $483.7M
Reading the program level
Open any department to see the divisions inside it. Every program figure comes straight from Section 1 of the Act, each department's programs add up to its total exactly, and the departments add up to the state's grand total of $6,996,795,500. Move a department slider and its programs scale together. Move a single program and the department total follows.
On screen the figures are rounded to the nearest hundred thousand, so a column of programs may look like it misses its department total by a rounding step. The Act and the state's own financial summaries carry the same caveat. The appendix shows the exact amounts, where everything reconciles to the cent.
Some things only become visible at this level. Correction is not mostly prisons in the way people assume: $126 million of it is medical and behavioral care the state is legally required to provide. Other Elective looks like a collection of small statewide offices until you open it and find that 97 percent is debt service. And Education is not twenty programs, it is essentially one. Division Funding, the salaries of teachers and school staff set on a statutory schedule, is $1.83 billion of $2.52 billion, which is more than a quarter of the entire state budget in a single line.
Delaware’s three other General Fund acts
The operating budget is one of four, and all four totals are now taken from the acts themselves: the one-time supplemental (SB 336, exactly $146,199,300), grants-in-aid to nonprofits and volunteer fire companies (SB 337, exactly $99,407,051), and General Fund cash inside the capital budget (HB 500, exactly $289,073,915 stated in its Section 3). Together those come to $534.7 million.
Add all four and you get roughly $7.53 billion against a $7.48 billion cap, which looks like a contradiction and is not. Three of the four are counted against the limit: the operating budget, the supplemental and the grants-in-aid act come to $7,242.4 million, which fits under the cap with $238.1 million to spare. Only the Bond Bill sits outside it. Under 29 Del. C. § 6532, an act approved under Article VIII, Section 3 of the state constitution is not counted as an appropriation for purposes of the limit, and Section 3 is the provision requiring a three-fourths vote to borrow money or create debt. That is what a bond bill does.
The grants-in-aid act carries a three-fourths enacting clause too, which is easy to mistake for the same thing. It comes from Article VIII, Section 4, which requires that margin for appropriations to any county, municipality or corporation. That is why payments to fire companies, senior centers and nonprofits trigger it. It is a different provision and it does not exempt the act from the cap.
One further distinction worth knowing if you compare this against DEFAC’s own worksheets. DEFAC’s Balance and Appropriations sheet shows a combined line that includes cash sent to the bond bill, because that worksheet is tracking every use of cash in order to derive the ending balance and the reserve ratio. The constitutional compliance test is a separate calculation on the same page. The two serve different purposes, and the appearance that DEFAC counts bond cash against the limit is an artifact of reading the first one as if it were the second.
What moving a revenue line actually means
These sliders are shorthand. Nothing in state law lets the General Assembly simply set a revenue number. Raising the personal income tax line means changing rates or brackets; raising the franchise tax line means changing a fee schedule that other states compete against. Four revenue lines open into their real components, so you can see that the personal income tax figure is gross collections minus refunds rather than a single number anyone chooses.
The labels
- Discretionary, Mixed, Mandated estimate how much room a department really has. Most of education is salaries set in statute; most of Health and Social Services is Medicaid with a federal match attached; debt service is already owed.
- Volatile flags revenue that swings hard year to year. Corporate income tax fell roughly 30 percent in this forecast. Realty transfer tax tracks the housing market. Dividends and interest track the Federal Reserve.
- These labels are editorial guidance, and so are the descriptions under each program. The dollar figures are not.
Checked against later acts
SB 337, the grants-in-aid act signed July 15, 2026, states in its title that it amends the Fiscal Year 2027 Appropriations Act, so it was read in full. Its Section 35 replaces an epilogue provision on salary supplements for state agency teachers, and its Section 36 reprograms prior-year one-time funding. Neither changes any Section 1 appropriation, so every figure here stands as enacted. Later supplementals and mid-year transfers are not reflected.
Verify it yourself
The verification appendix lists all 134 program figures with their account codes and page numbers in the Act, runs the reconciliation checks live in your browser, and states plainly which numbers are sourced and which are derived.
Sources
- Spending by department and program: Senate Bill 335, 153rd General Assembly, Section 1, signed June 30, 2026.
- Revenue by source: DEFAC General Fund Revenue Worksheet, June 2026.
- Appropriation limit and carryover cash: DEFAC Balance and Appropriations Worksheet, June 2026.
- All DEFAC forecasts and minutes: Delaware Department of Finance.