Legislative council outlines biennial reports-repeal process and asks committees to review expiring mandates

Tucker Anderson, legislative counsel for the General Assembly, told the Government Operations & Military Affairs Committee that state law expresses an intent that agency reporting requirements expire five years after enactment or five years after the last statutory amendment and that the committee must act to repeal or extend those requirements.

“And then went on to say…that it is the intent of the general assembly, that except for interstate compacts, the requirement to report to the general assembly shall no longer be required after 5 years,” Anderson said. “But as we all know, you can’t bind future assemblies. Right? And law doesn't repeal itself.”

The memo Anderson outlined explains the process: legislative council will compile a list of reports that are “due to expire,” send a survey to each committee of jurisdiction, and ask committee chairs to check one of three options for each report — repeal, extend for five years, or retain permanently. If a committee does not return a survey by the committee’s chosen deadline, Anderson said staff will prepare a bill that would repeal the reports assigned to that committee.

The guidance to committees includes a practical review: check whether the report has been submitted, whether the committee has used it for oversight or legislative decisions, and whether the report should be made permanent. Anderson said the Legislative Council maintains a public database of submitted reports running from 02/2009 to the present and that committees should use the database and the statutory citations provided to judge usefulness.

Anderson said many statutory reporting requirements appear to go unmet in practice: “Many of these reports, especially once they're, you know, 10 years old…are no longer being submitted. So there's a statutory requirement for them that's just not being met.” He asked committees to look for instances where a report has never been filed and to consider whether that absence indicates the report is no longer needed.

Committee members raised scheduling and capacity concerns. Anderson estimated there are roughly 136 reports subject to review this biennium, but after updating lists he expected each committee’s list to be closer to 60–80 items; he also said 75–80% of the items on the current list came from the past seven years. He warned that the workload for money committees can be heavy: when this process was last run, the House Appropriations Committee had 44 reports to review.

Operational details discussed included timing for sending surveys — historically committees have been given three weeks to respond — and options for prioritizing committees with more off‑session capacity. Anderson estimated updating the spreadsheets takes about 30–60 minutes per committee to pull information from the database and said finishing the remaining updates would take roughly a day of work.

Committee staff and members suggested strategies to improve response rates, including assigning committee members to coordinate with counterparts in other committees and allowing legislative council attorneys to meet with committees of jurisdiction to determine whether reports were ever submitted or used. Anderson proposed sending a fresh PDF of the spreadsheets and a blank draft letter the committee can use to contact other committees and said the Government Operations & Military Affairs chairs would confer with other committee chairs and reconvene to set a firm timeline.

No formal vote was taken; the discussion ended with direction to review the memo and reconvene the following day after other business to finalize timelines and responsibilities.