House Rules advances bill to clarify legislative audit access to Department of Revenue records

The House Rules Committee advanced Senate Bill 183 on May 8, 2025, a measure intended to clarify that state agencies must “furnish, assemble, [and] generate information in the form and format requested” by the Legislative Budget and Audit (LB&A) Committee and the Legislative Audit Division so auditors can complete oversight work.

The bill matters because auditors say they cannot finish a performance audit of the Department of Revenue’s oil and gas production tax audit group without data organized the way the auditors need it; that audit concerns assessments, interest and penalty calculations, appeals, and related settlement information that the auditors say affect billions of dollars of state revenue. Senator L. V. Gray Jackson, chair of the Legislative Budget and Audit Committee, told the committee the department has refused requests to provide previously compiled summaries and instead insists it is required only to provide raw data.

“Either the Department of Revenue has already compiled the information requested in the special audit for its own use and is deliberately withholding it from the legislative auditor, or it has failed to do so,” Senator L. V. Gray Jackson said. “The legislature must now assert its constitutional and statutory oversight authority and fulfill our obligation to the people that we serve.”

Chris Curtis, the state legislative auditor, told the committee that the audit request approved by LB&A in December 2020 seeks updated tables of assessment, interest, penalties and appeal outcomes in the same format previously provided to the legislature. Curtis said the requested tables are necessary to understand how much additional tax and interest were assessed across audit cycles, where cases are in the appeal process, and what sums have been collected or deposited into the Constitutional Budget Reserve or other accounts. Curtis repeatedly emphasized that “formatting makes data meaningful” and that auditors need agency expertise to populate some columns of the requested tables.

A Department of Revenue representative, Destin Greeley, said the division provided detailed raw transaction data and assessment letters but that the department’s tax system does not mechanically associate every dollar and interest amount to the specific audit letters in the requested table format. “We actually provided a transaction summary that includes every single transaction that has happened,” Greeley said, and added that producing the requested tables would require a time‑consuming new work product.

Committee members pressed both sides on practical details. Curtis said the audit team had populated parts of the template where possible but lacked the subject‑matter expertise the tax division holds to complete the remaining cells. Curtis also explained that some information may be confidential under statute; she said the statutes permit the legislative auditor access to confidential records but that publication of confidential material in a public audit report is a separate legal question the auditors would manage in coordination with the division.

Legislative legal services director Emily Nauman told the committee enforcement of the statutory duty to cooperate would likely play out in court if the executive branch refused to comply. She said courts would weigh separation‑of‑powers concerns but that the legislative auditor’s constitutional role as a post‑audit function strengthens the legislature’s oversight claim. Nauman cautioned that very prescriptive statutory language can be difficult to draft and that disputes over the meaning of “form and format” could lead to litigation.

The committee considered an amendment proposed by Representative Vance to restrict the statutory language so requests would explicitly flow from the LB&A Committee rather than only the Legislative Audit Division. Legislative Auditor Chris Curtis opposed that amendment, saying requiring committee involvement during an audit would impair auditor independence and violate professional auditing standards. The amendment failed on a 3‑aye, 4‑nay vote.

At the meeting’s conclusion, Representative Kopp moved—and the committee had no objections—to report Senate Bill 183 out of committee with individual recommendations and attached fiscal notes. The committee record shows the bill contains conforming changes to criminal statutes and personnel law, clarifies duties in Title 24, and includes an immediate effective date with a nonretroactivity clause.