Committee advances House Bill 704 to shift architect, engineer reporting to annual Open Georgia dashboard

A committee meeting at the state capitol advanced House Bill 704, an agency bill from the Department of Audits and Accounts that would replace monthly reporting on architecture and engineering contracts with an annual report published on the state’s Open Georgia website. Carol Sweeney, director with the Department of Audits and Accounts, presented the bill (LC 461157) and described the change as a way to reduce duplicate monthly submissions while creating a searchable dashboard.

The bill would remove the current requirement that state agencies, colleges, universities and technical colleges submit monthly statistics on contracts with architecture and engineering firms; instead the department would publish annual statistics pulled from the data agencies already submit each fiscal year. "What we are asking for in House Bill 704 is to move a monthly requirement to an annual requirement instead," Sweeney said.

The measure updates reporting established in a law enacted in 1970. Sweeney told the committee the existing monthly reports are posted as PDF files and cover a rolling 36-month period; the proposed change would allow the department to present the material in a dashboard format on Open Georgia, including filters so users could isolate hires in rural Georgia or firms located outside the state. "We would be able to set up filters. So somebody who may be at an agency is interested in certain data...they could pull statistics like that," Sweeney said.

Representative Bazemore questioned why the office selected annual reporting rather than quarterly or biannual schedules. Sweeney replied the department already receives annual information by law and that keeping monthly reporting would require agencies to continue submitting largely repetitive monthly entries. She said the department typically pulls the consolidated data in September after the fiscal year and would use that dataset to populate the dashboard.

Sweeney also cited a prior legislative effort to make the same change. She said a similar proposal, HB 1199, passed the House unanimously last year but did not advance out of Senate rules. The bill sponsor and other supporters named during that prior effort included Clay Pirkle, Gerald Greene, Mac Jackson, John Corbett and Rick Jasper; Sweeney said Sam Watson had planned to carry the measure in the Senate.

After discussion the committee took a voice vote on a motion related to House Bill 704; the chair called for ayes and the motion carried. The transcript does not specify the exact motion language, the mover or second, or the numeric vote tally. The next procedural step for the bill was not specified during the meeting.

The Department of Audits and Accounts said the dashboard-format report is intended to be more user friendly and accessible to a broader audience than the current PDF format, with potential value to state leadership, agency staff and private firms seeking contract opportunities.