House Appropriations staff review committee webpage and document organization ahead of budget work

Erin Pedley of the Joint Fiscal Office on Monday gave members of the House Appropriations Committee an orientation on the committee webpage and how testimony, reports and budget documents are organized ahead of upcoming budget work.

Pedley, identified in the meeting as a senior staff associate with the Joint Fiscal Office, said "pretty much everything that any witness would bring in front of the committee is going to get posted onto your website," and demonstrated how members can find documents by date, by witness and under a separate "other documents" area for budget material.

The explanation was intended to help members locate records after hours and as the session becomes busier. Pedley showed committee members how the page is organized into tabs including the main meeting documents, a "reports and resources" tab that is organized by submitting department, and an "other documents" area that contains folders for budget items such as FY26 materials and the Budget Adjustment Act (BAA).

Why it matters: committee members will receive a high volume of testimony, fiscal notes and related materials once budget work begins, and quick, reliable access to uploaded documents affects members' ability to review bills and amendments in advance of hearings.

Key details from the orientation:

- Search methods: Pedley advised that the simplest search early in the session is by date or by witness name. She recommended searching by witness for departmental submissions (for example, typing a presenter's name to see all materials uploaded under that name). She also said bill-number searches are most reliable when looking for a specific bill and that staff can assist if members have trouble locating documents.

- Budget materials and the BAA: Pedley said committee-produced committee bills such as the Budget Adjustment Act remain under subject folders on the committee page and do not automatically move into the site's central "bills" folder once given a bill number. She noted she might change naming conventions to make versions easier to track, but that the documents will remain under subject-based folders rather than automatically becoming a bill-folder item.

- Bills folder structure: Within bill-specific folders, Pedley described three subfolders members should expect to find when a bill is tracked there: drafts, amendments and legal documents (including bill language and fiscal notes); a public comment folder for written submissions tied to that bill; and a committee-of-conference folder when applicable.

- Public comment and email: Pedley said not every email a legislator receives from a constituent is automatically posted as written testimony. Lobbyists and others who intend their submissions to be public usually send them directly to committee staff for posting. Individual members may forward constituent correspondence to staff for posting, but Pedley said members should not assume all constituent emails will be posted unless specifically requested.

- Reports and resources: Pedley said she is compiling reports that have been submitted to the committee and will post them under the "reports and resources" tab, which is organized by the submitting department rather than by individual witness. She asked members to prioritize reading reports for budget areas they oversee.

- Livestreams and transcripts: The committee livestreams are hosted on YouTube. Pedley demonstrated that locating a specific piece of testimony in a livestream can be clunkier than searching posted documents: she recommended using the committee page's "previous meetings" full report to identify the date and then finding the corresponding video by date and time stamp. She noted that every break in the meeting results in a new video file and that time stamps do not always match agenda times when multiple witnesses appear in one stream.

- Joint Fiscal Office (JFO) mirror: Pedley said JFO maintains a parallel set of folders on its website organized similarly to the committee page; she manages documents on both platforms and tries to keep them consistent so members or constituents can find material on either site.

Members asked logistical questions about version control (Pedley advised to use the most recent date), the present number of witnesses listed on the page (Pedley cited 51 currently listed), and how historic bill lists appear; Pedley said there were "quite a few" bills in past biennia and suggested staff or IT can help locate materials when search queries fail.

The orientation concluded with a reminder from Pedley that committee staff can be contacted to correct errors or help find documents, and with committee staff previewing that FY26 budget folders and a member spreadsheet of budget numbers would be available for the committee's upcoming markup session the next day. No formal actions or votes were taken during the orientation.