Legislative Fiscal Division demonstrates public interactive data dashboards to Senate business committee

The Senate Business, Labor and Economic Affairs Committee heard a demonstration of public data dashboards from Legislative Fiscal Division staff during a committee meeting at the Montana State Capitol. Nick Van Brown, a staffer with the Legislative Fiscal Division, led the presentation and said the tools are available on the Legislature’s website and are intended to make budget, revenue and other state and local data more accessible to legislators and the public.

The LFD demonstration showed three top tabs — budget, revenue and other data tools — with the committee’s discussion focused on the “other data tools” section, which includes local government accounting summaries, jobs and wages series, and a cost-of-living dashboard. "All of these tools, to the extent possible, they're linked online," Van Brown said, adding the dashboards pull together multiple data sets and update as source data are submitted.

Committee staffer Joe Bahn demonstrated the jobs and wages dashboard and said it draws on the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Bahn showed historical series from the late 1990s through 2024 and noted the dashboards separate wages/salaries by NAICS industry category. He cited manufacturing employment at about 21,000 jobs on the most recent series and said health care and social services account for roughly $4.8 billion in wages and salaries on a quarterly basis; the all-industries series on the dashboard reaches on the order of tens of billions of dollars. "This is going to be data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis," Bahn said.

Molly Delcurto of the LFD reviewed a cost-of-living tool built to mirror the Massachusetts Institute of Technology methodology and adapted to Montana. Delcurto said the tool combines four principal expenditure categories — childcare, food, housing and transportation — and compares them to county median incomes. On childcare costs, Delcurto cited Department of Public Health and Human Services market-rate analysis figures comparing February 2015 to February 2020: median daily center-based child care rose by $7, group care by $2.50 and family-care by $5. She said DPHHS produces a market-rate analysis every five years and that a new 2025 update was expected to allow the LFD to refresh the dashboard.

Committee members pressed staff on data completeness and methodology. Van Brown said local government figures come from jurisdictions’ accounting systems (the trial balance) and that the LFD has collected nearly all counties’ data; some small cities, particularly those under 1,000 population, remain missing. He noted the city of Helena was still outstanding at the time of the briefing. Van Brown cautioned that some datasets are full administrative extracts (not samples) while others are limited by nonresponse or disclosure rules. "If you are missing Missoula County, you have to make that caveat," he said when describing aggregate tax totals.

Senators also raised concerns about unreported or informal child-care providers and sampling limits. Van Brown said the cost-of-living childcare numbers rely on DPHHS facility surveys and that the LFD has no separate estimate for informal or unregistered caregivers. He said small-cell suppression (grouping data when there are fewer than the disclosure threshold) and survey nonresponse can limit granularity for some metrics.

On practical matters, Van Brown provided contact information for follow-up and technical assistance: he said LFD staff are on the first floor, East Wing of the Capitol and gave his office number as 444-4461. Committee staff also announced two related events: a Department of Defense introduction from the 340th Missile Wing at 9:30 a.m. in Room 172 and a liquor warehouse tour at about 10 a.m. later in the week; senators who planned to attend were asked to confirm with committee staff.

No formal committee votes or motions were taken during the presentation; the session consisted of demonstration, questions and scheduling. Van Brown said the dashboards are modular and that LFD will refine them based on user feedback and corrections from data providers. He also agreed to follow up on a question about whether childcare providers pay a registration fee, saying that would require confirmation from DPHHS.

The committee was the first Senate panel to receive the full dashboard walkthrough after the LFD presented similar tools to most House committees, Van Brown said. Committee members were encouraged to test the online tools and report anomalies — for example, Van Brown said a legislator’s review had prompted staff to adopt updated HUD fair-market rent figures for Bozeman when those values changed.

The presentation closed with instructions for senators who want in-person help from LFD analysts and reminders about the Thursday events; the committee then continued to its remaining business.