Legislative Fiscal Division demonstrates new interactive local government finance tool to House committee

The House Local Government Committee heard a demonstration Tuesday of a new online Local Government Dashboard from the Legislative Fiscal Division that compiles and standardizes local accounting data to show revenues, expenditures and comparisons across jurisdictions.

The tool, developed by the Legislative Fiscal Division with input from the Local Government Services Bureau, the Montana Association of Counties and the League of Cities and Towns, lets users examine fiscal-year data from 2018 through 2023, filter by county or city, and compare per-capita revenues and expenditures and inflation-adjusted dollar amounts. "We've utilized the BARS chart of accounts to put names behind the account numbers that come in on that accounting data," said Ethan Bergen, Legislative Fiscal Division, demonstrating how the dashboard maps numeric account codes to categories such as general property tax, intergovernmental revenue and public safety expenditures.

Why it matters: committee members said the dashboard could make it easier to answer routine policy questions about where revenue comes from and how spending has changed over time. Nick Van Brown of Legislative Fiscal told the committee the product was intended to help lawmakers and local officials spot trends such as shifts in property-tax reliance or increases in personal-services spending.

Key features shown during the presentation: - Fund coverage: the dashboard uses five fund groups selected with local partners — general fund, special revenue funds, capital projects, debt service and enterprise funds — and displays both revenue and expenditure breakouts by fund and by functional category (for example, public safety, public works, public health). - Time frame and inflation adjustment: fiscal-year 2018–2023 data were uploaded; the tool includes an option to inflate earlier years to 2023 dollars and staff said they were beginning to pursue FY2024 data. - Comparison tools: per-capita and population-band filters; a facility to pull out a single county or city and show all others side-by-side to identify outliers; and a population-size filter for counties and for cities (county bands: <5,000; 5–20k; 20–35k; 35–50k; 50k+; city bands: <1,000; 1k–5k; 5k–10k; 10k+). - Analytic lines: the dashboard can overlay trend lines such as percent of total revenues coming from general property taxes or percent of expenditures that are personal services.

Bergen and Van Brown described the data source as the BARS (Basic Accounting and Reporting System) chart of accounts used by the Local Government Services Bureau. Bergen said the team standardized accounts so a given numeric account can be read as, for example, "general property tax" or "debt service" across jurisdictions. The presenters said the dataset currently includes 56 counties and more than 100 cities and towns and that the six most-populous counties are flagged (Yellowstone, Flathead, Gallatin, Lewis and Clark, Missoula and Cascade).

Committee members asked practical questions about the dashboard legend and how to select categories; Bergen walked the committee through using the visual legend, clicking categories to highlight a series and using the per‑capita comparison tool to remove outliers for clearer comparison. Representative Elvrom asked where the legend was; Bergen pointed to the chart legend and the interactive highlight feature. Representative Gist asked whether the tool could track whether local governments levy their full mill levies; Bergen said that was not currently linked and would require coordination with property-tax experts in the office.

The presenters said the immediate plan is to onboard FY2024 data as it becomes available and to continue outreach to county treasurers and city finance officers. Committee members did not take formal action on the presentation; staff will continue to refine data and update the dashboard.

Ending: The committee paused for questions after the demonstration and thanked Legislative Fiscal staff for the demonstration. Staff said the dashboard is intended as an ongoing resource and that updated fiscal years will be added when local governments complete their reporting.