Joint Fiscal Office walks Appropriations Committee through website, web report and document resources

Joint Fiscal Office staff briefed the House Appropriations Committee on Jan. 15 about navigating JFO public resources and where members can locate fiscal notes, web reports, past meeting materials and other committee resources.

Grady Nixon, joint fiscal staff editor and BAA coordinator, and Brady (Brady Nixon of the JFO) walked members through the site’s main sections, showing where to find fiscal notes (the office’s analysis of bill impacts), issue briefs, the fiscal facts compendium and the web report that tracks budget line items and differences between the governor’s recommendation and subsequent committee changes.

“Fiscal notes will always have a brief bill summary, sort of an executive summary,” Grady Nixon said, noting that fiscal notes also link to the bill versions they analyze. He recommended that members rely on the web report to follow the numeric changes through governor, house, senate and conference committee steps; the web report shows line-item changes and fund-source detail for each numbered section.

JFO staff showed committee members where to find conference budget highlights, contingency lists of one-time appropriations, the statement of legislative intent (a post-enactment chairs’ document clarifying ambiguous budget language), and archives going back to 2005. They noted a new front-page widget that tracks general-fund, education-fund and transportation-fund revenues and pointed members to the witness resources and budgets-by-department pages for testimony and agency presentation materials.

Staff also cautioned that the website search can be imprecise and suggested members browse by document type (fiscal notes, issue briefs, reports) or use the budgets-by-department and witness-resource pages to find agency presentations and handouts quickly. JFO staff said they will continue to support committee members with document requests and language drafting as the BAA process proceeds.