Committee adopts electronic voting pilot for committee records; fiscal staff explains fiscal impact report process

The committee heard two procedural briefings: one on an electronic committee voting system and one on how Legislative Council tracks and publishes fiscal impacts for bills.

Cody Malloy, IT director for Legislative Council, described a new in‑committee electronic voting tool that mirrors chamber voting in the online portal and will let clerks finalize votes and generate standing committee reports immediately. Malloy said the technology is already in use in several committees and summarized the benefits: "it'll make that document available publicly on our website" and help clerks "streamline the process" and reduce manual data entry. He noted use of the system — whether members cast electronic votes from tablets or the clerk records verbal roll calls — is ultimately a decision for each committee chair; for the full committee the chair said he will continue to call the verbal vote while staff will record it electronically to produce immediate public records.

Separately, Keith Mantz of Legislative Council described the fiscal impact and fiscal note process. He explained staff request fiscal notes from agencies when a bill likely affects revenues or expenditures; agencies have five calendar days to return a full fiscal note (one calendar day for an amendment). Mantz said the fiscal impact report "is a summary of all the bills introduced deemed to have a fiscal impact on revenues or expenditures of $100,000 or more" and that the report is updated weekly to reflect new notes and status changes. The report excludes items already accounted for in the budget status report (bills given a due pass by appropriations divisions) and will be available each Wednesday with updates from the prior Monday.

Why it matters: the voting tool is intended to increase transparency and speed the availability of committee documents to the public. The fiscal impact report gives legislators and the public a regular snapshot of bills with material fiscal effects so appropriators can see aggregate exposure while building the budget.

Next steps: the clerk and IT staff will help committees adopt the electronic voting workflow; Legislative Council will continue producing the weekly fiscal impact report and the budget status reports that accompany appropriations work.