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JFAC staff roll out SharePoint, session‑record tools and 10‑week hearing schedule
Summary
Legislative staff demonstrated a new SharePoint naming convention and session‑record access for Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee members, and outlined a 10‑week hearing schedule with daily committee sessions and afternoon work‑group meetings.
Keith Bybee, manager of the Legislative Services Office (LSO) Budget and Policy Analysis Team, demonstrated JFAC’s new SharePoint repository and the legislature’s session‑record tools during the committee’s Jan. 8 orientation. Bybee showed members how to download the legislative budget book and agency slide decks, explained a new file‑naming convention, and reviewed the committee’s hearing schedule and daily workflow.
Bybee told members that files must be downloaded from SharePoint to allow annotation: “The only way to get it out of read only mode is to download it and to save it to your drive where you're going to keep it,” he said. He recommended that members create a dedicated JFAC folder on their machines and save agency presentations there for offline annotation.
On scheduling, Bybee walked the committee through a roughly 10‑week plan the staff developed: JFAC will meet each weekday morning, roughly 8:00–9:30 a.m., with standing work groups scheduled to convene each day beginning about 9:30 a.m. as the committee’s hearing block ends. The schedule sets program‑maintenance budget work to be considered in the second week, with the committee expected to set program‑maintenance budgets on Friday, Jan. 17. Agency presentations and enhancement hearings will follow in subsequent weeks, culminating in an anticipated completion of JFAC business around mid‑March, staff said.
Bybee also flagged a Wednesday morning set aside (Jan. 15) for replacement‑item reviews in agency budgets — an item he said the committee would not always have previously but that staff now treats as growth and therefore worthy of a hearing. He noted the legislative budget book is roughly an 850‑page document and that printed copies remain available on request, but that SharePoint and iPad/Surface devices will allow members to annotate PDFs electronically.
Members asked for individual assistance with setting up SharePoint on personal devices; staff said they would provide one‑on‑one support. Bybee introduced the analysts and operations staff who will support members in hearings and work groups, and he urged members to contact their assigned analyst early to prepare questions and information requests in advance of formal hearings.
