Senate Revenue and Tax committee reviews DFA statutory reports; committee directs repeal of child-support report and scales ARPA reporting

The Senate Revenue and Tax Committee on Monday reviewed a long list of reports the Department of Finance and Administration (DFA) provides to the legislature and directed staff to prepare legislation to repeal one statutory report and to modify others.

Chair, Senate Revenue and Tax Committee, opened the session by describing a review of longstanding reports and the committee’s goal of improving efficiency: “If we all decide that we believe that report needs to be deleted, since these are in statute, we'll have to have our staff to prepare bills and we'll have to, run them through the process,” the chair said.

Why it matters: the committee reviewed which reports should remain mandatory, which can be provided without statutory requirement, and which may be discontinued. Several reports are tied to federal reporting requirements or longstanding fiscal oversight; others were created years ago and, committee members said, may no longer be needed in statute.

DFA staff presentation and key recommendations Paul Gehring, Department of Finance and Administration assistant revenue commissioner, said DFA reviewed the committee’s spreadsheet of reports and recommended which the agency believes should be retained and which could be discontinued. “DFA is always looking for areas to improve efficiency, and to allow this opportunity to balance the usefulness of the report against the resources that are required to generate the information,” Gehring said.

DFA recommended keeping the annual comprehensive financial report (ACFR) from the…