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Legislative Fiscal Division demonstrates MARA data tools for legislators
Summary
The Legislative Fiscal Division showed interactive data dashboards—budget, revenue, local government and personnel models—developed under the MARA committee, saying the tools combine multiple sources, refresh live, and can be customized for county- or district-level queries.
The Legislative Fiscal Division on the House State Administration committee floor demonstrated a suite of online data tools developed through the MARA Committee, staff told legislators. Nick Van Brown, a fiscal-division analyst, said the dashboards include the budget tool, revenue forecasts and modular pages for state, local-government and education finances that combine multiple data sources and refresh online.
Van Brown said the tools are intended to give legislators and the public current, searchable views of revenue and spending and to let users drill down by agency, county or school district. He said the local-government dashboard shows general-ledger data for cities and counties, and enables comparisons of revenue sources and expenditures such as property taxes and public-safety costs.
Sam Schaeffer and Molly Delcurto of the division demonstrated focused tools: Schaeffer summarized pension analysis resources, including a recently funded consulting actuary and SJ4 stress-test reports for the Teacher and Public Employees’ retirement systems; Delcurto showed a 20-year personal-services model with filled vs. vacant position counts, overtime, turnover, and cost-per-position measures in real 2024 dollars.
Committee members asked whether the school-district view can display all districts within a county or be filtered by county. Van Brown said staff can add a county ‘‘slicer’’ so a legislator can show all districts inside a single county, with a caveat that some districts cross county lines and require nuance. Schaeffer noted that some dashboards include PII and would not be published publicly; staff can run deeper analyses on request.
Chair Julie Darling and other members praised the work as a model other states consult on, and the committee discussed a planned field trip to Lewis and Clark County Elections to see how county-level data appears in dashboards. Van Brown said staff are available to provide county-specific demonstrations and to tailor dashboard filters on request.
The presentation closed with offers from LFD staff to meet individually with legislators to answer detailed questions or to run scenario analyses.
