Senate committee reviews H.67 pilot to centralize legislative accountability; $300,000 appropriation discussed

The Senate Committee on Government Operations on April 8 reviewed H.67, a four-page bill that would create a two-year pilot “government accountability project” to examine how evidence informs policy and whether laws are implemented as intended. The bill charges the Joint Fiscal Office (JFO) to select projects in consultation with legislative leaders and refer them to the Joint Fiscal Committee (JFC), and it authorizes either contracting with a consultant or creating a limited-service exempt position to carry out the work.

Representative Shay Waters Evans, who sponsored the measure, said the idea is to start small rather than re-create the broader multi-branch Government Accountability Committee that was discussed in previous years. “Instead of forming a whole new government accountability committee, we’re just asking the Joint Fiscal Committee to do that work,” Waters Evans said, describing the pilot as a pragmatic, manageable step that could produce repeatable evaluation tools.

Legislative counsel Tim Devlin read the bill’s…