Fiscal Highlights - June 2013

The Legislature has a new fiscal note system that it will use in the next general session. There were some agencies that used a version of it in the last session. Because of them, we know that the program works, and from their suggestions, the program has some significant improvements.

In the old system, agencies told us how a bill would affect them (and others) by filling out a form and e-mailing it to the Legislative Fiscal Analyst.  In the new system, agencies log on to a web site (maintained by UtahInteractive) and answer similar questions. The questions are in a smart form, so that the next screen depends on the answer provided in the last question. We hope that the smart form will speed up the process. All answers will be stored on a server.

In the new system, each agency has a fiscal notes manager that determines who in that agency will have access to the system. Further, the manager decides which of four levels of access will be assigned to each employee. (Only two levels may submit a fiscal note and the lowest level is "read only.")

New System - Agency Benefits

1.     More than one person from the same agency can work on the same response at the same time, streamlining the response process.

2.     Users can collaborate better using the "working notes" section to document their input, sign off when completed, or ask questions of each other.

3.     Agencies get a dashboard that:

• Organizes the fiscal note requests.
• Has a search function.
• A timer.
• Has sorts for: bills in progress, agency completed responses, and bills by sponsor.
• Agencies may comment on a bill that is not assigned to them.
• It has an annotating process that documents every change in your response noting who, when, and what was changed.

New Fiscal Note Manual

The Legislative Fiscal Analyst just published the Fiscal Note Manual.  The goal is to concisely cover every aspect of Utah's fiscal note process.