Committee converts House Bill 1329 to study amid implementation concerns
Summary
The Appropriations - Education and Environment Division voted to advance House Bill 1329 as a study after members and IT officials raised questions about costs, data standards and local district burdens for creating a statewide school spending transparency database.
The Appropriations - Education and Environment Division on Oct. 12 voted to advance House Bill 1329 as amended, converting the proposal for a statewide school spending transparency database into a study after lawmakers and IT advisers warned the project would be technically complex and costly.
Proponents said the bill would create a public database and website showing how school funds are spent. "They want to create a ... transparency database of information of, you know, how schools spend their money," a committee member said while describing the bill’s intent. The original bill requested $500,000 for initial database and website work.
Lawmakers and staff told the committee that the $500,000 in the bill would cover only initial web/database development and would not solve how districts would submit data or how the systems would interoperate. "You need to determine what data points you want to collect," one committee member said, warning that districts use many different financial systems and that protecting individual information would be an additional, substantial task. That speaker said discussions with the director of IT indicated full implementation would likely cost several million dollars across multiple bienniums.
Senator Shively moved an amendment (02004) to convert the bill into a formal study; the amendment was seconded and, after discussion, approved by the committee on a recorded vote (Aye 4, No 1). Later, the committee voted to give HB 1329 a "do pass as amended" recommendation. Chairman Sorvaugh cast a second for the motion to move the bill forward; the final committee tally on the due-pass motion was unanimous in favor.
Supporters of transparency said easier public access to spending information could help constituents understand how taxes are used, although several senators cautioned the study was necessary to avoid imposing large compliance costs on districts. "Transparency is always a good thing," one senator said, but added the committee needed to understand "what we're walking into" before allocating additional funds.
Committee discussion highlighted several implementation questions the study should address: which data points to collect; how to standardize and transmit data from roughly 168 unique school districts; how to protect personally identifiable information; whether the state should require districts to purchase or adapt software to transmit data; and an accurate multi-biennium cost estimate to achieve the bill’s stated goals.
The committee left the record open to obtain clearer cost estimates from the state's IT director and to refine what specific information lawmakers want published, then moved the bill forward as amended to a study so those implementation questions can be investigated.
For now, the amendment converting HB 1329 to a study and the committee's do-pass-as-amended recommendation are the formal outcomes recorded in committee minutes.
The bill’s sponsor, Senator Scheible, was informed the panel would carry the bill forward in amended form following the study and further negotiations in conference as needed.
