Bill Filing: Time to get Serious about Strategic Fiscal Reviews

In August Speaker Straus called for Strategic Fiscal Review  (SFR) that consists of:

• fundamental questions about the services provided by agencies
• agency use of state funds
• the extent to which the agency could carry out their missions with fewer employees and resources.

Fall 2014, House Appropriations focused its SFR on these agencies, with the LBB being the information gatherer:

• Trusteed Programs within the Office of the Governor
• Department of Information Resources
• General Revenue-funded programs at the Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services
• Higher Education Coordinating Board
• System Offices of General Academic Institutions
• Available University Fund
• Texas State Law Library
• Juvenile Justice Department
• Department of Public Safety
• Department of Transportation
• Public Utility Commission   Speaker Straus August 12, 2014 Press Release 

State Representative John Otto filed HB 5 which codifies SFRs. It will require biennial written reports of selected agencies that include:

• a description of the discrete activities the state  agency is charged with conducting or performing together with:
  •  a justification
  • an evaluation of the effectiveness and efficiency of the state agency’s policies, management, fiscal affairs, and operations in relation to each activity;including:
    •  a quantitative estimate of reasonable adverse effects if the activity ceased
    • an itemized account of expenditures required to maintain the activity at the minimum level of service 
    • an itemized account of expenditures required to maintain the activity at the current level 
    • a ranking of activities by relative importance of each  activity to the overall goals and purposes of the state agency at current service or performance levels;
• recommendations to the legislature regarding whether the legislature should continue funding each activity & at what level HB 5