Enrolled Bill Summary

Senate Bill 656 adds a provision to the Government Code requiring the designation of a state agency employee or officer as state demographer. The bill sets out eligibility requirements and imposes on the demographer the duty to disseminate demographic and socioeconomic data to the public, inform the legislature of the impact of demographic and socioeconomic changes on the demand for state services, evaluate data needs for monitoring such changes and assessing the effectiveness of state service delivery, and provide population projections or estimates on specified schedules to the state, counties, and municipalities. The agency that employs the state demographer is the coordinating agency for the State Data Center and certain U.S. Census Bureau programs.