BILL ANALYSIS |
C.S.H.B. 284 |
By: Zedler |
Public Education |
Committee Report (Substituted) |
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
According to interested parties, there has been criticism of the financial practices of certain public school districts, particularly with regard to financial transparency. These parties assert that, despite the state's investment of many billions of dollars in public education funding, transparent district expenditure information is not uniformly available for the public to properly gauge the state's investment. C.S.H.B. 284 seeks to address this criticism by requiring a school district's checking account register to be maintained online in a searchable portable document format and to be made available in such format to any interested person who requests the data under the state's public information law.
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RULEMAKING AUTHORITY
It is the committee's opinion that this bill does not expressly grant any additional rulemaking authority to a state officer, department, agency, or institution.
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ANALYSIS
C.S.H.B. 284 amends the Education Code to require a school district, other than a district with a student enrollment of fewer than 500 students in kindergarten through grade 12, to maintain and to post on the district's Internet website, the transaction register for the district's checking account in a searchable portable document format (PDF) in which the transaction register is readily available for online viewing and downloading by any interested person and is able to be shared by the district, as required under the bill's provisions, with any person who requests the data under the state's public information law. The bill requires a school district to post at all times on the home page of the district's Internet website a prominent and direct link to the webpage on that website that contains the electronic checking account transaction for such viewing and downloading.
C.S.H.B. 284 requires, with certain exceptions, the electronic checking account transaction register to include for each check written from the district checking account the transaction amount and the name of the payee. The bill prohibits a school district from including in such a transaction register a check issued to a district employee in payment of salary, wages, or an employment stipend or a workers' compensation income benefit, medical benefit, death benefit, or burial benefit that is issued by a school district operating as a self-insurer under statutory provisions relating to workers' compensation insurance coverage for employees of political subdivisions and exempts from the bill's provisions a checking account maintained by a school district or school campus solely for a student activity fund. The bill establishes a deadline for a school district to update the electronic checking account transaction register and a retention period for the maintenance of each transaction or listing in that transaction register on the district's website.
C.S.H.B. 284 adds a temporary provision, set to expire September 1, 2014, to require a school district's electronic checking account transaction register to contain the transaction amount and the name of the payee for each check dated on or after August 1, 2013, beginning September 1, 2013.
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EFFECTIVE DATE
On passage, or, if the bill does not receive the necessary vote, September 1, 2013.
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COMPARISON OF ORIGINAL AND SUBSTITUTE
While C.S.H.B. 284 may differ from the original in minor or nonsubstantive ways, the following comparison is organized and highlighted in a manner that indicates the substantial differences between the introduced and committee substitute versions of the bill.
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