LEGISLATIVE BUDGET BOARD

Austin, Texas

FISCAL NOTE, 83RD LEGISLATIVE REGULAR SESSION

March 30, 2013

TO:	Honorable Jimmie Don Aycock, Chair, House Committee on Public Education
FROM:	Ursula Parks, Director, Legislative Budget Board
IN RE:	HB284 by Zedler (Relating to the availability of certain school district financial information on districts' Internet websites.), As Introduced

No significant fiscal implication to the State is anticipated.

The bill would amend the Education Code to require the posting of certain school district financial information on districts’ Internet websites including an electronic checking account transaction register, credit card transactions, information about employee compensation, and information about the district’s fund balance. These postings would be required for school districts with a student enrollment of 500 or more. The bill would also require specific information and implementation timeframes for each of the financial requirements. The Texas Education Agency indicates the duties and responsibilities associated with implementing the provisions of the bill could be accomplished by using existing resources. The bill would take effect immediately upon approval by the appropriate voting majorities, or on September 1, 2013.

Local Government Impact

School districts with student enrollments of 500 or more would experience costs related to the required postings. Costs could be incurred to establish a website if the school district currently does not maintain a website. Costs could also be incurred to create and maintain checking account transactions in a searchable spreadsheet format that could be downloaded from the website. School districts would incur costs to prepare and post credit card transactions and to develop the reports of employee compensation and update those reports annually. In addition, school districts would incur costs related to posting and updating fund balance statements.

Administrative costs for school districts would vary depending on whether and how many additional staff members had to be employed and whether the district was required to invest in additional hardware, software, and Internet bandwidth to handle the additional capacity for posting very large datasets. It is estimated that larger school districts would be required to hire between one and three new additional staff members to organize and post all the required financial data.

Source Agencies:

701 Central Education Agency

LBB Staff:

UP, JBi, JSc, AW