| TO: | Honorable Tommy Williams, Chair, Senate Committee on Finance |
| FROM: | Ursula Parks, Director, Legislative Budget Board |
| IN RE: | SB657 by Paxton (relating to procedural requirements for adopting and filing a school district budget.), Committee Report 1st House, Substituted |
The bill would require a school district budget filed with the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to contain a cover page that included the district property tax rates for the preceding and each district property tax rate that had been adopted or calculated for the current fiscal year, the total amount of bonds and other debt obligations owed at the time of the budget adoption, the computation of the instructional expenditure ratio and instructional employee ratio, and the record vote of each member of the board of trustees, by name, voting on the budget adoption and, if the vote had been taken, the setting of property tax rates for the current fiscal year. If the budget would raise more, less, or the same revenue from property taxes than the previous year, the cover page would have to include one of three statements to that effect.
The bill would require the school district to post a copy of the adopted budget, including the required cover page, on the district's website and maintain the information for three years.
The bill has no direct fiscal implications for the Foundation School Program (FSP) and no significant impact on the operations of the TEA. The TEA currently receives budget information electronically. The new required documents could be submitted as electronic documents to the TEA.
School districts would have administrative costs to prepare additional budget information for submission to the TEA and for posting on their Internet websites. Districts without a website would have to create one.
| Source Agencies: | 701 Central Education Agency
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| LBB Staff: | UP, KK, JSc, JBi
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