Honorable Larry Taylor, Chair, Senate Committee on Education
FROM:
Ursula Parks, Director, Legislative Budget Board
IN RE:
SB1230 by Creighton (Relating to the availability of certain school district financial information on certain districts' Internet websites.), As Introduced
No fiscal implication to the State is anticipated.
The bill would require the 50 school districts with the highest enrollments, as determined by the Commissioner of Education, to maintain certain financial information on their Internet websites, including the checking account transaction register, monthly credit card transactions, obligated and unobligated fund balances, and total amount budgeted for compensation for certain categories of employees. For each category, the district would also have to post the number of FTEs and the average salary.
The bill would provide that a school district should maintain a minimum fund balance equivalent to at least two months of the district's operating budget
Local Government Impact
Based on the analysis of the Texas Education Agency, the largest 10 school districts would require three new staff members and the other 40 school districts would be required to hire between one and three additional staff members to organize and report all of the required accounting transaction data. The fifty largest school districts would also be required to invest in additional software, database capacity, and bandwidth to handle the additional load from providing large datasets.
Administrative costs for the 50 largest school districts would vary depending on how many additional staff members had to be employed and whether the district was required to invest in additional hardware, software, and Internet bandwidth.