BILL ANALYSIS

S.B. 1571

By: Campbell

State Affairs

Committee Report (Unamended)

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

It has been reported that the comptroller of public accounts has faced challenges in implementing requirements to contract with consultants to conduct payment recovery audits for certain state agencies due to the relatively small number of agencies subject to those requirements. S.B. 1571 seeks to address this issue by replacing certain requirements with authorizations, lowering the applicable threshold value of vendor expenditures, and making certain other revisions.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE IMPACT

It is the committee's opinion that this bill does not expressly create a criminal offense, increase the punishment for an existing criminal offense or category of offenses, or change the eligibility of a person for community supervision, parole, or mandatory supervision.

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.

ANALYSIS

S.B. 1571 amends the Government Code to replace the requirement for the comptroller of public accounts to contract with one or more consultants to conduct audits to recover overpayments made by state agencies to vendors with an authorization for the comptroller to contract with consultants for that purpose. The bill replaces the requirement for the comptroller to require that recovery audits be performed on the vendor payments made by certain state agencies with an authorization for the comptroller to require those audits and expands the state agencies subject to a recovery audit based on total agency expenditures during a state fiscal biennium by decreasing the applicable expenditures from an amount that exceeds $100 million to an amount that exceeds $50 million. The bill authorizes the comptroller to determine the frequency of such recovery audits. The bill revises certain deadlines related to the forwarding of reports relating to the recovery audits and the required contents of a biennial report to the legislature by the comptroller regarding those audits.

EFFECTIVE DATE

September 1, 2019.