The Legislature enacted a new rule for itself last week to illuminate the process of attaching price tags to bills, though the director of the office responsible for those price tags said everything his office does was already transparent.
The new rule, forwarded by the Joint Select Committee on Joint Rules and enacted by the Legislature Thursday, involves fiscal notes, which state the cost of implementing pieces of legislation. The notes, which are prepared by the Office of Fiscal and Program Review, are important because they are often a crucial factor in whether or not a bill succeeds.
Sen. Philip Bartlett, D-Gorham, who chaired the rules committee, said this rule was “the most significant” of four approved by the committee last week. The rules committee, which convenes at the beginning of each session to decide on new procedures, rejected seven other proposals.
The fiscal note rule gives legislative committees the right, with a majority vote, to summon a representative from the fiscal office to a work session to describe how a number on a fiscal note was tallied. This would require a review of the estimates, assumptions and data used to write the fiscal note.
Conversely, the rule requires each committee clerk to provide the fiscal office copies of all testimony and other materials received during public hearings, if the bill in question receives a favorable recommendation.
Bartlett said fiscal notes can sometimes be subject to as much debate as the bills themselves, particularly when one comes in higher than a legislator’s estimate. Sometimes, said Bartlett, there is suspicion among legislators that state departments inflate their cost estimates to make a bill more difficult to pass.
“There have been a lot of disputes in recent years, especially when the numbers you get don’t line up,” said Bartlett. “This makes sure everything happens in the light of day. It makes sure everyone knows what data was relied upon.”
Sen. John Nutting, D-Leeds, who sponsored the rule, said it will help the process.
“Most bills are pretty straight-forward, but sometimes people think the departments inflate the fiscal note to kill a bill on the Appropriations Committee table,” said Nutting. “It’s a major change because of the number of times legislators from both parties have kind of been surprised and shocked.”
Grant Pennoyer, director of the Office of Fiscal and Program Review, said his staff of four full-time and one part-time analyst will comply with the rule, though their workload has already been “tough.”
“The process has been transparent,” said Pennoyer. “We always would have provided that information if asked.”
The requirement that all public testimony be forwarded to his office creates a paper management challenge, said Pennoyer, but will help accommodate for the fact that there are not enough fiscal analysts to attend every hearing. Attending committee work sessions to explain a data trail might also prove challenging if the rule is exercised too often.
“The only thing that would concern me is that this promotes a whole lot more requests,” he said. “We could have some conflicting requests.”
This rule was enacted by the Legislature following unanimous positive recommendation from the rules committee.
The other three rules unanimously recommended by the rules committee were as follows:
– One rule stipulates that every Legislator agree with and sign the Legislative Code of Ethics, which was developed in the 100th Legislature. Legislators already take a verbal oath to uphold the state’s constitution. This rule was referred by the Committee on Legal and Veterans’ Affairs.
– Another rule requires that any legislative proposal that affects the Fund for a Healthy Maine be reviewed by the Committee on Health and Human Services, which in turn will present its findings to the Committee on Appropriations and Financial Affairs. The Fund for a Healthy Maine is an account that contains proceeds from class-action settlements against tobacco companies. This rule was adopted by the Legislature.
– A third new rule would allow a bill’s sponsor to kill the bill without a committee vote on it, providing the committee chairmen agree and no public hearing has been scheduled. Bartlett said this rule, which was enacted by the Legislature, will come into play when a Legislator wants to pull a bill for any of a variety of reasons.
Proposals not approved by the rules committee included measures that would have limited bill submissions and enabled legislators to witness the fiscal note process in person, among others.
(Statehouse News Service)
