It looks like there’s an effort underway at the Legislative Budget Board (LBB), the state’s chief budget advisory agency, to shine a little more light on the Texas state budget.
At yesterday’s House Appropriations Committee meeting, LBB Director John O’Brien testified that the agency will, in the future, offer up program-specific budget detail along with its legislative recommendations. The additional information, to be made available on their website, will help Members and the public get a better handle on how the state is spending money at the program level, a key piece of budget information currently missing from the conversation.
The new program-specific detail, according to O’Brien, will include: “additional detail on each program, its statutory cite (citation), and its Method of Finance by General Revenue, General Revenue-Dedicated, Federal Funds, (and) Other.” With this added detail, taxpayers and lawmakers will be better able to see where the money is being spent and, hopefully, be able to more easily conclude whether this spending is a priority or not.
Overall, this looks to be a win for taxpayers.
-James Quintero