State lawmakers make decisions about tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer money, but under a new rule from state auditors only a few dozen of the most powerful lawmakers will be able to request information about how exactly those decisions will affect the state’s finances.

The State Department of Audits and Accounts and the Office of Planning and Budget are responsible for producing what are known as fiscal notes. The analysis describe how much proposed legislation will cost, or how much a potential fee would bring in. For example, during a 2015 debate over a billion-dollar transportation bill that included new taxes, a fiscal note helped guide discussion in the Legislature.

The new rule says “any fiscal note requests made after the legislative session begins will need to come directly from the committee chair to which the bill is assigned.”

Committee chairs are mostly veteran lawmakers appointed by the leaders of the House and the Senate, and all but a few are Republican. While the new rule adheres to current law, it makes it more difficult for Democrats and low-ranking Republicans to get non-partisan information about the financial effect of legislation.

When the Legislature is not in session, any lawmaker can request a fiscal note. That essentially poses no barrier to lawmakers who want to figure out how much their bill will make for the state, or how much it will cost. But, it does little to allow lawmakers to request analysis of a bill proposed by another member. Besides a window between two legislative sessions, it gives Democrats and low-ranking Republicans little chance to request fiscal notes for bills they did not file.

The issue of fiscal notes has been caught in political debate for years. Georgia law says legislation that has “significant impact” on revenue or expenditures must have an accompanying fiscal note, however what qualifies as “significant impact” is subjective and often left to the party in power.

“Sometimes we request a fiscal note simply to see whether we want to make the argument that it should have had a fiscal note,” said Democratic Senate Minority Leader Steve Henson.

Republican Sen. Renee Unterman, the chair of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, has a different concern: that state agencies try to manipulate the information they give state auditors to affect the fate of legislation.

“This is what is so aggravating to me,” Unterman said. “If the agency likes [the bill] they’ll come back and say ‘It’s neutral. There’s no cost. You don’t need a fiscal note.’ But if they don’t like it they’ll say ‘You need to get a fiscal note.’”

“They can hyper-inflate the fiscal note and it gets to be very, very political,” she said.

Auditors say it’s their job to wade through the politics behind requests, but they admitted they can’t catch everything, especially amidst the legislative session when they’re pressed for time. They say they responded to 56 requests for fiscal notes in 2013, and 102 requests in 2016, but they did not explain the increase in requests.

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