Title: An act relating to eliminating selected detail from the governor's budget submittal.

Brief Description: Eliminating selected detail from the governor's budget submittal.

Brief Summary of Bill

• The Governor's budget documents submitted to the Legislature no longer need to classify proposed expenditures at the activity level.

Majority Report: Do pass. Signed by 27 members: Representatives Sommers, Chair; Fromhold, Vice Chair; Sehlin, Ranking Minority Member; Pearson, Assistant Ranking Minority Member; Alexander, Anderson, Boldt, Buck, Chandler, Clements, Cody, Conway, Cox, Dunshee, Grant, Hunter, Kagi, Kenney, Kessler, Linville, McDonald, McIntire, Miloscia, Ruderman, Schual-Berke, Sump and Talcott.

The Budget and Accounting Act (B&AA) establishes various requirements for the budget documents and information that the Governor must submit to the Legislature before each regular session. The required documents and information include the Governor's budget message, which explains the budget and outlines proposed fiscal policies for the period covered by the budget; the budget bill; estimated revenues classified by fund and source for the past, current, and next fiscal period; undesignated fund balance or deficit, by fund; and a tablulation of expenditures by fund, function, activity, and agency.

In 2002, the requirement that proposed expenditures be classified at the activity level was suspended for documents to be submitted for the 2003-05 fiscal biennium. As a result of the 2002 change, the Governor's budget documents for the 2003-05 biennial and the 2004 supplemental budgets did not include activity-level expenditure tabulation. "Activity" is not defined in law, but in practice the documents have included program-level detail.

The requirements for the Governor's budget documents are revised. Proposed Expenditures no longer need to be classified at the activity level.

Effective Date: The bill takes effect 90 days after adjournment of session in which bill is passed.

Testimony For: This bill makes permanent the current practice, which was previously authorized in the budget bill. It will eliminate confusing terminology, but it won't affect the activity-level information used in the priorities of government analysis. It won't affect function-level reporting or other ways in which budget information is broken out.