Fiscal Notes for HB 444

Exempt Social Security benefits from the state income tax.

Listed above are links to the fiscal notes legislative staff issued for the bill or joint resolution you selected.

Unfortunately, the order is not always in ascending or descending order of the date the FN was issued.

Also legislative fiscal note links do not always fully describe what version of the bill is the subject of the note

But beginning in 2021, the PDF link is divided into three parts, seperated by a period, that indicates the version of the bill covered by the note.

Part 1: The last letter indicates the whether the measure began in the Senate or the House -- i.e. a SB, SJR, HB or HJR.

Part 2: Except for earlier years, the last letter indicates the version:

I: The introduced version
C: The committee approved verson
P: The perfected verson
S: For the Senate, this indicates a conference committee substitute that might or might not have cleared the legislature.
F, T or A: The Final version. For measures that cleared the legislature, T inicates what finally cleared the legislature TATFP for Truly Agreed To and Finally Passed or in older years just TAFP for Truly Agreed and Finally passed. The meaning of the other letters is a bit unclear.

Part 3: For most measures, this will be ORG indicating the original fiscal note for the version. In a few cases, this will be COR indicating it is a corrected version of the original version.

Also, in some cases it appears the Oversight Division does not prepare a new fiscal note if the there is no change in the prior FN.

MDN's list of fiscal notes links is based on what the House or Senate listed as FN links for bills that began in the chamber. Unfortunately, in the earlier years until at least 2004, the some of the legislative links do not exist or no longer work.

Also, for 2004 some House fiscal note links for a few bills no longer exist.

Years ago the Oversight Division had its own website with a conformity in fiscal note links, but that site no longer exists.

Background: Fiscal notes are estimates by staff of the legislature's Oversight Division about the potential financial costs or increases for state government and and agencies.

Legislative staff seek cost estimates from a variety of sources, the most important being the agencies directly affected by the legislative measure.

There is a near army staff for various executive-branch agencies who provide detailed financial estimates and descriptions of legislative measures that would affect their agencies.

In fact, the value of a fiscal note can go well beyond just a dollar figure. A fiscal note provides independent descriptions of how a measure would impact government agencies.

But the time pressures to deliver estimates for the large number of measures before the legislature limits the time staff have to determine a detailed estimate of a measure's cost. Often, as you'll find, these estimates often are very rough using words phrases like "could exceed," "$0 or Up to..." or just "unknown."

For most fiscal notes, the most significant figure is the estimated increase or loss in General Revenue collections. That money comes, primarily, from state taxes that the legislature is free to appropriate as it sees fit.

A fiscal note divides the estimates by fiscal years. A fiscal year begins July 1 and concludes June 30 the following year.

Usually, a fiscal note covers only the first three fiscal years. But some measures have a staged or delayed implementation, leading to a fiscal note concluding with the ultimate annual cost when fully implemented.

A legislative sponsor can appeal a fiscal note estimate, but that is not common.

or joint resolution you selected.

A new fiscal note is written as a legislative measure progresses through the legislative process.

Except for Senate measures in the early years of online sfiscal notes, the links are PDF files that can take a bit of time to load.

Click the help button above or click Fiscal Notes Help from the menu drop-down on the drop-down menu of the top bar for detailed information about fiscal notes.

Legislative Fiscal Notes

Fiscal notes are written by staff of the legislature's Oversight Division

A fiscal note is an estimate by the division's staff as on the financial impact to government about a measure -- either a positive revenue or negative revenue effect.

A fiscal note estimate can be based on information from one or more state agencies that would be affected by the bill or with financial information involving the bill.

Sometimes, Legislative Oversight will use financial information from outside, independent organizations such as academic research units.

Fiscal note estimates are broken down by the state's fiscal year (July 1 to June 30 in the next year).

Legislation, however, does not take effect until late August (unless the bill takes effect immediately upon the governor's approval) by the legsilature adopting an "emergency clause."

When citing fiscal note information in their stories, reporters usually refer to the "first full year of implementation." But that's not always easy to determine.

Some bills can have effective provisions that extend full implementation beyond the first full fiscal year. And, occasionally, bills have been written to delay the full implementation beyond the limited number of years covered by a fiscal note.

Not every bill will get a fiscal note. In more recent years, bills not assigned to committee until the final weeks of the legsilative session are unlikely to warrant staff efforts for researching the fiscal impact of a measure.

There can be multiple fiscal notes written for a bill as it progresses in the legislative process. For a bill that clears the legislature, the fiscal notes, in chronological order, may include:

The introduced version of the bill in the original chamber.
A committee subsitute.
Any floor substitutes (current rules allow floor substitutes only in the Senate.
The final version approved by the original chamber.
A committee subsitute in the second chamber.
Any floor substitutes in the second chamber.
The verson approved by the second chamber.
A conference committee substitute, if a conference committee adopted a substitute for the two chamber versions.
The final version passed by the legislature -- termed the "Truly Agreed and Finally Passed" version (or TAFP).

Note: After the 2019 legislative session, Legislative Oversight abandoned it's web site that had all the fiscal note versions written for a bill going back for decades.

Instead, now you have to go to the specific bill website of the chamber of introduction to get the full list of fiscal notes for a bill.

That's not a problem for Senate bills and joint resolutions, their fiscal note pages replicate original Oversight Division's pages for a bill, at least as this help is being written.

However, the list of fiscal notes for a House bill are not necessarily in chronological order. Even worse, House links do not provide a clear indication as to the status of the bill addressed by the fiscal note (introduction, committee substitute, etc.).

The last three characters of the main name of the link (before the tag .ORG) provide a clue:

#: This digit seems to indicate fiscal notes on the various versions of bills in a chamber (HBs/HJRs in the House and SBs/SJRs in the Senate). Latter numbers seem reflect the second chamber. If there is more than one digit, it may indicate a bill returning to the chamber with changes made in the second chamber.
N: This letter seems to indicate the initial version of a bill for a chamber. If so, 1N probably indicates the original orginal version for the bill introduced into the first chamber or the original version received by the second chamber
P: This refers to the perfected version of the bill, apparently.
T: This indicates the "Truly Agreed and Finally Passed" version of a bill -- the final version passed by the General Assembly and sent to the governor or placed on a statewide ballot.