PLAISTOW — Rep. Norman Major, R-Plaistow, wants truth in budgeting. To get it, he is crafting a bill to make reporting state expenditures mandatory.
Major's bill would require state administrators to report monthly on what money was spent. The state now does that for revenues, but not expenditures.
"How can you consider a budget if you do not know what has been expended?" Major said. "We've been working with budgets, and we have not had that information available."
Legislative budget assistant Jeff Pattison said Major's point is well taken.
"That has been a long-existing weakness in the financial system in New Hampshire," Pattison said, "and a lot of people have wanted to be able to monitor expenditures on a tighter basis."
He said Gov. John Lynch also has asked for expenditure figures.
In general, expenditures are more difficult to track than revenues, because spending on some items come from a variety of sources.
"A dollar goes out and it could have a nickel of county money, a nickel of state money, a nickel of federal money and a nickel of fee-related money," Pattison said.
The good news is that the state's new $25 million accounting system will make it possible for the Office of Administrative Services to track expenditures, he said.
Still, Pattison said he doesn't know when expenditure tracking will be programmed. The state is apportioning limited resources to ironing out bugs in the new system.
Major said he hopes the bill, with bipartisan support, would apply pressure on the state to make the tracking happen.
He said he asked Pattison's office a few months ago to get him the expenditures from the fiscal year 2009 budget — from July 1, 2008, to June 30, 2009 — and they have not been able to get the figures.
If a department had $1 million appropriated, but only spent $800,000, that is key information to have, Major said. Spending patterns and trends are needed to establish budgets, he said.
Major, an advocate of cutting spending to balance budgets, said his bill is solely intended to improve the process.
"It's not to get anybody," he said. "We need this information to do our job right."
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