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By Paul Emerson
TAC Legislative Staff
As the 81st Legislative Session quickly approaches, the County Information Project (CIP) is requesting all 254 counties to participate in this year’s County Expenditure Survey for 2009. During the month of October 2008, surveys were mailed to each county auditor’s office and also to counties with only a treasurer’s office. Collecting this information will be extremely valuable in identifying major cost drivers that have a significant fiscal impact on counties especially now that the nation is facing economic uncertainties.
The 2009 survey is only seven pages long (including the three pages of instructions) which makes it shorter than previous surveys. The number of questions has been reduced from 38 to 22, which will hopefully increase our response rate. In the past, TAC has made the results of the surveys available to various legislative committees, and to individual members upon their request. The survey results are also used to respond to the Legislative Budget Board (LLB) and the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts (CPA) when estimating the fiscal impact on proposed legislation affecting county government. Data collected from previous surveys are included in the County Expenditure Survey for 2009.
A blank copy of the survey is available on TAC’s website.
In order to have the survey data available for this coming session, all surveys must be completed and returned to TAC by Monday, December 8, 2008.
For further information about this survey, please contact Paul Emerson at Paule@county.org or at 800-456-5974.
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