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Waiting Periods for Fiscal Bills

One way to increase accountability in government finance is to implement waiting periods for all bills with a fiscal impact.

Too often, lawmakers are asked to vote on important legislation – such as the budget – with little or no lead up time to review the final result of negotiations. Spending provisions may be slipped into the legislation at the end of deliberations. Votes are cast before the ink is dry or the copies have cooled off.

Several states have a “cool-off” period for budget votes, but this is a reasonable requirement that should be adopted by the federal governemnt, state governments and local governments for all bills with a fiscal impact.

Ideally, every such bill would have to be published for five days on the Internet, so that taxpayer watchdogs, fiscal analysts, journalists and average taxpayers have an opportunity to review the legislation. Every amendment should set back the clock to require another full five days.

Model Legislation

While the Center for Fiscal Accountability advocates for longer cool-off periods of five full business days, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has adopted state model legislation prohibiting hearings or votes on appropriation and/or revenue related bills until 72 hours after the bill’s public introduction. Votes on amendments to these bills also require a budget cool-off of 24 hours. The bill and respective amendments have to be made publicly available for those periods, which means posting the text on the legislature's website and its publication in a bill report, committee report, and/or conference report. This ALEC model bill can serve as a great starting point for drafting legislation.

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