An Assessment of Factors Important to Legislators in Budget Decisions; How Much Impact Can Agencies Have?

Budget deliberations represent a dynamic interaction between many actors, including agency officials and legislators. There may be opposing perceptions about the relative importance of various types of information and there are likely many priority items that legislators base their decisions on, which budget officials may, or may not, have the ability to impact or control. Through a survey of state legislators, we first determined the relative importance of 27 items in approving budget proposals. Agency officials were surveyed and asked to rate the degree that they can impact each of the 27 items. We considered how the difference in party affiliation of legislators relates to the type of information they view as important in budget decisions. We then compared the importance ratings of legislators with the impact ratings of budget officials, which led to some recommendations aimed at agency officials.