121st Maine Legislature
		Office of Fiscal and Program Review
		LD 1861
		An Act to Require School Administrative Units To Report Their Costs for Legal, Consulting and Other Professional Services to the Department of Education
		LR 2714(01)
		Fiscal Note for Original Bill
		Sponsor: Sen. Brennan of Cumberland
		Committee: Education and Cultural Affairs
		Fiscal Note Required: Yes
Fiscal Note
Current Cost - State Mandate
					Projections	Projections
			2003-04	2004-05	2005-06	2006-07
Net Cost (Savings)
	General Fund		$0	$10,000	$10,000	$0
Appropriations/Allocations
	General Fund		$0	$10,000	$10,000	$0
State Mandate
	New or Expanded Activity				Unit Affected	Costs
	Requiring local school units to provide additional information to the Department of Education associated with fees and expenses for legal, consulting and other professional services is a mandate.  The cost to the individual units can not be determined at this time.  However, it is not expected to be significant.				School	Insignificant
Fiscal Detail and Notes
	The Management Information Services program within the Department of Education will require a General Fund appropriation of $10,000 in fiscal year 2004-05 to contract with an outside agency to collect and analyze the required data.  The Department is in the process of developing a new data management system which will allow for the in-house collection of this data.  That system is not expected to be available to collect this data until the 2006-07 fiscal year.
	The cost of this mandate to local school units is insignifiant because the fiscal note assumes that the definition of "other professional services" in this legislation is the same as that defined in Object 330 of the "chart of accounts", which school administrative units currently utilize in their reports to the State.  If the intent of the legislation is to gather information based on a different definition of "other professional services", the cost to the local school units may be more significant.