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Identifying Intergovernmental Mandates 1 (January 2005)

handle is hein.congrec/cbo8318 and id is 1 raw text is: A series of issue summaries from the Congressional Budget Office JANUARY 6, 2005 Identifying Intergovernmental Mandates The federal government sometimes requires state, local, and tribal governments to expend resources to achieve certain goals.1 In 1993, for example, the National Voter Registra- tion Act required states to simplify and expand the proce- dures for registering citizens to vote. Since that time, states have spent millions of dollars to comply with those requirements. The Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (UMRA) focuses attention on the costs of such federal mandates. In particular, UMRA was intended to promote informed deci- sions by the Congress about the appropriateness of federal mandates on other levels of government and about the de- sirability of providing financial assistance for the costs of intergovernmental mandates. Since UMRA took effect in 1996, the Congress has enacted few federal mandates on state and local govern- ments that impose significant costs, as defined by UMRA. Although the Congress has rarely used UMRA's explicit enforcement mechanism when considering bills, it has changed several pieces of legislation before enactment to either eliminate mandates or lower their costs. Concerns exist, however, about which bills are covered by UMRA and about how the law defines intergovernmental mandates. UMRAs application is limited in three ways: The law does not apply to certain broad policy areas, such as national security, constitutional rights (including voting rights), and parts of the Social Security program; New conditions on federal grant programs are not con- sidered mandates in most cases; and The law focuses on mandates with costs above a specified level, so IJMRA does not affect many preemptions of state and local authority. As a result, some federal requirements that state and local officials view as burdensome to their jurisdictions are not considered unfunded mandates under UMRA. Those requirements include, for example, provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the Help America Vote Act, and the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, as well as many changes to the Medicaid program. What Is an Intergovernmental Mandate? According to UMRA, an intergovernmental mandate can take several forms: An enforceable duty. Any provision in legislation, statute, or regulation that would compel or explicitly prohibit ac- tion on the part of state, local, or tribal governments is a mandate unless that duty is imposed as a condition for receiving federal aid or arises from participating in a vol- untary federal program. Certain changes in large entitlement programs. In the case of some large entitlement programs (those that provide $500 million or more annually to state, local, or tribal governments), a new condition on, or a reduction in, federal financial assistance can be a mandate-but only if states lack the flexibility to offset the new costs or the loss of federal funding with reductions elsewhere in the program. A reduction in federal funding for an existing mandate. A provision to reduce or eliminate the amount of federal funding authorized to cover the costs of an existing man- date would itself be considered a mandate under UMRA. What Does UMRA Require? Title I of UMRA aims to ensure that the Congress is informed about the potential direct costs of federal man- dates before enacting legislation. The law requires the Con- gressional Budget Office (CBO) to provide statements to Congressional authorizing committees about whether inter- governmental mandates contained in reported bills would impose costs on state, local, or tribal governments. If the es- timated direct costs of all mandates in a bill are above a spec- ified threshold in any of the first five fiscal years after the manates wouCIII ltke -effectCCO mustrovd netmt

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