As we approach the 2027 General Session and look ahead to the next chapter in Utah’s fiscal future, anyone fascinated by Utah’s budget performance should check out the 2026 Follow-Up Report. This report includes information on spending, progress, and performance for over 400 new funding items and almost $5.0 billion in spending from past sessions.
Keeping an Eye on Utah’s Health
Today, let’s explore the purpose of the Follow-Up Report with an analogy. Let’s say that you’re trying to improve your resting heart rate and your cholesterol levels. You’re tracking your heart rate with a smart watch and your cholesterol levels with regular blood tests at the doctor’s office. First, you change your diet, reviewing the “groceries” line item of your household budget. While you always have to spend money on groceries, you decide to reallocate some funds to options that will better help you achieve your goals—goodbye gummy bears, hello hummus! You’ve tracked your resting heart rate and cholesterol for a few months, and you’ve seen improvement, but not as much as you’d like.
Next, you decide to take accountability for your activity levels and their impact on your health. You know that running can improve both your resting heart rate and your cholesterol, so you invest in a one-time purchase of nice running shoes from a local shop. You believe that upgrading your shoes will encourage you to run more often on Utah’s beautiful mountain trails. In Utah budget terms, we’ll call this new shoe purchase a “funding item.”
After a few more months, it’s time to re-evaluate and decide whether your running shoe “funding item” was effective. In one scenario, you’ve started running twice as often since buying the shoes, and your measures have improved dramatically. Based on these outcomes, you decide to turn this one-time “funding item” for running shoes into a regular “line item” for running shoes, and you budget for a new pair of shoes every six months from now on.
However, in another scenario, you discover that the new shoes weren’t as effective as you hoped. You realize that you don’t enjoy running, you haven’t run much more than before, your joints hurt, and your heart health measures haven’t improved. Now it’s time to start the cycle again and try another strategy. Perhaps you’ll make another one-time investment into a six-month pass to the swimming pool, or you’ll decide not to spend extra money in this area and do some free cardio workouts at home instead.
Our goal in publishing the Funding Item Follow-Up Report is to serve as the fiscal equivalent to a smart watch or a cholesterol test—it’s designed to evaluate whether Utah’s ongoing and one-time investments in the state’s health and wellbeing have been effective, and to deliver that information to the Legislature so that they can make well-informed, strategic budget decisions for the future. While the state doesn’t have a resting heart rate or cholesterol, it does have other key indicators of health, such as graduation rates, employment rates, or even (public) health measures of wellbeing, all of which are impacted by the ways we choose to use public funds.
Moving Forward
We’re excited to announce that we’ve improved the dashboard interface to make it more user-friendly, and soon you’ll also be able to explore multiple years’ reports all in the same place. The report will soon be updated to include data on long-term line item measures as well.
Below, you can also refer to our FAQ for a refresher on some Follow-Up Report terms:
Which funding items have reporting requirements?
Agencies must report on spending and implementation for funding items that were appropriated for $50,000 or more in state funds (General Fund, Income Tax Fund, etc.). Agencies must report on performance for funding items that were appropriated for $500,000 or more in state funds.
How are performance measures created?
After each General Session, LFA, GOPB, and agencies work together to establish performance measures for funding items that were appropriated for $500,000 or more in state funds. Agencies develop an initial proposal for each funding item’s performance measure. GOPB and LFA then each give feedback, negotiate changes to the proposed measures and targets, and sign off on the final measure and target value. This process is completed in the spring, before the beginning of the new fiscal year.
When do agencies report results?
Agencies are required to report spending, implementation, and performance results for items funded in the last fiscal year by August 15 of the new fiscal year (45 days after the end of the last fiscal year). This report, including related recommendations from LFA, is then presented to the Executive Appropriations Committee in September of the new fiscal year. The State Board of Education and the Utah Board of Higher Education are required to report these results on or before November 1 of each calendar year.
How long does reporting last for a new funding item?
By default, agencies are required to report on new funding items for one fiscal year. If a new item is expected to take more than one year to complete, the Legislature may supersede the default one-year reporting schedule and establish a reporting schedule that involved multiple years of reporting or deferred reporting.
How does LFA develop its staff recommendations?
After agencies submit results on August 15 of each year, LFA reviews the data and evaluates each funding item’s progress based on its spending, implementation status, and performance measures. LFA develops initial staff recommendations for legislative action (such as requiring additional reporting, changing performance measures or targets, or reallocating appropriated funds). LFA then receives feedback on those proposals from the agencies and GOPB. Lastly, LFA finalizes its recommendations for legislative action and publishes those recommendations in this report.
We encourage you to check out this year’s report and explore how Utah’s recent investments are making a difference. You’ll also be able to see LFA’s recommendations for improving the uses, effectiveness, and measurement of these investments and outcomes. We hope that the Follow-Up Report will be a valuable part of keeping Utah fiscally healthy for many years to come!