Effectiveness of Legislative Program Review

Although much has been written about how state legislative audit-evaluation studies should be and are conducted, little has been written about what the actual published reports contain, and why the findings and recommendations in the reports are used or ignored. The first section of the volume focuses on seventeen state legislative audit-evaluation agencies and their work. Included is a review of 288 reports published by the agencies that focuses on the topics covered, report formats, amount of staff effort, data gathering techniques, recommendations made, and written responses from executive branch officials.The second part of the book addresses the issue of impact and implementation - the "so what?" question. Staff members from audit-evaluation agencies in Hawaii, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, New York, South Carolina, and Tennessee each describe the conduct and impact of their "most implemented" and "least implemented" reports. The editor then reviews and summarizes the factors which promote or impede the utilization of report findings and recommendations. The attitude of executive branch officials, press coverage, nature of findings and recommendations, report timing, interest of the legislature, choice of the subjects reviewed, and legislator approval of the topics are judged to be the most important factors.