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F I S C A L I M P A C T R E P O R T

SPONSOR Sanchez, M

ORIGINAL DATE

LAST UPDATED

1/27/07

1/31/07 HB

SHORT TITLE

Personnel Board Telephone Staff

SB 308

ANALYST Moser

APPROPRIATION (dollars in thousands)

Appropriation

Recurring

or Non-Rec

Fund

Affected

FY07

FY08

NFI

(Parenthesis ( ) Indicate Expenditure Decreases)

SOURCES OF INFORMATION

LFC Files

Responses Received From

State Personnel Office (SPO)

NM Department of Corrections (DOC)

NM Public Education Department (PED)

SUMMARY

Synopsis of Bill

Senate Bill 308 proposes to amend the Personnel Act requiring the Personnel Board to

promulgate rules requiring state agencies to establish an accountability policy that requires each

agency to staff customer service and other citizen information lines sufficiently to ensure

telephones are always answered promptly and with courtesy during business hours

FISCAL IMPLICATIONS

There is no direct fiscal impact. Agencies are budgeted to meet these needs.

SIGNIFICANT ISSUES

The Personnel Act establishes a system of personnel administration based solely on qualification

and ability to ensure that a merit system is in place for state classified employees. The SPO

indicates that this proposed legislation expands the scope of the Personnel Act by addressing

customer service broadly and may not be the most appropriate section of state statute for

Senate Bill 308 – Page

2

inserting this new language. Customer service is currently being addressed by agencies through

existing agency specific code of conduct policies, customer service policies and with individual

employees through performance appraisals.

The PED indicates that it is not unusual for local, state and federal governmental agencies to set

telephone customer service standards and values in order to ensure consistent responsiveness and

accountability to their constituencies. According to a federal study entitled “Putting Customers

First—Serving the American Public: Best Practices in Telephone Service" that was conducted in

1995 available at http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/library/papers/benchmrk/phone.html on a

single day in January 1995, Americans placed 1.7 million calls to the Social Security

Administration. In 1994, the Internal Revenue Service received 68.7 million calls and the

Immigration and Naturalization Service received some 12 million calls for services and

information. Ten years later, one would expect those statistics to be even higher.

Although telephone call statistics for a state agency are presumably far less, this study reinforces

that citizens speak to their government. Telephone service also appears to be a cost-effective way

to deliver services to people. This study reports that one estimate is that it costs more than three

times as much to respond to an inquiry by letter than it does to respond to the same question over

the telephone. It concludes that as agencies face severe budget constraints, cost is becoming an

even greater factor and many agencies may determine, just as many businesses have, that

telephone service is the most cost effective way of interacting with their customers.

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