AB 1593 adds Government Code section 11093.9 to require state agencies that impose monetary charges to publish annual reports of the revenue those charges generate. Agencies must organize revenue by the statutory or regulatory authority that authorizes the charge (including the receiving program or fund) and make the report downloadable in a machine‑readable format under standards set by the Department of Finance.
The measure pushes for fiscal transparency across licensing boards, regulatory programs, penalty regimes and other fee‑collecting activity, and creates a single, reusable data feed that budget analysts, auditors, watchdogs and regulated parties can use. It also creates an implementation task: agencies will need to map existing accounting and receipts systems to statutory authorities, meet DOF formatting standards, and sustain annual publication beginning January 1, 2028.
At a Glance
What It Does
It requires every state agency that levies fees, fines, penalties, licenses, assessments or similar payments to report the revenue those charges produce, organized by the legal authority and fund, and to publish that report in a machine‑readable, downloadable form.
Who It Affects
Executive-branch departments, boards, commissions, and other entities defined as 'state agency' under Section 11000 that collect regulatory fees or administrative charges; the Department of Finance, which writes the formatting standards; and downstream users such as legislative fiscal offices, auditors, researchers, and advocacy groups.
Why It Matters
The bill centralizes previously fragmented revenue information into standardized, reusable datasets, improving oversight of fee-funded programs and enabling comparisons across agencies — but it also forces agencies to reconcile accounting systems to statutory authorities and to bear the technical and staffing cost of publishing compliant data.
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What This Bill Actually Does
AB 1593 creates a narrow but consequential transparency requirement. It defines key terms — 'category' (the statute or regulation authorizing a charge and the destination program or fund), 'monetary charge' (fees, fines, penalties, assessments, licenses and similar payments), and 'state agency' (as already defined in Government Code section 11000).
Using those definitions, the bill directs any agency that imposes monetary charges to prepare an annual report of the revenue those charges generate, beginning January 1, 2028.
The reporting requirement is deliberately focused on revenue (receipts), not on expenditures, claims, or individual payer data. Agencies must organize reported totals by the authorizing statute or regulation and by the program or fund that receives the money.
The bill further requires publication in a machine‑readable, downloadable format and ties the technical format and publication standards to specifications the Department of Finance will establish.Operationally, agencies will need to map their fee schedules, fine codes and receipts to the underlying statutory/regulatory authorities and to the fund structure reflected in state accounting. The bill does not specify enforcement mechanisms, penalties, or penalties for noncompliance, nor does it mandate historical backfill of data before the first January 1, 2028 publication; those gaps leave discretion to agencies and dependence on DOF guidance.Finally, while the bill standardizes the data output, it leaves open several implementation details to the Department of Finance: the precise machine‑readable formats (for example, CSV or JSON), the data fields required (counts, timestamps, fiscal year alignment), and whether agencies must reconcile reported figures with State Controller or budget documents.
Those delegated standards will determine how comparable and useful the published datasets actually are to analysts and the public.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill adds Government Code section 11093.9 and requires state agencies to publish annual revenue reports for all 'monetary charges' starting January 1, 2028.
'Monetary charge' is defined broadly to include fees, fines, penalties, assessments, licenses and other payments imposed by statute or regulation.
'Category' requires agencies to tie revenue to the specific statutory or regulatory provision authorizing the charge and to identify the program or fund that receives the revenue.
Reports must be machine‑readable and downloadable, and must follow formatting and publication standards established by the Department of Finance.
AB 1593 does not create a penalty or enforcement mechanism in the statute, leaving compliance incentives to DOF standards, public scrutiny and existing oversight tools.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Definitions: 'category', 'monetary charge', and 'state agency'
Subdivision (a) establishes the vocabulary that drives the rest of the requirement. 'Category' ties revenue to the statutory/regulatory authority and the receiving program or fund, which directs agencies to map receipts to legal authorities rather than to internal line‑items. 'Monetary charge' is expansive and captures regulatory fees, penalties and licenses; that breadth ensures most revenue‑generating government charges are in scope. The cross‑reference to section 11000 imports the existing, broad statutory definition of 'state agency', so the rule will apply across many executive entities.
Annual reporting obligation and schedule
Subdivision (b) requires each covered agency to publish the revenue report on its internet website on or before January 1, 2028, and annually thereafter. Practically, agencies must assemble one report per year that aggregates receipts by the defined categories. The timing creates a clear deadline but does not specify whether reporting aligns with fiscal year, calendar year, or the agency's existing accounting cycles — an operational ambiguity agencies must resolve while preparing the first report.
Machine‑readable publication and DOF standards
Subdivision (c) mandates that reports be in a machine‑readable format and downloadable, and it delegates format and publication standards to the Department of Finance. The provision centralizes technical decision‑making: DOF will define the data schema, file formats, naming conventions and possibly the validation rules. One drafting wrinkle is the bill's reference both to publishing 'on its internet website' and to making the file available 'on the department’s internet website,' creating a question about whether publication is decentralized (each agency) or consolidated (a DOF portal).
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Explore Government in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Legislative fiscal and budget staff — standardized, machine‑readable revenue data will reduce time spent reconciling disparate agency reports and improve the ability to evaluate fee‑funded programs and hidden revenue streams.
- Transparency organizations, journalists, and researchers — the new datasets will enable analysis of cross‑subsidies, fee trends, and the scale of non‑budget general fund revenue across programs.
- Regulated entities and trade groups — public reporting allows businesses and licensees to benchmark fee levels and contest inconsistent or unusually high charges with empirical data.
Who Bears the Cost
- State agencies that collect fees, fines or licenses — they must map receipts to statutory authorities, adapt accounting systems, and staff or contract for data publication work, creating upfront and ongoing costs.
- The Department of Finance — DOF must draft, publish and maintain data standards, provide guidance, and likely respond to implementation questions, which consumes administrative resources.
- Small boards and commissions with limited IT budgets — these entities may face disproportionate compliance costs to create machine‑readable exports and host downloads or to integrate with a DOF portal.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The bill pits the public interest in standardized, machine‑readable transparency about fee‑funded state activity against the administrative burden and accuracy challenges of mapping diverse accounting systems to statutory authorities; greater transparency is valuable only if the data are accurate, consistently categorized and maintained — which requires resources many agencies do not currently budget for.
The bill delegates critical implementation choices to the Department of Finance while leaving several practical questions unresolved. The statute requires revenue reporting by 'category' but does not specify the granularity of those categories, whether multiple statutory authorities that fund a single program must be split, or how to treat fees that are pooled or transferred between funds.
Agencies will need to decide how to apportion receipts where legal authorizations and accounting practice diverge. Without uniform guidance at the outset, early publications risk inconsistent categorizations that could lead to misleading comparisons across agencies.
Another unresolved issue is the publication locus and reconciliation with existing fiscal reporting. The text alternates between requiring publication on each agency’s website and on 'the department’s internet website,' creating uncertainty about whether DOF will host a centralized repository.
The bill also omits enforcement mechanisms and does not require historical backfill, so the public value of the data will depend heavily on the scope and rigor of DOF standards and on agencies’ willingness and capacity to comply. Finally, although the requirement targets aggregate revenue (not individual payer records), agencies must still manage privacy and confidentiality risks when reporting narrow sets of receipts that could be identifiable in small programs.
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