Communities want good governance that improves outcomes for residents, but how can policymakers know what legislation will make a difference?

Impact assessments answer this question by examining how potential or enacted policies may affect different populations. Typically conducted by nonpartisan legislative analysts, these assessments examine how policies might disproportionately affect different people, particularly those who historically have been harmed or disadvantaged by public policies.

As states prepare for legislative sessions, they can use impact assessments to strengthen policymaking even as federal approaches to equity evolve, key datasets face changes, and preparations for the upcoming 2030 Census raise questions about data completeness and representation.

Research and policy organizations can support this work by producing the methodologies and analyses that ground these assessments in evidence and quality data. They can also call on government leaders to formally adopt assessments as standard practice to promote transparency and accountability toward their communities.

Though many states have adopted impact assessments in recent decades, others, like Rhode Island, are still exploring how to initiate and use them. In this interview, Alan Krinsky, director of research and fiscal policy at the Rhode Island Economic Progress Institute (EPI), discusses EPI’s efforts to incorporate impact assessments into the state legislative process, implementation trade-offs and considerations, and use cases for policymakers, advocates, and community members.

1. At least 10 states use impact assessments to assess fairness in policy outcomes, but approaches vary by topic and depth. How do you think about these different state models?

We have long debated the different approaches of shorter statements on more pieces of legislation versus fewer but more in-depth assessments, along the lines of the Colorado demographic notes model. The importance of the former approach is that it can be made part of culture change in state government, with policymakers thinking about it as a regular part of the policymaking process. The disadvantage of this approach is that it can lack the data and analysis that might be more substantial and change minds on a proposal.

Would it be best to have brief equity impact assessments, light on data, that would help usher in a culture change as a first step? Such assessments could be attached to most pieces of legislation, perhaps as a one-page document with check-off boxes and some room for comment. There could even be the option to declare that proposed legislation has no equity implications. This would force legislators to at least acknowledge that they have considered equity dimensions to their proposals. A second option is to have fewer equity impact statements but make them more detailed, including with data, which could make greater differences for those few pieces of legislation to which they are attached.

2. Assessments are often conducted by nonpartisan legislative staff, but some states have nongovernmental partners, like university researchers, do the analysis. What considerations inform those approaches?

One issue or trade-off concerns who produces [the assessments]. Is it better to make assessments into a broadly available, democratic tool? Or, is it better to make them more specialized, and data-intensive, likely requiring cooperation from state agencies? 

We tend to think that the ideal would be state government embedding this in their work, in both the executive and legislative branches. However, we do not want to wait to get equity impact assessments into use until we can reach this ideal. The worry is that if they work really well without state government needing to invest in producing them, state policymakers will see no need or advantage to bring them in-house. 

Relying on expertise from local colleges and universities has the advantage of bringing subject-matter experts to the table. Yet the question of payment for services is real, and the differences in the academic and legislative calendars can pose obstacles for timeliness.

3. These analyses are typically designed to inform policy development and debate. How can policy and research organizations outside of the legislature use them?

Our main goal was for policymakers to use them, but we do also see a broader opportunity, both for other organizations and for the general public. Importantly, the latter includes helping state residents advocate for themselves and their communities in a more informed way. For other policy and research organizations, such assessments could help both in the development of policies and in advocacy for or against them. In both cases, while the existing legislative committee hearing process is open to anyone from the public to provide written or verbal testimony, having a common format to be appended to other written testimony could make testimony more impactful, especially as legislators serving on committees become familiar with the format and deem it credible. 

The scorecard our team has drafted [for the assessment legislation] includes a section on community engagement. For state residents who are not regularly engaged in lobbying, this section allows them to share their experience and perceptions of whether potentially impacted community members have been part of the policy development process. This has the potential to offer a dimension not available from data or statistical analyses.

4. Are there programs or efforts you’ve developed that would have benefited from the information captured in impact assessments?

Certainly, any of our advocacy campaigns would have benefitted from the availability of formal equity impact assessments. We have tried to do some linking of equity impact with public transit needs, but a more formal assessment or scorecard could improve this. We have done some exploration of data around use of public transit and percentages of households without access to cars, yet a more focused equity analysis could assemble such data in a more forceful way, perhaps also linking to something like distance of affordable housing to bus stops. 

Or, there are efforts to move the central bus station from one location to another, but we are unaware of any equity analysis of such proposals, in terms of who is likely to benefit the most and least from such a move, as well as how the same funds might be spent in a way that could increase equity further.

5. What kinds of analyses would you find most helpful to your work?

In terms of topics that might not always be identified as having equity dimensions, certainly environmental policy and programs are important. We sometimes use the example of the siting of an industrial production facility that might result in air or water pollution. While the approval for such a facility might normally be treated as an administrative matter or as something deserving of an environmental impact assessment, it’s not evident that such projects are evaluated in terms of proximity to communities based on racial and ethnic population data. The latter could be of great relevance in decisionmaking. 

As data centers (and tax incentives for them) become a more pressing issue, similar concerns can be raised. Or, perhaps something like the location of cryptocurrency kiosks in convenience stores might have equity dimensions. It would certainly be of value for policymakers and the public to apply equity evaluations to the distribution of economic development tax incentives and grants and loans. One legislator who initially proposed bans on gas-powered leaf blowers, which emit a lot of noise, acknowledged that such a ban could increase disparities by causing lawn business owners, possibly disproportionately Latino, to have to pay more to convert to other equipment.

6. What supports and capacity are needed to mainstream these assessments in policy processes?

We need more culture change and more convincing of policymakers, including or especially those in the executive branch, that equity assessments will help make them better at their jobs. Having standardized, shared tools across states would generate greater legitimacy all around. And making equity assessments of entire state budgets could prove critical in understanding the allocation of funds in terms of disparities and equity.