Section 2HHHH. There shall be established and set up on the books of the commonwealth a separate fund to be known as the Fingerprint–Based Background Check Trust Fund, which shall consist of all fees collected for the purposes enumerated in section 172O of chapter 6, sections 7 and 8 of chapter 15D, section 38R of chapter 71 and section 26A of chapter 119. Amounts credited to the fund shall be available, without further appropriation, to the executive office of public safety and security to carry out fingerprint-based state and national criminal background checks for the purposes of employment, professional licensure and other noncriminal justice purposes.

Terms Used In Massachusetts General Laws ch. 29 sec. 2HHHH

  • Appropriation: The provision of funds, through an annual appropriations act or a permanent law, for federal agencies to make payments out of the Treasury for specified purposes. The formal federal spending process consists of two sequential steps: authorization
  • Fiscal year: The fiscal year is the accounting period for the government. For the federal government, this begins on October 1 and ends on September 30. The fiscal year is designated by the calendar year in which it ends; for example, fiscal year 2006 begins on October 1, 2005 and ends on September 30, 2006.
  • Joint committee: Committees including membership from both houses of teh legislature. Joint committees are usually established with narrow jurisdictions and normally lack authority to report legislation.
  • Other entity: includes a domestic or foreign nonprofit corporation. See Massachusetts General Laws ch. 156D sec. 11.01

For the purpose of accommodating discrepancies between the receipt of revenue and related expenditures for implementing fingerprint-based checks of the state and national criminal history databases, as authorized in section 172O of chapter 6, said sections 7 and 8 of said chapter 15D, section 38R of chapter 71 and section 26A of chapter 119, the executive office of public safety and security may incur expenses and the comptroller may certify for payment amounts not to exceed the most recent revenue estimate; provided, however, that the fund shall be in balance by the end of the fiscal year. Revenues deposited in the fund that are unexpended at the end of a fiscal year shall not revert to the General Fund and shall be available for expenditure in the following fiscal year.

The fund shall be utilized for the sole purpose of carrying out state and national criminal background checks and verifications, including, but not limited to, obtaining or contracting to obtain fingerprints and fees from subjects, making payments charged by the Federal Bureau of Investigation or other entity, staffing the department of state police and the department of criminal justice information services to submit fingerprints and to obtain, verify and disseminate the results of background checks and maintaining the public safety information systems used to obtain access to fingerprint-based state and national criminal background information.

The department of criminal justice information services shall report annually to the house and senate committees on ways and means and the joint committee on education on the cost of operating and administering the fingerprint-based criminal background check system, including the amount and purpose of expenditures from the fund.

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