Legislative Update #7
WOW! That was a wild 2 weeks in the Unicameral. The first2 weeks of all-day debate were so slow and grinding that they went by in a flash. So many things were happening at once for me, that each day before seemed like a week ago. The pace of play is very unpredictable. Debate goes along just fine, and then a random bill might take half a day. Then, what we think might take several hours, slips away after 30minutes and we're all scrambling to get in the game sooner than we thought. Sure makes day/week planning pretty difficult!
So, what's happening? The budget is still $140M short for the next 15 months, so Senators and the Governor are trying 'revenue generation' as a tactic to close the gap. So far, they haven't been too successful. A bill to raise tobacco taxes and raise an estimated $50M took a day and a half of debate to ultimately fail by 2 votes. (I was on the winning side of this one.) Another bill containing multiple smaller revenue pieces from the Revenue Committee made it to the second round with less fanfare (I was on the losing end of this one).
The budget bills consumed most of this week. They started debating them on Monday afternoon, and the last one advanced to Select File Thursday morning still containing that $140M gap. Several attempts were made at increasing/returning funding for initiatives and to reduce some others, most of them being unsuccessful on round one. Some of them will be back on round two Select File, and depending on what happens between now and then, some might be successful. I can tell you that the Governor’s team and a few Senators will be having lots of conversations this weekend and doing some old-fashioned horse trading to get the budget gap filled and accomplish several goals on every side of every aisle. Anyone who has a vote card for about 12 different bills just as well throw them away, because none of them will look the same in a few days.
Up next week are more attempts to raise some revenue, followed by the second round of budget debate. Also, we start late-night debates next Wednesday…BOO HISS…so it will officially become Silly Season. And it’s a rare year when the Legislature’s St. Patrick’s Day party will actually be held on March 17th…so we get one last piece of fun before we begin evening debates 😊.