AWSP Blog

The first deadlines have come and gone. Action now shifts to the floor of each chamber. A bill needs to be brought out of the Rules Committee, put on the floor calendar, and then brought before the body for debate and vote. This process has to have all bills out of their chambers by February 19th. Then the process starts over with committee hearings and votes on opposite house bills – however at a much more rapid pace. Currently, there are over 300 bills sitting in the House Rules Committee and around 343 bills before Senate Rules. The challenge now becomes how to get one’s bill to rise above the herd and move to the floor? Admittedly, one hopes some bills don’t make the cut. Many won’t.

Legislative actions continue. As this is being written, the deadline for policy bills to leave committees has arrived. The next cut-off is February 11 for all bills that have a fiscal or monetary impact – either positive or negative. The Legislature’s fiscal committees, Senate Ways and Means and House Finance and Appropriations will be very busy – possibly working this weekend (House Appropriations) and late into the evenings trying to hear all of the bills dropped into them by the policy committees.

The big push has begun as bills will be moving out of their house of origin in order to clear the policy and fiscal deadlines and move toward adoption by the chambers. Some bills have yet, if ever, to be scheduled, and are not reported here yet, they may not be dead. Remember that bills dealing with dollars, (think COLA or SEBB), will stay ‘alive’ until SINE DIE as they fall into the ‘necessary to implement the budget’ category. These have been mentioned in previous reports. All of that and a SEBB meeting update.

Since covering pension/retirement/health insurance issues on behalf of WASA and AWSP, there are a few important points we have learned. This is just a brief summary of selected retirement related topics. However, the importance of advance planning cannot be overstated. These are not issues to put off until the last month of either one’s impending retirement or approaching Medicare eligible age.

Hearings and any resulting actions moving bills out of committees have begun as both houses move toward the first cut-off date. This is only a summary of bills that have had some degree of action to date or have been recently introduced. Last week’s report covered all the bills that been introduced to date.