AWSP Blog

The good news is that K–12 got all the dollars they needed and more. The bad news is that April Fool’s Day ran long. Most of the policy and fiscal bills are moving to their respective Rules Committees where they may then move to floor action. Lurking in the background are the two proposed budgets with the fiscal leaders of both houses beginning to discuss compromise and agreement. Floor action, opposite house reaction, and debates are occurring to move bills out of the opposite house by their April 11th deadline. Budget negotiations are going on behind closed doors as adjournment will occur on April 25th.

Committees continued meeting primarily to move bills out of their respective committees while concurrently, the majority party in each house released their budget proposals as the week ended. The policy cut-off for bills was Friday, March 26th; the fiscal one will be the following Friday, April 2nd. Bills are stacking up for scheduling on floor calendars. Further activities will begin to focus on floor action, negotiations and compromises aiming toward an attempt to end on time on April 25th.

Public hearing and Executive Sessions continued this week as legislators dealt with various bills received from the opposite chamber. In fact, it appears that committees have sped up bills passing from Executive Sessions. This pattern will continue until the deadlines come and go for bills to have cleared policy (March 26th) and fiscal (April 2nd) committees.

This second half of session is just a repeat of the first half except each house is hearing the bills that passed the opposing chamber. And the process starts with committee hearings and as Milton Berle once said, “a committee is a group that keeps minutes and loses hours.”

Debates and voting also known as ‘Floor’ action have continued throughout the week. The pattern seems to be that for every three or four bills a chamber passes with bipartisan support, they then debate for hours on a controversial bill which ends with a partisan vote (28/21 or 57/41).