The Fix is In!
The Senate this afternoon took up Sub for SB 61 the school finance fix bill that restores the missing $80 million that had been intended in SB 423.
The House drafted the bill in a special Appropriations Committee meeting on Friday night the debated it, advanced it, and passed it on final action on Saturday.
The Senate took up the matter after 2:00 today and with relatively little discussion or debate, passed the bill on emergency final action on a vote of 31 to 8 with one Senator passing. Click here to see how your Senator voted.
The bill now goes to the Governor and he has indicated that he will happily sign it, moving the decision on school finance adequacy to the Supreme Court. This action means what was intended in SB 423 is not actually what has been passed.
Senate Adopts a Budget; Negotiations Have Begun on Both Budget and Taxes
Also today the Senate adopted their budget in Sub for Sub HB 2359 on a vote of 28 to 12. This action puts two competing budgets into conference and the conference committee met this afternoon and evening to begin negotiations. This is an arduous process since the budgets are enormous and 14 pages of conflicting positions are being discussed. There will be a lot of back and forth offers until a comprehensive package of some House positions, some Senate positions, and some compromise positions are put into a conference committee report for consideration by both chambers.
At the same time, the tax conference committee is working out compromise positions on a number of bills. The big issue there will be what to do about Sub for HB 2228, the Senate’s massive tax cut package that, if passed, puts the whole budget being worked out by a different committee in jeopardy.
Negotiations on the Budget continue tomorrow at 10:00 am; tax negotiators meet again tomorrow beginning at 10:30. It will likely be a very long day!
