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Final Rush for Policy Bills: What's Next?

By April 3, 2016 No Comments

This week is the second bill deadline at the Capitol. This is the final rush of policy bills and most individual finance bill hearings.

Committee agendas this week are packed with many bills scheduled for hearings. It’s possible that by the end of the week we’ll see House and Senate supplemental budget plans emerge, at least at the “10,000-foot” level.

Finance committee chairs are waiting for instructions from their respective leaders on what, if any, budget targets with which they’ll have to work. Some committees may not have new money to spend, but they will have permission to shuffle existing funds to fund new spending priorities that emerged this session.

The following week we’ll see the Finance and Budget Committees put together supplemental budget bills. They need to get their finance committee work done by the end of this week to move them toward the Senate Finance and House Ways & Means committees where they’re likely to be rolled together into one large omnibus supplemental budget bill. This is how the legislature typically deals with budget adjustments in a non-budget session.

The supplemental budget plans need to be finalized in Senate Finance and House Ways and Means by April 21.

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