Headed deep into Overtime
Monday, May 2nd will be the 113th day of the 100-day scheduled session. Legislators are working now without per diems, clerks, and most of the legislative pages are done for the year. The cafeteria is closed for the year, too, so if you plan to head to the Capitol to advocate for your issues, be sure to bring a lunch (and call ahead since legislators are only in the building when needed for floor and committee work).
While there hasn’t been a lot of legislative activity in the past couple weeks, we are checking in with a short status update. We hope the next one we send will be announcing the end of session. Yet, that remains out of reach, at the moment.
Recent Action
The Legislature took action this week to complete the Governor’s priorities on biofuels (HF 2128), workforce (SF 2383), and unemployment insurance (HF 2355). The biofuels bill required some changes to make the bill easier for fuel retailers to implement. On the workforce bill, they ended up removing two sections that caused some concerns from local governments (re: restrictions on zoning usage and setting state building codes). On the unemployment bill, both chambers agreed to reduce the unemployment benefits period from 26 to 16 weeks, but they did not attach a one week waiting period before the benefits kick in.
Logjam Persists
We still remain in limbo with regards to when they will finish the 2022 legislative session. As was the case in the last update, the single biggest holdup right now is the education bill that contains school vouchers – briefly: the Governor and the Senate want it, but the House does not have 51 votes to pass it (some say the number could be as low as 37).
Meanwhile, the House has passed ALL but one of the budget bills over to the Senate. The Senate is unlikely to take action on most of them until a decision is made on the school voucher bill. Once that happens, the budget bills will all likely come together pretty quickly and the session can be completed in a few days. There are a number of other policy bills still in play – bottle bill, tax bills, a pharmacy bill, etc., - but the budget is really the only thing remaining that MUST be passed by the Legislature prior to adjournment.
The question though … is when will that shutdown phase of the process start? Some legislators have indicated the Senate and the Governor may wait until after the June 7th primary election to complete the session.
In a nutshell, that is where we are at – waiting. If you need more specific information about any issues, feel free to reach out to us with your questions. Please be aware though that on 95+% of issues, the last legislative update is still current.
Publication Note – Reminder that this publication, which typically comes out every two weeks during session, will NOT be published two weeks from now IF it looks like the Legislature could adjourn in the near future. If that is the case, we will instead wait and publish AFTER they adjourn for the year. In the mean time though, keep an eye out for timely alerts requesting you to take action.
