STATE LEGISLATURE ADJOURNS SINE DIE WITH NO FURTHER TRANSPORTATION-RELATED ACTION:
This year's legislative regular session finally came to a definitive closure earlier today. The Senate passed a motion to adjourn sine die back on May 8th but the House continued to pursue a future resumption of the session, and after a two-month hiatus, reconvened last week in the absence of the Senate. After passing a package of bills that had already cleared the Senate, another set of "non-controversial" bills that still needed further Senate votes, and two new bills that were directly COVID-19 related, the House also moved to adjourn sine die on Thursday with an expectation that the Senate would come back today and quickly address last week's House activity over no more than a two-day period.
Shortly after gaveling the Senate back into session today, a motion to adjourn immediately passed ending the Senate's work with no further action on bills. That effectively wrapped up the regular session other than transmitting the earlier Senate-passed bills that the House passed last week to the Governor. None of which are transportation-related.
It is highly anticipated that the Governor will call for at least one special session as early as late June which will likely be focused on COVID-19 response. Due to the very high uncertainty of future state revenues, it is doubtful that state lawmakers will take up any further legislation this year with significant budget ramifications unless COVID-19-related.
Attached is a final transportation bill matrix for the session and another with the transportation-related details of the enacted budget bills. You will find that not much has changed in the matrix since the abrupt suspension of the session a couple of months ago other than the finality of "failed to pass prior to adjournment" added to the end of most bill descriptions.
So, for now, we will wait for a special session call but will also follow the consideration of federal relief funding as well as revenue updates as general fund and transportation revenue forecasts are highly speculative right now to say the least.
