John --

Welcome to one of the longest legislative weeks of the year – it’s the FINAL week for bills to be heard in committees in their chamber of origin (except for Appropriations, which gets an extra week). This means LONG committee hearings, often into the night. And what’s this I hear about the budget moving next week?!

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Monday’s are normally my lightest day of the week at the capitol. I don’t have a committee hearing that day, and floor business is usually rather light. Tuesday ramps up, with our weekly caucus meeting in the morning and then Appropriations in the afternoon after floor (usually starts around 2:30pm).

I expect Appropriations and Finance (which meets Wednesday afternoon, and which I am the ranking member of) to both last into the evening. Each committee has over 15 bills on the docket, and while most aren’t too terribly controversial, both hearings should last several hours.

Good news on some of my bills – they’re moving! Two of my K-12 mental health bills, SB 1444 and SB 1445, unanimously passed the Senate Education committee last Tuesday. SB 1444 clarifies that mental health days can be used as excused absences in K-12 schools, and SB 1445 expands the requirement that suicide prevention training be taught in teacher training programs to also cover students studying to be school counselors or school social workers.

Both bills are slated to be heard in caucus later this morning, and both might receive a Senate floor vote later this week. Yay!

Another bill of mine that passed the Senate Higher Education committee last week, SB 1284, is slated to be heard in Senate Appropriations later this week. You might be wondering why it was assigned to TWO committees – because the bill has a dollar amount attached to it, it also has to clear the Appropriations committee. Once it clears Appropriations, it can then proceed to the floor for further action.

Happy to report that I have another K-12 bill receiving a hearing this afternoon in the Senate Education committee, and that’s SB 1446, which would require suicide prevention phone numbers or text services to be on the back of all student ID cards at the high school level and also at higher educational institutions. I worked hard on this to make sure that it was easy to implement for school districts and gave them flexibility about how they could display the information. Proud of our bipartisan support on this one, and hopeful we get a positive vote out of committee later today.

So with no committee hearings next week (other than Appropriations), what will we be doing all week, you ask? Well, it’s a lot of floor sessions, which means we are voting out most of the Senate bills and sending them to the House. The House is doing the same, voting their bills out and sending them to the Senate. Hence why it’s called “Crossover Week,” where bills cross over the courtyard to go to the opposite chamber.

But what about doing a budget next week, too? Could it happen?!

The budget is no small thing. It’s about $12 billion, give or take. My first three sessions, the budget wasn’t voted on until May (early May in 2017 and 2018, and late May in 2019). But alas, there is a lot of desire this year to do the budget EARLY, so we can adjourn the session early so everyone can go campaign and get away from the capitol.

But when you’re doing with ninety legislators, and the governor’s office, it’s never easy. Not to mention the fact that the governor’s office, Senate Republicans, House Republicans, and the Democratic caucus all released SEPARATE budget proposals, with a lot of substantive differences between each.

And from what I’m hearing, there is still a lot of friction and differences between the House and Senate majority caucus budgets. Disagreements over the size of tax cuts, funding for higher education, and the governor’s “Project Rocket” program that he announced in his State of the State address last month. The governor has several key proposals that he wants included in any budget that gets sent to his desk, and those will need to be listened to.

As you might have heard, the state has about a $1 billion surplus (again), which naturally means a lot of conversation about what that surplus should be used for. There is a lot of bipartisan support for investing in K-12 education and infrastructure projects. Our Appropriations hearing later this afternoon, for example, has about a half dozen bills relating to bridge and road repairs throughout the state.

And while the governor had some good investments in higher education in his budget proposal, those are meeting some opposition in the majority caucus, from what I’m hearing. There is a strong desire by some to cut taxes by several hundred million dollars, but those cuts are facing resistance from the more moderate members of the majority caucus.

So add all of this together, and you can see why putting together a $12 billion budget can be difficult. I’m hearing the House wants to run their budget next week, while the Senate isn’t ready yet. Could the House just go ahead and run their budget next week and tell the Senate to catch up? It could happen. And since we’re talking about the House, expect debates LONG into the night, with votes at 3am or so in the morning, if recent history is any indication.

To close this edition, we can end on a light hearted note. There were several tough days at the capitol last week, and on Wednesday, the Humane Society brought some puppies to the Senate for us to spend time with. I spent about fifteen minutes playing with some adorable puppies, including the one below. This little break was just what I needed after another long day at the capitol. :)



I hope you enjoyed this week’s update – stay tuned every Tuesday morning for more updates! And on Monday mornings, I post a weekly video on social media outlining the week ahead at the Senate.

Thank you for all your help and support – please consider a contribution today as we gear up for this fall <[link removed]>!

Sean


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