John --

We survived Crossover Week last week, and this week we start hearing House bills in committees. Meanwhile, there are still quite a few Senate bills we have to vote on before we get to House bills on the floor.

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Last week was LONG, and involved a lot of floor sessions to get Senate bills through the chamber and over to the House. The most controversial bill we dealt with was SB 1224, yet another school voucher expansion bill that I voted against. Unfortunately, it passed by the slimmest of margins, 16-14.

Some good news, however, on my bills moving through the process – SB 1446, which would require suicide prevention numbers on the back of student ID cards at the high school, university, and community college level, unanimously passed the Senate yesterday!

This is the THIRD bill of mine that has passed the Senate unanimously in the last couple of weeks. SB 1446 joins SB 1445, which would expand suicide prevention training requirements for students studying to be school counselors or school social workers, and SB 1444, which would clarify that mental health days count as excused absences for K-12 students.

SB 1444 unanimously passed the House Education committee yesterday as well, meaning it has already started its journey through the House!

And last but not least, my community college bill, SB 1284, is set to be voted on later this afternoon by the full Senate. This is considered a budget bill, which means if it passes the full Senate it will go into what’s called “The Box” where all appropriations bills go in order to be considered in the larger, $12 billion budget conversation.

I’m proud of the work we’ve done this session on all four bills, and appreciate all the support from my colleagues in both chambers on both sides of the aisle.

Speaking of the budget, what’s going on with that? Talk pre-session was that the legislature wanted to get the budget done during crossover week, which was…last week. I’m here to report that there is still no budget, and I don’t see one happening anytime soon.

It was reported last Friday that the Senate leadership and House leadership had agreed on a framework for a budget (whatever that means). No word if that includes the governor’s office, and last I heard is that rank and file members had not seen the budget details as of yesterday.

There are some big issues to sort out, although not as big as last session. Last session was unique because of two giant issues that had to get agreed to. The first was the governor’s desire to increase the size of our state rainy day fund to $1 billion, which required an investment of nearly $500 million. The second was the tax conformity changes that had to be made to tailor to the federal tax cut law that passed prior.

Those two issues dominated the budget conversation last year. Those issues are gone this year, and the big ideas this session are around further tax cuts and some of the governor’s pet initiatives that he outlined in his State of the State address back in January, including a veteran’s tax cut and his “Project Rocket” initiative for targeted funding in K-12 schools.

We are slated to have another nearly $1 billion surplus this year (out of a $12 billion budget), and thankfully, the budget plans I’ve seen pore a good chunk of that into K-12 education, especially the full restoration of our District Additional Assistance (DAA) formula. Another big chunk of that is going to infrastructure projects around the state, which I support as well. We’ve passed at least a dozen bills through the Appropriations committee in recent weeks around specific road, bridge, and other transportation projects throughout the state. All of these bills are slated to go into “The Box” that I mentioned earlier.

So why isn’t the budget moving soon? It’s largely infighting in the majority caucus. There are disagreements over the SIZE of the tax cuts, and which taxes should be targeted. There are disagreements about some of the investments in higher education. And there are finally disagreements about some pretty big pieces of legislation moving through the legislature this session, which is seeping its way into the budget talks.

And those are just the things I’m allowed to share with you! Suffice to say, I’ve been chuckling every time I hear someone say we will be wrapping up the budget this week. It’s not going to happen anytime soon.

Meanwhile, my colleagues and I will continue to advocate for a strong, bipartisan budget that focuses on responsible investments in our K-12 schools, higher education, housing, and our developmentally disabled (DD) community. We are ready, willing, and eager to sit down and hammer out a bipartisan compromise that makes sense for all Arizonans.

And this year might be the year we get to do it, thanks to all the uncertainty and infighting going on amongst some of my colleagues. Stay tuned!

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!

Sean

http://www.seanbowieforaz.com/

Paid for by Sean Bowie for State Senate. Authorized by Sean Bowie.