Weekly Legislative Update 4.10.15
4.14.2015
The unofficial mid-session lull has hit the Capitol. All but three Committees (Judiciary, Appropriations and Finance) have met their deadlines and are in fact acting on bills referred to them by both Chambers.
The Senate met on Wednesday to act on the first bills of the session. Both the House and Senate will be in session next week as final action on legislative business begins to ramp up. This past Wednesday marked two months remaining until the end of session. With so many pressing issues, never mind the budget, June 3rd will be here in the blink of an eye!
Speaking of the budget, each of the Appropriation’s sub-committees have given the Appropriations Committee Chairs their final budgets. It is now up to Sen. Bye and Rep. Walker to put the whole package together. With your help, we did everything we could during the early stages of the budget process to influence the decision makers as to how to protect the YSB funding. I do believe we gained traction on mitigating the YSB cut to both line items. However, I want to caution each of you that there will still be a cut, the question is the size. I will continue to talk to key Legislators about the line items, but now that the pieces of the puzzle are in the Chairs’ hands, the wagons have been circled. If all goes to plan, the budget should be ready for a Committee vote by the end of the month. Once that occurs and I have a solid understanding as to what it means for YSBs, we will set strategy for the next phase of the process. Finally, from the many conversations I’ve had with Members, I see no way that the proposal to move YSBs from SDE to DCF will occur. Not one Legislator I spoke with thought that was a good idea.
