Budget Priorities
The House has so far passed the Housing; Commerce, Climate, and Energy Finance; Higher Education; Agriculture and Broadband Grant; Transportation Finance and Policy; and Legacy omnibus bills. Today (Friday) we will vote on the Jobs and Environment omnibus bills. On Saturday, we will take up the Education and Health and Human Services bills, as well as a bonding corrections bill. That leaves the Public Safety and Tax bills for next week. We must complete all of the budget bills by Wednesday, June 30th, which is the end of the state’s fiscal year.
My two biggest priorities for the Special Session have been ending the Governor's emergency powers and extending reinsurance. You can read my op/ed on reinsurance on page 4 of the Maple Grove Press e-edition here. Scroll down to find my column near the bottom left corner.
I assumed we would have some sort of global “deal” on these two issues before the final votes would be taken on the various budget bills, similar to the “deal” announced at the end of regular session. Unfortunately, as I write, those two issues are still not resolved, even though we have been passing major portions of the budget in these individual bills.
Although I support some of the items in these bills, I believe our only leverage is to vote against the budget bills until these two issues are resolved. I will continue to vote against the individual budget bill until we have set the end date for emergency powers and extended reinsurance for another year.
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