Friends, my apologies: The week 6 legislative wrap-up and week 7 preview was one of the casualties of my having fallen down on the job – literally. But I am back and all is well because I have a cast on and the snow is finally beginning to melt down here in ‘SnOly’.
Week 7 In Review
Week 7 featured the “fiscal cut-off” where all bills referred to the fiscal committees had to have a hearing and be passed by the end of the day on Friday. The Senate only has one fiscal committee (Ways and Means) while the House has four – three sub appropriations committees by subject area (education, health and human services, and general government) and one main Ways and Means committee.
Note on process: Generally, only bills with significant fiscal impacts (usually over $50K) have to go through the fiscal committees – usually to one of the sub appropriations committees and then on to Ways and Means. But not always. Sometimes, in the House of Representatives bills with fiscal impacts only have to go through one of the fiscal committees – sometimes they go straight to Ways and Means and sometimes they go through a sub-appropriations committee and then pass on without getting referred to Ways and Means.
Bills that were referred to a fiscal committee but were not passed by Friday are either dead for this year or can be considered later in the session if they are considered Necessary to Implement the Budget (NTIB) – meaning that something in the biennial budget could not go into effect without passage of the bill.
Another fun little note on the process: dead bills are really just sleeping. Because we work in bienniums (two year cycles) all bills that have ‘died’ this session get resurrected at the beginning of next session – and they start from where in the process they died. For example, if your bill died because it got a hearing in a policy committee but was never voted on at the beginning of next session it starts out still waiting for that vote.
So then what? All bills pass to a committee in each chamber called the Rules Committee. The Rules Committees consider ” all bills reported from policy and fiscal committees and determines whether, and in what order, to schedule their consideration on the floor”. Basically, this is the place where bills go to wait….or die. Members of the committee or Leadership ‘pull’ bills out of rules and on to the floor of each chamber for consideration. If the bills pass on the floor they get referred to the other chamber and start the whole process over again but this time under a more condensed timeline.
What is coming up in Week 8
Next Monday, March 7 is the deadline for all bills to pass out of their chamber of origin. That means this week is all about passing bills out of the Rules Committees and off the floors of both chambers. It means a lot of dealing, speeches, and late nights, and it also means working through the weekend. Floor sessions are already scheduled for both Saturday and Sunday.
While there are still a number of NTIB bills we are following that have not yet passed out of policy or fiscal committees, here is the current status of some big bills we are following and expect to see action on this week:
- WaKIDS (HB 1510/SB 5427) – both bills waiting in Rules Committees
- High School Math Graduation Assessment (HB 1412) – Rules
- Innovation School Zones (HB 1546) – Rules
- Recognizing Innovative Schools (SB 5726) – Rules
- PASS Dropout Prevention (HB 1599) – Rules
- Alternative Principal Certification (HB 1593) – Rules
- Continuing Education Reforms – work of the QEC (HB 1443) – Rules
- The Launch Year (Hb 1808/ SB 5616) – both bills in Rules Committees
- P-20 Education Council (HB 1849) – Rules
- School District Levy Base legislation (HB 1815) – Rules
As always, this is not a comprehensive list of bills under consideration (House and Senate) or the complete list of committee hearings this week.
