MARCH 10, 2023
Round 2 has begun! Cut-off for bills to get out of the original house was Wed. at 5:00 and hearings on bills from the opposite chamber began in earnest yesterday morning at 8:00 am! From now until March 29th, policy committees will be meeting to hear, and exec bills. It is anticipated the fiscal committees will also be trying to hear bills as they come over from the policy committees. There are only 6 days between policy and fiscal committee cut-offs, which really doesn’t give much time for opposite house bills with a fiscal impact (of which there are a lot!), but hopefully the fiscal committees can avoid really huge backlogs!
Bill tracker update!!! Because a number of bills have now died, we are going to take them off the tracker. If they were a companion, their number will continue to be included on the tracker but we will remove the write up on them. For example, HB1405 and SB5397 (SSI/Child Welfare) were basically companions. HB1405 is continuing to advance but SB5397 died in Ways and Means. In this week’s tracker, we will no longer include SB5397, just HB1405!
That said, bills can resurface as amendments or provisos and technically, they are still alive because this is the 1st year of the biennium and bills stay alive for the 2 years of the biennium! So keep an eye out, and if you are following a bill, you might want to periodically check on its status to see if it has been amended by folks in the opposite chamber
It’s interesting to note that yesterday was the 60th day of the 2023 legislative session. If this were a short session yesterday would have been sine die! Kind of hard to believe that much can happen during a short session but it does! Legislators are generally working 7 days a week and often keep very late hours. This past week was no exception – they burned the midnight oil multiple times to get through some of the most controversial bills. . Hopefully they can get some rest this weekend, although many are doing town halls in district so will definitely be working! If you are interested in finding out about town halls in your district you can get info here:
· Senate Democratic Caucus members schedule here
· House Democratic Caucus members schedule here
· Info on individual town halls of House Republican Caucus members here
Apologies that we were not able to find a list for Senate Republican members town halls.
That’s it for now! Remember you can watch previous floor action, committee hearings, press conferences and more by going to TVW archives.
Have a good week!
Here is the bill tracker for week nine: P4C week nine bill tracker 2023.