On its website, the Times-Picayune this legislative session has a helpful morning blog previewing the day’s legislative action, along with links to other news and views regarding state government. This morning’s edition sets the stage (front and center) for budgetary action in the House:
The first week of May used to be a somewhat sleepy time for observers of the state budget, a period when state agencies made their ritual visits to the House Appropriations Committee to discuss their plans for the year ahead.
Not this year. Today the budget panel is expected to finish its work on House Bill 1, the 244-page, $26.7 billion spending proposal for 2009-10, and move it on to the full House, which will likely take it up late next week.
That's about two weeks earlier than in most years, when the bill would get shipped over to the Senate just in time for hearings to start on Memorial Day weekend.
Tucker has said the plan is for the Senate to finish its work on the budget by early June, which would leave the last couple of weeks of the session (adjournment is June 25) to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the bill in a conference committee. The idea was for the House to get away from recent tradition, where the budget would get sent back from the Senate just a few short days before Sine Die, which left some House members feeling like the Senate had the upper hand in conference committee.
If the schedule holds, expect even more horse-trading than usual in the final days as the two chambers settle their differences.
With the budget bill having already gone through a round of amendments in committee -- and the Division of Administration having proposed $679 million worth of changes, mainly new federal dollars - the only remaining mystery at this early stage is how much the committee will set aside for the 500-plus non-governmental organizations that asked the state for aid.
Appropriations Chairman Jim Fannin, D-Jonesboro, said earlier this week to expect some money for parish councils on aging, but that's as far as he would go.
