Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
This could be our final week of the session if conference committees move along. We are having floor sessions to vote on bills three times a day, but with only a handful of bills at each session. We completed nine bills on Monday and look to have more as the week progresses because the committees are completing their work.
Monday, I had conference committees on the Public Employees Retirement System budget, Extension Budget, Career and Technical Education budget, Agriculture Commissioner, Workforce Safety and Insurance, and Council on the Arts.
Bills we approved on Monday included SB 2272, which provides for a skilled workforce scholarship program so important to filling our workforce shortage areas.
We approved SB 2290, which provides the guidelines when financial requests need to be made to the Emergency Commission, the Budget Section, and the Legislature. These requests come up often when federal funds become available and authority is needed to accept the funding stream.
HB 1162 was passed on a slim margin of 24 yes and 23 no votes. This would allow raffle sponsors to accept credit/debit cards as payment for raffle tickets. I believe there was some confusion on this bill as some thought it also included e-tab machines and slot machines, but it does not. So, if your charity is holding a raffle, you may now accept credit/debit cards as payments with limits on those charges.
Thursday at 5:00 p.m., the Senate took up House bills 1298 and 1323, which the Governor vetoed on Wednesday. The House had overridden his veto at their 1:00 p.m. session. The vote in the Senate was to override the veto on HB 1323, which is the anti-mask bill, and to sustain the veto on HB 1298, which is the transgender athlete bill.
Other work this week continues with floor votes in the Senate regarding conference committee reports. My work, the remainder of the session, involves a number of conference committees, as well as the final big conference committee, which is the Office of Management and Budget conference report. This has a committee consisting of the four legislative leaders and the two chairmen of House and Senate Appropriations. That bill (HB 1015), usually is a catch all for many items, either inadvertently omitted in other bills, or else defeated in other bills. The committee carefully considers these additional items, especially to determine if there has been a hearing on the issue. So much work remains, but we are nearing the end of the 67th session.
