Legislative Report: Feb. 20, 2023

It’s day 27. The Senate is working hard to make our crossover deadline. Almost all the Senate bills have been heard and are awaiting action from the committees. We have 154 bills still left in committee and waiting for Senate action. Most are in the Appropriations committee which has 74 left to act on. There have been a whole lot of asks for state money. The State has a healthy reserve, indicating that our economy is doing fine. The committee will have to look hard at what is a need and one-time spending, or something that will burden taxpayers well into the future.

We also are moving forward with the school funding payment. The increase that we are currently using is three percent, and that will cost about $120 million, which would provide a per-pupil payment of $10,860 in both years of the biennium.

As of today’s writing, we are $1.1 billion over budget. We are generally over at crossover but not quite to that degree. There will be much work done to get the budget balanced.

Tax relief continues to be a key part of our discussions. There is a feeling that it will be a combination of property tax and income tax relief. A common discussion is that it should be between $400 and $600 million. We will keep working to see how much we can do. Stay tuned.