Legislative Report: May 1, 2023

It's day 70. We are down to the last few days. We are hoping that we will be done by day 75. A lot of committees were working this past Satur­day toward compromises both on policy and appropriations. Our budget, as of today, is still a couple of hundred million in the red. There are several what I would call earmarks still in some of these bills. Much dis­cussion will be about what is genuinely a need versus what may be a want. We will see.

As of today, there is an agreement on a tax package. It includes lowering all the income tax brackets, result­ing in $359 million of income tax savings. It also has a $500 primary residence credit. This would include approximate­ly 206,412 units with a cost of around $103 million. There is also an additional $53 million in the Homestead Property Tax Credit Program. The total package would be $515 mil­lion for this biennium. We had been shooting for between $400 and $600 million. This looks to be the compromise. The other huge budget that is still being worked on is the Human Services budget. It's our biggest budget, with a lot of the revenue coming from the Federal Government. We are currently between $5.1 and $5.4 billion in the budget. That includes, what I am told, a two percent increase for our developmental disability pro­grams. The committee contin­ues to work to come to some agreement somewhere in the middle.

Lastly, I would like to thank everyone who has sent me messages. I will apologize be­cause I know I have not gotten back to everyone. Depending on the issue, there are days when I have received hun­dreds of messages. I do appre­ciate the civil discourse. There are some messages, however, with profanity and obscenity that I will open briefly, and I do delete those quickly. Once again, thank you to all for your kind and civil messages. Until next time.