AWSP Blog

It was budget week in the Legislature as both House and Senate Democrats released their supplemental operating budgets. Both budget bills had hearings within hours of their release on Monday, and both were amended within days of these hearings. Budget negotiators from both chambers will now seek to reconcile differences and come to a final budget before “sine die” (the last day of the session), scheduled for March 10.

We reached the halfway point of this year’s short legislative session this week and have passed several important cut-off dates. The action is now focused on passing bills out of both the House and Senate. Bills must pass off each floor by February 15 to stay alive (unless they’re NTIB). After that, the process repeats all over again in the opposite house, only with a shorter timeline. Hearings in the education committees start back up next Wednesday.

We reached the halfway point of this year’s short legislative session this week and have passed several important cut-off dates. The action is now focused on passing bills out of both the House and Senate. Bills must pass off each floor by February 15 to stay alive (unless they’re NTIB). After that, the process repeats all over again in the opposite house, only with a shorter timeline. Hearings in the education committees start back up next Wednesday.

The saying that short legislative sessions are like sprints and long legislative sessions are like running marathons is completely true! This week, the 2022 legislative session got off to a rapid start. With about 1,500 bills either recently introduced or leftover from last year and more on the way, bill hearings began right away on Monday and both the House and Senate began voting bills out of their respective chambers on Wednesday.

This year’s legislative session ended on time after 105 days. It’s been described as unique, historic, surprising, and consequential. Despite economic concerns about our state revenue last summer and fall, and uncertainty about how the Legislature would run its process to hear and pass bills in a mostly virtual manner, some significant bills passed and the final budgets boosted spending on many different programs.