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SPECIAL QUICK & DIRTY UPDATE EDITION
This will be, of necessity, a quick-and-dirty e-news this week. Why? Because nothing is decided and everything is in play.
The operating budget has gone to a conference committee which is to decide the fate of about 125 or so items that are in dispute between the Senate’s version of the operating budget and the House’s. The mental health budget is in the hands of the same conference committee.
(Here’s a quick explanation of the conference committee process. When the Senate and the House can’t agree about how a bill should be written, three members of each body are chosen to try to iron out the kinks. For the operating budget, the Senate conferees are Bert Stedman, Lyman Hoffman and Joe Thomas. The House conferees are Mike Hawker, Bill Stoltze and Les Gara. Each item still in dispute has to be agreed to by two Senators and two House members.)
The capital budget is big, big, big: Counting federal funds, the price tag is $2.2 billion – yes, that’s billion with a B. A lot of people think that’s too much. About half of it is federal spending, the rest is state spending. It is also not particularly well liked by the people who run the House, since that state spending has all been proposed by the Senate. So I think it’s fair to say that as I write this Thursday evening, the capital budget is a bone of contention.
(I’m not even going to comment on what Gov. Sean Parnell might do when the capital budget gets to him. Hard to imagine that a budget this big wouldn’t get a thorough vetoing from a self-styled fiscal conservative who is running for re-election.)
In addition to a big operating budget and a big capital budget, rumors persist of a big general obligation bond to be put before the voters. Nothing has emerged from that except a placeholder, HB 424, which is supposed to be filled with goodies at some point. Estimates of how much the voters will be asked to spend start at $300 million and go up from there. So people think that some or all of this spending will be done through certificates of participation instead of bonds. Think of COPs, as they’re called, as borrowing without that bother of getting voter approval.
Now, most of this spending will be done with money we don’t even have yet. But the revenue estimates say that, right now, all this spending will leave about $300 million in cash.
Except one more kind of spending bears mentioning. Fiscal notes (estimates of what new legislation will cost), labor agreements and court settlements to be paid could cost another $150 million. Leaving only $150 million in reserve. A bad week in the oil markets could wipe that out, and two bad weeks would send us scrambling, to either impound spending or grab some of this savings legislators have been dragging about while they hustle to spend every other spare dime.
Sorry if my cynicism is showing. I’ve seen feeding frenzies before, and they are never pretty.
And lest you think I am completely overwhelmed with financial matters, here’s a list of bills that may or may not be important to a rational end of this session. Some of them are moving and some look as dead as the hoop skirt, but there are nine days left and hope springs eternal.
Best wishes,
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