I don’t know what pop song will serve as the theme to the education conference committee this week, but at some point, I can imagine it’s going to be Kenny Loggins’ “This is It.” Legislative leadership had hoped that all of the conference committees could have wrapped up their work by the end of last week, but while some of them have completed their work, the larger conference committees—including the E-12 conference committee—have yet to put things to bed. I am sure leadership will be applying polite pressure to the conferees across-the-board to finish their work by the end of the week. The Legislature must adjourn on Monday, May 22, at the stroke of midnight (no more covering up the clock like they did in an earlier era) and there will be considerable debate on the major bills as they hit the floor.

With the House passing its version of the omnibus education funding and policy bill on Thursday, attention will now move to the Senate, which plans to pass both its omnibus education funding bill and omnibus education policy bill today, Monday, April 24. Unlike the House, the Senate brought its finance and policy bills to the floor separately. I was expecting the bills to be formally combined on the Senate floor and it will be interesting to see if that happens. It has been almost twenty years since the Legislature negotiated separate education finance and education policy bills and I don’t expect that to be the case this year, but it will be interesting to see when the Senate does fuse the policy bill provisions with the finance bill provisions so that there can be a seamless discussion of all of the measures contained in both the House and Senate bills when the conference committee convenes.

And We’re Back!  Last week was a quiet week at the Legislature as the budget committees finished their work prior to the break for the religious holidays and most of the major budget bills made their trek through either the House Ways and Means Committee or the Senate Finance Committee by the end of last week.  The House omnibus bill cleared the House Ways and Means Committee last Thursday and will be heading to the House floor at some point this week.  The Senate omnibus bill cleared the Senate Tax Committee last Thursday and is scheduled to be heard in the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday, April 19.

The Legislature took a big leap forward this past week as the omnibus bills across all funding were assembled in both the House and Senate. Some of those bills—most notably the omnibus Education Finance and Policy bills—will make the trek to the Tax Committee early this week for that panel to assess changes in levies in each bill and how levies have been shuffled around to maintain a zero-levy target. In a bygone era, the omnibus Education Funding and Policy bills could contain levy increases that would be bought down by the Tax Committee. In recent years, leadership has insisted that the education funding bills come to the Tax Committee with no overall levy increases. There are levy increases in the omnibus education funding bills this year to ensure menstrual product availability and extend Long Term Facilities Maintenance Revenue to cooperative facilities to name two instances—and those increases have been brought back to net zero by increases in the second-tier Local Option Revenue and Total Operating Capital equalizing factors.

The Governor’s proposal for the district revenue runs.