Despite a House Session this week and a Senate Session scheduled for next week, there is little of municipal interest, other than continuing negotiations on the budget, that we haven’t already mentioned in prior Legislative Bulletins. Next week will see the Municipal & County Government Committee executive session that we mentioned in last week’s Bulletin. We are also waiting for the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold executive sessions on a number of bills, including HB 307, the attorney’s fees bill, which we wrote about in Bulletin #14. We believe that bill will be discussed at the executive session scheduled for Tuesday, May 9 at 1:00 p.m. in State House Room 100, and we are hopeful that the Senate Judiciary Committee will recommend HB 307 as Inexpedient to Legislate. 

We anticipate that it will be several more weeks before we know the Senate’s position on the budget as the Senate has until Thursday, June 8 to act on both HB 1, the budget, and HB 2, the budget trailer bill. (Because both HB 1 and HB 2 were both assigned to Senate Finance as their initial committee, there would be no second committee for them to go to after Senate Finance makes its recommendation and the Senate votes on both.) If the House and Senate policy committees wrap up most, if not all, of their work next week or the following, there will likely be very little to report until the Senate decides on its position on the budget.