We
are essentially a month into the legislative session and much of the major
business-related issues remains sidelined. The Revenue and Tax committees in
the House and Senate are not even holding meetings because they don’t have anything
to consider despite the fact that they are four weeks into the session. That is
a telling sign that the 89th General Assembly is taking things very
methodically.
My
assumption is that leadership in the House and Senate have agreed to focus on
social issues in the first month before turning their attention to taxes,
Medicaid and other business-related legislation. The past two weeks have seen a
lot of committee time spent debating abortion and guns. Next week should see
the final resolution to many of these issues.
Tuesday (February 12), the House Education committee will consider
Representative Charlie Collins’ (R, Washington County) bill to authorize
college staff and faculty to carry concealed weapons on campus. Many
universities oppose this measure and the Education committee will no doubt hear
from them that allowing concealed weapons on their campuses will not make them
safer and will result in higher liability insurance for academic institutions.
are also two abortion bills that are moving through the House and Senate and
their final form should be decided in the next week as well. Once those are
done it seems more likely that the General Assembly’s energy will focus on
taxes, Medicaid, funding the Big River Steel plant and a host of other issues.
has hinted that all tax cut related legislation will be considered at the same
time and after spending levels are more certain. So, instead of passing
individual tax cuts they will weigh the merits of each and then decide which
they can afford. In 2011, the House passed four tax cuts fairly early in the
session that then got held up in the Senate and used as a negotiating piece for
other legislation. One might guess that House members may want to hang on to
some leverage by working jointly with the Senate to ensure their main
priorities are enacted. If so, it will be March before Revenue and Tax has
anything to vote on.
the General Assembly is focused on social issues, it raises the question what
types of bills are being filed and is there a backlog waiting to be heard.
While clearly not a scientific analysis, keyword searches of filed legislation
produces the following insight:
bills are related to revenue (out of approximately 580 total bills filed)
72 bills
are related to tax
24 bills
are related to Medicaid
20 bills
are related to economic development
8 bills
are related to concealed weapons
6 bills
are related to abortion
the issues with the fewest number of bills are generating the most debate!