April 8, 2002

Since the rules have all changed this session, it's harder to predict what
will happen than ever before.  But we can update you to today!

Both the Senate and the House now have a budget bill. The Senate bill has
been approved in committee, but not by the full Senate.  As of today, neither
bill addresses changing scores or protected income levels.  That is very good
news, but it is far from over yet!  The House bill does contain 1.1 million
in new funding for PD Waiver waiting list, but Senate bill does not. We hope
to have an amendment added on the Senate floor for at least that much and
maybe more.

We believe the Senate will work their Budget bill sometime early this week
and go to conference committee with the House, possibly as early as Wednesday
night. 

As you may recall, conference committees must come up with one compromise
bill and take it back to both Houses for passage. If it doesn't pass, then it
goes back to conference committees.  Then even when it passes both Houses, it
goes to the Governor for his signature.

What really complicates things this year is that the budget bill is
basically a spending bill. The House bill is short (more spending than
revenue) by about $129 million and the Senate bill is short less than that,
but it is not done yet.

So there also needs to be a tax bill which will have to go through the same ap
provals on each floor and to conference committee and to Gov.

The plan as of today is for a lot of that to happen by April 13th, which
could mean very early hours of the morning of April 14th. 

Then both Senate and House go home for two weeks and return May 1st. 
Normally in that two weeks they would have an "Omnibus session" which looks
at all spending from all bills and income and reconciles the state budget. 
This is done in conference committee.

But this year there is rumor that there will be no Omnibus.

If that's the case, we have two weeks to make sure legislators understand our
needs for the budget. That means meeting with them while they are home.  Just
to remind them of the PD waiting list which is now at least 5 months long.

So one more big push is needed and we might be home by end of May.

That's all for now. Please feel free to e-mail with questions, I'll try to
answer!

Gina

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