[E]veryone needs a deadline. And perhaps no group of individuals needs a deadline more than legislators who might otherwise adjourn in June.
Fresh off a Town Meeting Day break, lawmakers will be in a furious flurry this week as they hammer out final language on dozens of bills.
The crossover deadline is Friday, and bills that remain stuck on the wall in committees will be dead for the biennium. Those that make it out of committee will be taken up on the floor of the House and Senate sometime between now and the end of the session.
Next week, legislators in House Appropriations, House Corrections and Institutions and House Ways and Means, the tax writing committee, will meet a second set of deadlines — for the budget, capital expenditure, tax and fee bills. Bills from other committees that include a fee, tax or appropriation also have to meet the March 21 cutoff date.
A lot is in play. Many bills just won’t make it. For example, a Burlington charter change that would put new limits on guns in the Queen City will remain stuck to the wall, according to Rep. Donna Sweaney, D-Windsor, chair of House Government Operations.
But there are plenty of legislative priorities that will make it through in one form or another.
Legislation authorizing the formation of an ethics commission is taking shape in the House and Senate.
Economic development initiatives that could help to support better affordable workforce housing is in play. Controversial legislation that would further clarify the state’s misclassification of independent contractors is a major initiative that will come out of House Economic Development this week.
House and Senate committees are poised to pass new forestry rules, endangered species protections and siting requirements for solar projects.
Judiciary committees are looking to tighten highway safety rules that will better protect bikers on the state’s roads. Lawmakers also want to give poor people who rack up traffic fines a break. House Institutions is looking at policies that would reduce incarceration rates.
A bill developed in Senate Health and Welfare would limit the amount of opiate-based painkillers doctors can prescribe.
And, of course, there’s pot. The Senate teed up a marijuana legalization bill before the Town Meeting Day week, but it will be April before the House takes it up. That’s because over the next three weeks, representatives will be slogging through the budget and tax bills. As is typical in the dance between the House and Senate, the House passes the budget and tax baton off to the Senate and then has about a month to catch up on Senate legislation it hasn’t yet addressed.
The buzz in the building is that adjournment will be early — perhaps as early as the end of April, certainly by the first week of May. It is, after all, an election year.
It helps that lawmakers have already passed major legislation in the first half of the session. Adjustments to the Act 46 cost containment provisions, which occupied much of the first month of the session, was also completed early on. Paid sick leave mandating time off for most workers, will be signed into law on Wednesday.
In the intervening six to eight weeks, expect to see political shifts as lawmakers readjust position. With House Speaker Shap Smith leaving office and Gov. Peter Shumlin’s tenure coming to an end, it’s likely that junior lawmakers will begin to use their powers in strange ways. By May, the Statehouse could resemble Hogwarts more than ever.