It's finally budget week
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Feb 12, 2007 Posted by Bill Luckett
You wouldn't know it, but our legislature technically meets once every two years to craft the state's biennial budget. This is not one of those years. Yet, for most of the past decade, state government has enjoyed substantial surplus revenues, and figuring out what to do with those revenues has become pretty much an annual, rather than biannual, tradition.
The budget "mirror bill" - so-called because identical bills will be introduced on the House and Senate floors - hits the chambers today for the first of three readings before the full House and Senate. In this article from Sunday, Gov. Freudenthal discussed some of the rationale for investing in such areas as local governments, water development and wildlife. Our state highway system also has massive needs that the governor wants the Legislature to address. Meanwhile, there remain some lawmakers who would rather stash as much extra money as they can into long-term savings instead of take care of today's pressing needs. As always, the collective of priorities of 90 people will become clear in the next week or so.