April 2, 2015 This week concludes the second funnel of the Legislative session. To remain eligible to advance, a bill must have passed one chamber of the Legislature and have received committee approval in the opposite chamber. This has been, in my experience, a very quiet second funnel. Very few bills have arrived from the Senate, which has resulted in very little committee work over the last two weeks. The second funnel also marks the end of policy committee meetings for this year’s session. With all policy bills that are still viable having received their committee consideration, any new policy that will move from this point onward will have to be amended to bills already approved by committee. With the wind down of the policy process the Legislature will begin a slow shift and begin to focus on the budget. More on that later. A bill that is still eligible for debate concerns the use of communication devices while driving. I have managed this bill in the transportation committee throughout this session. Early in the session this bill was assigned to me as chairman of a three person sub-committee. In its original form the bill would prohibit the use of any hand held communication device while driving. Texting would be expressly prohibited while talking on a cell phone or receiving voice mail would be limited to the use of a hands free device. It was easily approved by the subcommittee with the only objection raised by the American Civil Liberties Union contending that the bill would result in racial profiling. As the bill moved to the full Transportation Committee there was little resistance but there was some concern over “big brother” dictating more rules and regulations. As the discussion continued there began to be some question as to whether the bill could be approved by the full House. As there was a similar bill working its way through the Senate, it was decided to wait with our bill to see what would come out of the Senate. Last week the House received the Senate File 391 concerning this issue. The Senate bill had been watered down to the point of irrelevancy. Essentially all the Senate bill accomplished was to move texting while driving from a secondary offense to a primary offense. It did not address distracted use of a phone or the use of hands free devices. As this bill was assigned to me for a second time in Transportation, we again held a sub-committee meeting where testimony concluded that the Senate bill was nothing more than window dressing and law enforcement deemed it unenforceable. With that testimony fresh in our minds I took the bill back to the full Transportation Committee with the recommendation that we go back to the House’s original
bill that would ban the use of hand-held devices while driving. My recommendation was approved by the full committee by a vote of 17 to 4 and is now eligible for floor debate in the House. There is still a considerable amount of concern in the House in regard to the “big brother” aspect of this bill. At this time I do not believe it will be debated on the floor unless the Legislature receives a lot of input from the public supporting the concept. Back to the budget. There seems to be an awful lot of misinformation out there as to the status of the state’s budget. Proponents of increased spending are touting the Revenue Estimating Conference’s report that the state has $380 million in new revenue and therefore $250 million in new spending in education is achievable and will leave funds for increases in other areas. The fact that these folks conveniently forget is that $200 million of that new revenue is mandated to be spent on Medicare, a cost over which we have no control. With $180 million left after Medicaid, $250 million in increased education spending would require $70 million in cuts in the remainder of the budget. Add to that the $60 million plus cost of the recently arbitrated labor settlement. Suddenly the budget is $130 million in the red and we would have to consider layoffs and programs cuts throughout everything except education. The House position of $100 million in new revenue for education will require cuts in the rest of the budget, but those cuts, while painful, would be manageable. Until everyone comes to the realization of the limits of our current financial situation, the budget process will be a slow and painful one.
