One More Day (No Word)

Just Gotta Have an Obscure 1970s Music Reference.  I keep forgetting how old I am and how much music I’ve listened to, but I couldn’t resist titling this entry after an old Todd Rundgren song from his masterpiece album Something/Anything.  The song One More Day (No Word) is the tale of a heartbroken guy whose girlfriend has left him and day-after-day he doesn’t hear from her.  Not a word.  Well, those of us in the education community aren’t exactly heartbroken at the moment, but today was another day with no word from the conference committee about what when the final omnibus education finance and policy bill will be released and what will be its contents when it is released.  Given that a later start time was scheduled for 3:30 PM today, it was thought that the negotiations on the bill would be wrapped up and that the final draft of the document would be released.  The meeting was cancelled early in the afternoon and has been rescheduled for 3:00 PM tomorrow and the posting states the meeting will last an hour.  That would indicate that there is some measure of confidence that they have almost buttoned things up.  We’ll just have to wait and see.

Interesting Development.  During the session, the position of the Senate Republican caucus is to not vote for the bonding bill unless there was more revenue dedicated to tax cuts.  The bonding bill requires 60% of each body to pass instead of a simple majority and with the slim majorities in both the House and Senate, that will require votes from members of the minority party in order to get to the requisite number of votes necessary to pass.  Failure to pass the bonding bill would require the Legislature to use a portion of the one-time money that comprises our record budget surplus to fund building projects throughout the state.  And that has been the plan since the Senate failed to pass the bonding bill earlier this session, when the strategy changed to using one-time dollars as the funding stream to pay for the bill.  The revised strategy takes about $1.9 billion off the table.  The Senate Republicans made an offer that they would support the bonding bill if the majority agreed to cut taxes by $1 billion, put $200 million into long term care, and leave $700 million for the majority to spend as they pleased.  I don’t know if this offer is coming just a week too late, but it may pique the interest of the majority.

Still No Conferees on the Omnibus Labor Bill.  I wrote about the omnibus labor bill yesterday and was hoping to be able to post the members of the conference committee, but they have yet to be named.  I will post them when they become available.