Where’s the Budget?
At this stage of the legislative session, the budget has entered the shadowy world of the budget conference process. During this time there are no public meetings or hearings. The budget conferees from the Senate and House meet as needed, in private, to negotiate and hash out the differences between their two versions of the state budget. What were those differences? In a nutshell both budgets cut public services deeply: health care, public education, the arts, etc. They both also raise revenue, though the Senate raises more revenue than the House with an assortment of fee increases. Both houses emphatically rejected general tax increases.
