Budget bill transmittal

This past Monday we had a push to get all Senate bills through our Senate chamber for another transmittal cutoff, this time for budget bills. In order to accomplish this, we had early committee meetings and ran an all-day floor session from 10 a.m. until just about 8 p.m. We started with 25 bills on third (and final) reading, meaning we had heard and voted on them twice previously. At that point we began hearing presentations on 42 of the bills that had to get moved to the House by cutoff. Of the 42 bills, I could not vote for 13 of them. Many were taking local control away from either teacher...