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District 14 Legislative Reports

By Staff | Mar 31, 2017

Here it is: Day 57. Most committees have completed their work and have moved the bills to the Senate floor for final approval or disapproval. As of this writing, 61 bills remain to be heard in the Senate, and of those, 25 remain in appropriations. With the decline in revenue, most of the appropriations are moving along with not a whole lot of debate.

There are a couple of appropriations bills where we are hoping to restore some funding. One of those is in the insurance department budget. We hope to get the local fire district funding back to where it was. It is an important source of funding for our local fire districts and there is a lot of effort to put that funding back into the bill.

There is also some effort to find $9 million to help provide additional dollars for our nursing homes. That $9 million could help leverage additional federal dollars, which would go a long way toward helping the needs of our nursing homes. That is still up in the air, but we are certainly hoping we can find those dollars before we go home.

Speaking of going home, we are still working to get done well before the 80th day, which would be the maximum amount of days. We still hope that we can save some days so if the economy turns around before the next session, we could call ourselves back and potentially fund some priorities that may need some enhancing. Things are very fluid right now. Stay tuned.

Thanks for the messages,

Sen. Jerry Klein