Reporting this week: Sen. Jerry Klein

It’s day eight here at the Capitol. As I mentioned last week, we are facing a number of bill introduction deadlines. The House deadline for bill introduction was this past Monday. The House has introduced 545 bills this session as compared to 303 bills in 2017. I am not sure what all those bills cover, but I am guessing some will not make it to the Senate.

Over here in the Senate, we have another week where we can bring in up to three more bills. As of this writing, the Senate has introduced 300 bills as compared to 227 in the 2017 session. We are also running a bit ahead of last session and it will be interesting to see what all these great ideas do.

One of the biggest discussions this week has been what we are calling the Prairie Dog Bill. This bill provides up to $280 million per biennium primarily for cities, counties and townships outside of our oil patch. This money would be available for infrastructure projects in those political subdivisions and come from oil money. It is based on a formula of population and property valuations and would be available to all our communities starting in 2021.

I think it is a great idea. For quite some time, we have been very supportive of the needs in the oil patch. Now that many of those critical needs have been addressed in the west, we are addressing critical needs throughout the rest of the state. I hope it works out.

I have to run. Keep up the messages. I will do what I can to get back to you.

Sen. Jerry Klein