The long Memorial Day weekend has come and gone and we are now less than 30 days from the constitutional adjournment date of June 25th. Since our last update, while there have been a handful of meetings between Senate Republican Leadership, the Governors Office and Senate Democrats little has changed. Thus far, it still seems more likely than not Senate Republicans will continue to deny a quorum until a day or two before the 25th with the idea of simply passing the budget bills. As mentioned previously, the House continues to function normally, and budgets are still being moved though the committee process. Currently, the House tentatively plans to complete its business and then recess during the mid-June time frame with the hope the Senate at some point will begin passing bills again. While there are still four weeks or so left until we truly know how all of this is going to pan out, we thought it might be helpful to attempt to shed light on some of the most likely scenarios.

• Senate R’s comeback early, sometime in the next couple of weeks:  If this were to happen, we should see a reduced number of bills pass between now and the end of session.  Most bills  in the process would likely come up for a vote, however based on negotiations, some bills could die.

• Senate R’s comeback on June 24^th or 25^th : Under this scenario, we should see all budgets pass and a few policy bills.  This would require the Democrats to allow for the Republicans to dictate the last few days of session and something that seems unlikely to us right now.  That said, it is the desire of the Governor’s office that they would like all budgets passed by July 1^st.  Most policy bills under this scenario would require rules suspension, meaning the republicans would control which policy bills would be allowed to have a final vote.

• Senate R’s come back, but session ends without budgets passing:  If the Senate R’s comeback on the final day or two of session there is a good chance that the democrats say it is too late and would not allow the R’s to dictate what bills/budget is considered on the final days of session.  Under this scenario it is very similar to if they don’t come back at all and we will see a special session to pass budgets and possibly more.

• If we have a special session (or more than one) the timing would be very much up in the air.  The Legislature has passed a continuing resolution that allows for all current state agency budgets to continue at the current level until September 15^th.  Legislative Democratic leadership would like to try and schedule something for a week in mid-July to mainly focus on budget and little to no policy bills.  It sounds like from our conversations that the Governor would like to have all budgets in place by July 1^st and if there is a need for a special session, to do so, immediately following the June 25^th constitutional sine die.  Under either scenario we will get a good idea about what budgets could look like in the coming weeks as the assembly still plans to roll these out of Ways and Means.

In any event, and as things change (and I am sure they will in the coming days) we will be sure to let you know. In the meantime, we are happy to answer questions if there are any.