Legislature Abandons Its Responsibilities

For the past few days, the House and the Senate have been engaged in a game of chicken over a tax bill on pensions. This bill was a relatively small income producer; as proposed, it would have raised roughly 17 million. But the House really, really wanted the tax for some reason. The House Finance Committee successfully held up a number of bills until the Senate agreed to the tax. In turn, the Senate indicated it would be done for business at 6:00 pm. If the bills didn’t pass by then, then they’d be dead until next year. This included a huge number of environmental measures: funding for OEQC, the paper/plastic bag fee, revisions to the public utility commission, the undersea cable bill, etc. There were other measures pretty important to the state, like funding for all of the claims against the state, funding for the medical school, funding for APEC security, etc. So, 6:00 pm passed. Most of us figured common sense would prevail and there were would be a last minute passage of bills. Around 9:30 pm, the Senate and House came back to pass only four revenue bills (including, ironically, the pension tax). The House/Senate raised far less then needed to fund the budget. Then they announced they were done. And . . that was that. There were hordes of stunned bill supporters walking around.