|
60th Legislative Session - Sine Die - April 27
The Senate went Sine Die Friday morning, April 27, just as the House Appropriations Committee was considering a motion to pass an amended HB 2 (the original budget bill) to the House Floor for debate. The Free Conference Committee on HB678, the new school funding vehicle had been meeting that morning and was in recess after failing to come to any consensus. The administration continued to insist the education funding bill incorporate revenue enhancements (the DOR tax bills amended into HB833) to pay for any increase in funding. Senator Story stated the legislature set the priority on funding when they increased the budget by over $170 million and it was inappropriate to be looking at revenue enhancements on the 90th day of the session.
The amendments to HB833 incorporated all the Department of Revenue bills we continue to oppose. Scroll down to see the op-ed by the Montana Society of CPAs and the Montana Taxpayers Association. The 2007 Session Link reveiws these proposals.
The offer, made by the administration the night before, was rejected and no other compromise could be reached (although there was one additional offer to remove REITs from the list of revenue ehancers, but to leave the rest of the Department of Revenue proposals). At the link below we have provided as many of the documents we were able to obtain from the last moments of the session.
After the Senate adjourned, the full House met and debated whether to place the budget bills on the board to be passed to avoid a Special Session – the motions failed on party line votes. Without a budget, any tax relief or a school funding vehicle, a Special Session was imminent.
Senator Cooney, President of the Senate, called a meeting of the leadership for May 7 in
Billings. The Legislative leadership appeared to make progress on how the process would work for a special session and concluded the meeting after about one hour. Within one-half hour of the legislative leadership meeting, the Governor placed a call for a Special Session to begin that Thursday, May 10.
|
