Last week was the house of origin cutoff deadline, so now’s a good time to look at the session stats so far. The two chambers have:

• Introduced 2,850 bills (that includes companions) so far;
• Passed 671 bills to date (bills that have passed their house of origin); and
• Sent 11 bills to the Governor for signature.

By comparison, in the 2017 session (the last long session – data includes three special sessions), the Legislature introduced 2,236 bills and sent 377 to the Governor.

If you were thinking that it seems like there have been a lot more bills introduced in 2019 than typical, you are right. Taking a quick look back over the last five years, it looks like this is the greatest number of bills introduced in a single session. And each week, more bills still get dropped.

While bills continue to work through the committee process, next week we expect the House to introduce its budget proposal. The Economic and Revenue Forecast Council will release its revenue and caseload forecasts on Wednesday, March 20 which will provide the latest estimates for revenue and costs associated with caseloads. That information will likely help inform the final decisions of the House budget writers before they release their proposal. We expect it to come out on Monday, March 25. That same day, we will host around 75 city officials on Capitol Campus for our AWC Lobby Day event. There’s still space if you’d like to join us!

Your AWC Government Relations team will review the budget proposal and update our budget matrix with the impacts for cities and share that information in a Budget Alert email the following day.

We have been sharing cities’ budget priorities and hope that you have also shared them with your local legislators. Below is a quick overview or you can check out the video message.

Here is a quick snapshot of AWC’s budget priorities:

• Fully fund state shared revenue distributions for cannabis, liquor, and fire premium taxes as well as the criminal justice assistance distributions.
• Fully fund the Public Works Assistance Account (also known as the Public Works Trust Fund) and recommit to the program by restoring the REET and solid waste tax revenue streams that have been diverted away from the fund for critical infrastructure needs related to housing and culvert replacement.
• Make additional investments in affordable housing through the Housing Trust Fund as well as a funding a new sales tax credit tool to allow cities to target community investments.
• Fund a watershed approach to correcting fish-blocking culverts by fully funding the Fish Barrier Removal Board’s $50 million request.
• Fund the mental health field response grant program to allow cities to hire mental health professionals to work with our police departments in responding to individuals in crisis.
• Fund the Municipal Research and Services Center (MRSC) to allow them to continue to serve as a critical and cost-effective source of assistance for cities.

There are still a number of AWC priority bills that are necessary to implement the budget (NTIB) that are awaiting action, as well as other important policy bills that cities support – and a few that we continue to oppose. You can find out more about those bills on our weekly Hot Sheet.