Things are still moving slowly at the legislature by historical standards. The House Health Committee held its first meeting of the year last week with an abbreviated agenda and the Senate Health Committee didn’t even meet.
The rumors circulating are that the Legislature will send a continuation budget to Governor Hobbs this next week even though they know she’ll veto such a proposal. Experts in the process say that would be risky because Governor Hobbs could line-item veto the budget, which would force the Legislature to live with last year’s bipartisan budget for any agency the Governor approves.
If the Legislature attempts to pass a continuation budget next week, it is also speculated that committee milestone deadlines will need to be extended because of the slow start over the last three weeks and many, many bills haven’t been heard in committee yet.
Tuesday’s Senate Health Committee Agenda doesn’t really have any blockbuster bills on it. We are signed in for SB1088 – Good Samaritan; drug overdose; extension – which would remove the sunset provision currently in place protecting folks from tort liability exposure when helping someone having an opioid overdose episode.
House Health on Monday has a more robust Agenda. We’re signed up in support of 3 bills, against one, and neutral on one. None rise to the level of asking to speak on the bills at the podium. You can look at our tracking spreadsheet to see the status of the various bills.