End-of-session budget hearings and bill numbers
Closing time: Legislature's budget committees prepare to wrap it up for 2023
(August 29, 2023 note: A later post here contains more up-to-date information on 2023’s end-of-session budget bills.)
Each year, the Legislature considers an end-of-session budget package—primarily comprised of language to “clean up” provisions in June’s annual state budget package. Because of the State Constitution’s single subject rule for bills, the end-of-session package typically consists of 10 to 20 budget bills. The Assembly Budget Committee and the Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review have scheduled hearings on August 30 to review the 2023 end-of-session budget package. Floor votes in both houses are expected thereafter—before the end of the 2023 legislative session on September 14.
Budget Vehicles to Watch. As suggested in the Senate committee’s file hearing notice, the universe of new budget bills for the end-of-session package includes both Assembly Bills and Senate Bills 104, 135-144, 148, and 151-157. The package likely will not include all of these bills at the end. (This Substack will send one or two emails noting the emergence of these bills in print over the next week or so. I will also post more timely updates on each bill via LinkedIn and Threads.)
Items in End-of-Session Package. AB/SB 104 is expected to be 2023-24’s second “budget bill jr.,” consisting of amendments to this year’s budget act. (Each group of trailer bills coming to the Floor of the Legislature is bundled with a budget bill jr.) The remaining bills (AB/SBs 135-144, 148, and/or 151-157) will be trailer bills to implement or clean up provisions of the annual budget package.
Each trailer bill generally contains multiple statutory changes related to a single budget area: for example, health, human services, developmental services, child care, K-12 education, higher education, public safety, courts, resources and environmental protection, energy, state government (sometimes called “general government”), and ratification of state employee labor agreements (also known as “memoranda of understanding,” or MOUs).
Some items discussed in the June budget process were deferred for later consideration, and some of those are likely items for the end-of-session budget package. Most items in the end-of-session package, however, are likely to be fairly technical.
