As we begin to see the flowers of May, we are also almost at the end of the legislative session. All bills must be acted on by the Senate and House by June 3rd. That means we have only a month left for this wild legislative ride to be over. There will certainly be bills that the House and Senate do not agree on so Committees of Conference will be formed in June. You can be sure there will be a Committee of Conference on the budget. The resolution to the House and Senate differences on bills of the will have to be finally acted on by June 24th. The end is near.

The Senate is finishing up its agency presentations for the next budget. The Senate Finance Committee will hold public hearing Tuesday and then beginning on Wednesday, the 5th, the Committee will actually begin its work of creating their own budget out of what the House sent over. Do we expect the Senate budget to mirror the House budget?  Absolutely not. For example, the Senate has passed and is hoping the House passes a bill to exempt PPP (Payment Protection Program) grants from business taxation. The price tag is a hit to the state revenues of about $90M. We expect they will add dental benefits for those on the State Medicaid program, which may cost up to $11M. These are just a few examples of additional expenses that may become part of the Senate budget. The $50,000 question is what is going to be cut from the House budget? 

Besides the budget there are many issues that impact business that are being discussed. For our smaller businesses, SB 101 which increases the gross business income from $50,000 to $75,000 for filing a BPT tax return had a lengthy hearing on the House Ways and Means Committee. They are discussing with DRA what it would look like to index the increases instead of giving such a big one-time increase. Even though revenues are coming in above projections, the Committee still seems concerned about any lessening of revenue. 

It looks like this will not be the year that we move to Atlantic Standard Time. So plan on continuing to move those clocks.

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Government Affairs Committee.