A clear explanation of what happened Monday

July 6th – 4 bills are passed unanimously by the Legislature. #1 – we fund K-12 education at the 2009 level, plus a 2% inflationary rate required by state law. This means schools stay open, class sizes stay reasonable, and teachers are rehired. #2 – we agree to negotiate on 5 smaller "chunks" of funding for K-12 education, with resolution required by October 1st. Until we negotiate an agreement, schools can spend what they've already budgeted in these areas: soft capital, desegregation, career ladder, early kindergarten, excess utilities. The October 1st deadline was self-imposed – if we don't have an agreement by then, schools automatically get full funding in each of these 5 areas. #3 – we make a technical change to state law regarding how local governments pay the state for health care. This was a federally required change in order to qualify for stimulus money to pay for health care. The Governor's veto last week eliminated this "fix" – so we put it back in law. Now we meet the federal requirements for stimulus money. #4 – we adjourned the special session so that "rank and file" members don't have to come to work every day while no formal action is taking place. To have them come to work every day when we don't have an agreement yet simply wastes state money. This change says that legislators will only get paid on the days that we come to work (duh, right?).

Tomorrow – Republican and Democrat leaders in the House and the Senate will meet to set a schedule for our work. We have to negotiate about 70% of the state budget from scratch, and that takes time. We have to redo the budget in several key areas: higher education, health care, social services, and some portions of k-12 education (see above). These areas are the top concern for Democrats, so this is very important to us. This is going to be hard – we have a deficit of about 2 billion right now, and that's a hard hole to fill. So leadership will work on crafting an agreement that everyone can live with. I anticipate that this will be the hardest thing we've ever done at the Legislature.

In the coming weeks – As we work, House Democratic leadership will communicate with our "rank and file" members via phone conferences to make sure that everyone agrees with what we're working on. Once we have a resolution to this budget shortfall, all members will be called back to the Legislature by the Speaker of the House and the Senate President and we'll vote on a budget package.