Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Ending Budget Sessions

As most Wyomingites know, ever session of the legislature isn't a full session.  Every other year is a budget session. This year is a regular session.

A bill is in the legislature to eliminate budget sessions and make them regular sessions. 

There's solid logic to this.  The budget sessions have become regular sessions in spite of themselves.  They're more constrained in time, but legislators nonetheless try to run through a bunch of regular bills through them. Why bother with the charade is the logic, and it's pretty solid logic.

Having said that, for careful observers there's always a certain sense of dread about the full session as the legislature has more time to monkey with stuff.  Making that occur only every other year provides a little relief.  And on that, the legislature isn't actually required to have a budget session, its just allowed to.

It'd be nice, in an odd way, to have the legislature actually skip the budget sessions for awhile before just giving up on them. That would make the general session really packed, but maybe that would also keep out a lot of the bills that really waste time by being simply unpassable.  But passing on budget sessions is asking for more restraint than most deliberative bodies can muster.

Anyhow, there's a bill out there.

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