April 16, 2024
Lawmakers face the final deadline of the legislative calendar at the end of this week, April 19th. That is the date by which omnibus finance bills, bills that spend money in the current biennium, must have made it out of committee and be lined up for final votes on both House and Senate floors. This is typically not the final stop for bills, House and Senate omnibus bills very rarely align perfectly, and as such normally require a conference committee to be assembled to iron out the differences. That conference committee process will start in earnest when lawmakers return from the final recess of the Session, which is scheduled to take place next week on Monday and Tuesday.
Omnibus finance bills are much smaller in scope in the second year of the biennium, the two-year budget is already set so these bills are to supplement that spending. Because the state has a surplus there are some additional resources to allocate this year. As highlighted in previous updates, joint budget targets have been agreed by leadership, so these omnibus bills fill in the details of how that money is to be spent. It sounds like many of these omnibus bills are going to be combined with one another for floor votes and for conference committees, but that has yet to take place.
Details on the omnibus House and Senate Economic Development bills can be found here:
One individual bill that we are tracking to see if it ends up in an omnibus bill is
Senate File 5157 and
House File 4994, bills which would expand prevailing wage requirements to include all tax increment financing projects that are for either a multifamily housing development of 25 or more units, or any multifamily housing development receiving $100,000 or more in TIF assistance. The Senate file was laid over in the Senate Labor Committee to potentially be included in their omnibus bill, but did not make it into that bill. It could still wind up in an eventual omnibus tax bill, so EDAM will continue to keep a close eye on it and keep members informed of opportunities to weigh in as the Legislative Session starts to wind to a close in mid-May.