Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Tuesday March 27, 2012

So after three weeks of silence on my part I’m back to (hopefully) regular posts. After the Town Meeting break I was away at an ABA event while the legislature worked to meet the crossover deadline. Then, last week the House, at least, spent most of the week on the floor advancing the bills that made the Friday, March 16th deadline. The budget passed along with a number of other bills that are now in the Senate; the same thing happened there also.

I can report that a number of the issues we’ve been following and that I’ve been reporting on have passed the original chamber and have crossed over. This week is full as the committees of jurisdiction in the second chamber have scheduled initial hearings on those bills. Here’s what’s on the calendar as of this writing:

Today the House Judiciary will review S.116, the probate proceedings bill while the Senate Judiciary Committee will meet Magistrate Barry Peterson for his confirmation hearing. Later today the House General Committee will review S. 52, an act relating to workplace bullying.

Tomorrow is a bit crazy with both judiciary committees doing work of interest to us at the same time! The house committee will be reviewing S. 203, the child support enforcement bill while the senate side will look at H.327, the uniform principal and income act; H. 403, the rewrite of the foreclosure statutes; H. 600, the amendment to foreclosure mediation; as well as H. 272, the private roads bill. This is all happening while the House General Committee will continue its work on S.52.

On Thursday the retention of Judges Carroll, Pearson and Magistrate Peterson will be decided in a joint assembly at 1 PM. On Friday afternoon the Senate Finance Committee will take testimony on H.565, which contains the changes to the licensed lender law.

Clearly there’s a lot going on this week. I should mention that the bill dealing with amendments to perpetual conservation easements remains on the Senate Action while the Notice Calendar contains S. 143, the bill energy disclosure bill. There are issues with this bill that we’ve opposed. It came out of the Senate Natural Resources Committee on a 3-2 vote. It is stripped of most of its language by the Senate Finance Committee in its amendment that really just leaves intact a study committee. An interesting floor battle is taking shape for later this week perhaps.

Also, the confirmations of Judges Arms and Maley are still on the calendar for Senate action.

I’ll post updates as I can this week. Thanks for reading.

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