In what has to be the shortest committee meeting in history, a meeting of the joint House and Senate Appropriations committees just broke up after some 10 minutes, and the House accepted the Governor’s Executive Order that, according to subscription only Gongwer, cuts $344 million in spending.
After finally getting Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop to the table with his Top Secret budget plan, the Governor, the budget director, the state Treasurer, the Lt. Governor and the Speaker of the House met with Bishop for the past two days
The Senate Appropriations Committee is set to being meeting at 3:30 p.m. to consider accept the executive order, but the committee is then expected to approve the negative supplemental to close out the total estimated $950 million shortfall in the current budget.
O f course, the Senate cuts are still the best kept secret in the state because Bishop does not have the backbone to tell the public, who he works for, what the cuts will be. We assume they will come out at the Appropriations Committee meeting, but in light of the extraordinary measure he has taken in the last 36 days or so to keep the plan from us, if he indeed has a plan, nothing will surprise me.
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