Floor Speech: April 17, 2023
So we all know, again, we’re at 90 days plus one; so now we’re hearing it again about, “we’re past the law”, “we’re not going to be out in 90 days.” And I wanted to remind some folks, they may not remember this but, you yourself [Senate Chair Stevens] actually put it in a bill with some research and tried. We saw that last year. Unfortunately, we had some members that were not comfortable enough to move that one forward.
But you recognize the fact that we are ignoring a law that was organically passed by the people via initiative, and it gets tiresome at times – right? We all get tired of being beat up for that. It’s like, “let’s not do that anymore”. So, I think, in retrospect looking at it kind of supportive of that, even though I know that it was organically the people who wanted that.
So, maybe it’s time we look at that and let’s repeal that if we’re not going to follow it. It’s a little bit like the PFD, I think we’re all getting tired of [getting] beat up on that – like the fiscal policy workers [with] “let’s just go to 50/50 if we’re not going to follow it, let’s just change it [or] do something else.”
And I wanted to highlight something as well. I took a little time over the weekend to research because I wasn’t really sure what every other state did. So, like you have done in the past, I took some time and looked at each individual state. And realized about half the states actually do 90 days or less – 90, 60, 40. Some of them, like Texas which is massive compared to us (not size of course, but just in population and budget), only meets 60 days every other year. And they get the job done.
So we can do it, but for our own reasons we don’t. And that’s fine…if we choose as a legislature not to do it, we can do that. I wanted to highlight that for the folks back home and say, “Look, if we’re simply not going to operate that way or we’re going to operate within the constitutional limit which is 121 days, maybe it’s time we take that off the table so we stop fighting about it.” Because that does get to be tiresome at times.
I thought it was worth that “Ninety plus one”, since the House just discussed this last week, would put that on the record for the folks how other people do it, how we decide we’re going to do it, and maybe it’s time that we go ahead and take a look at a change so we stop fighting about it.