While you were busy getting the cottage together for holiday visiting relatives and other hangers on last week, state lawmakers were engaged in a little house cleaning of their own. They made a mad dash for a July first deadline to finish the new state budget. As Maxwell Smart use to opine, “missed it by (hands held apart) this much.”
After pulling an all-nighter Thursday and Friday, two days after the self-imposed deadline, 23 hours later at 9 a.m. Friday, the new spending document was on its ways to the governor for her blessing following a bipartisan vote from both the house and senate. Since her office was involved in the delicate budget negotiations with Republicans, it’s a good bet she’ll sign most of it pegged at around $84 million of your hard earned money although some R’s will try to convince you it is much lower. Beware.
Question: If you miss a deadline at work, are their consequences? Guess it depends on the boss but at any rate, it’s not a good look. In the legislature, where the code word last week was, “laws were made to be broken” they breezed past July one without even a grown. That’s because when they passed that law, they somehow forgot to attach some punishment. One lawmaker, who apparently did not get the memo about keeping your mouth shut about failing to meet the law, has now suggested that the governor, house speaker and senate leader all be docked pay for missing the deadline.
