Wednesday night: Careening toward a conclusion and a road trip
The House and Senate continue to careen toward a conclusion for the session. The Senate has left for this evening. The House, as of 10:52 p.m., is still in a standby mode waiting for a committee meeting to come back so they can get a bill done before midnight.
Late in the evening, the honorables were still dealing with a couple of a big bills.
The Voter Owned Elections Pilot bill, which some folks thought was a dead duck, passed the Senate on second reading and awaits third reading tomorrow. It then goes back to the House for concurrence. This is the measure that would make public financing available for a handful of council of state races, such as Agriculture Commissioner and the Insurance Commissioner.
Also, Senate passed the conference report on the landfill bill, also on second reading, before adjourning for the evening. That is the bill aimed at preventing mega-dumps. The House is running a second bill that will amend the landfill bill (confused yet?), basically aimed at making changes to clean up mistakes in the first bill.
Thursday morning update: More on the landfill measure from the Charlotte paper at this link.
I've been told that one item in that measure would repay companies who won't be able to build their dumps due to the moratoriums and limits for the fees paid to the state over the past year or so. I don't full understand that provision, but there you go.
Update: Senate Bill 6 is the fix bill. It's a gutted bill, which originally was meant to create an early organizational sessino for the General Assembly. Now it will modify the landfill bill.
Debate on this fix-it-up bill began at 11:43 p.m.
Rep. Pryor Gibson just told his fellow members that the House isn't going to give the main landfill bill a final vote until the Senate passes the fix-it-up bill.
Update The fix-it-up bill has passed and been sent to the Senate. The House has also passed the main landfill bill on second reading, and are scheduled to give it a full debate again Thursday. They won't pass it on third reading until the Senate passes the fix-it-up bill.
Update: If you're inclined, click here to listen to the 15 minutes of debate on the two landfill bills Thursday evening.
Those are two of the bigger items moving toward conclusion, with House and Senate leaders saying they'll be done tomorrow. Hints are that the honorables will be here pretty late into the evening, but you never know.
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Posting here will be light for a couple days. I'm heading out of town on a trip scheduled months ago, but will check in on things as time and travel allows.