With negotiations between the House and Senate having fallen apart for now, the Senate is moving forward with the enactment of a series of budget and revenue related bills, in their effort to try to get the budget done. For the first time in this budget process, we are now able to see support for legal services funding emerge from the Senate. While prior appropriations bills originated by the Senate have completely zeroed out any state appropriation for legal services, the bill expected to be passed Tuesday by the Senate has legal services funded at $3.064 million. This compares to the appropriation last fiscal year of $3.172 million, which was reduced by $100,000 during the course of the fiscal year, as a result of one of a number of freezes imposed by the governor on various budget lines, as revenues began to fall behind projections. For a full spreadsheet on the budget, see the attached.

Of course, passage of this appropriation bill would constitute action only by the Senate, without any agreement of the House or the Governor that they would support the bill. The total amount of the Senate budget is less than what was agreed to by lawmakers in their deal over two weeks ago. But with that deal having fallen apart, the Senate is now taking action to try to move the budget process forward. We’ll have to see whether there will be enough votes in the House to pass this version of the budget. There have been many false starts in this budget process as we all know. Rumors are that this may be the version that gets to the finish line; we’ll see. However, observers note that the appropriated amounts in this bill are very close to those agreed upon Monday by House and Senate Democrats and by the Governor, again making this look like a “deal,” without there really being a handshake. If the Senate acts Tuesday, with the House rules requiring three days to pass a bill, the budget could be enacted by as early as Friday.

The Senate is also expected to take up an amended HB 1607 Tuesday and to use this bill as a vehicle for the passage of a filing fee bill. The Senate version of the bill will impose a temporary fee of $10.25 for courts and $1 for legal services, and a permanent fee of $2.25 for District Attorneys, with no funding for domestic violence services. There will be a 25 month limit on the fee for the courts and legal services. This represents a significant reduction from the fee bill passed by the House, HB 1861, which allocated a $2.65 fee for legal services. See my prior posting about the House-passed version of the fee bill. The committee report on this amended bill estimates the revenue on each fee dollar as $2.8 million, which is lower than we had thought, but we’ll have to check this out. On a fiscal year basis, legal services would be at about half any annualized amount of expected revenue for this fiscal year, since collections will not start until 60 days after enactment of the bill, taking us nearly half way into the fiscal year. All of this means the House would still have to concur, so this is still another step from enactment and it is hard to tell right now how the House will respond to the changes from their version of the fee bill.