Becky Edwards

This morning I was able to pass out two of my bills from the House. HB 153, “Recycling of Electronic Items,” and HB 169, “Refinery Amendments,” are now in the possession of the Senate. The recycling bill involved a lot of questions from the House body, but did pass which was very gratifying after the considerable efforts of so many who’ve been involved with the recommendations that served as the framework for this bill. The refinery bill received more immediate support and passed quite easily. Other items of note today include the second caucus lunch/meeting of the week. Each day this week we are meeting during lunch as a Republican caucus to discuss and finalize the budget. House leadership has been given the responsibility to find a way to remove the latest $21 million cut to public education. The next step of that will be getting buy in from the Senate and the Governor, which is not as easy as it may sound. From here on out the House will only hear Senate bills and the Senate will only hear House bills. Rumor has it we don’t have as many bills as in years past and we may not be going as late on Thursday night. Just once I want to be serving when we go down to the wire at midnight, but it doesn’t sound like it’s going to be this year.