Week 6 – Legislative Update 2025

Published date: February 18, 2025

APWA Upcoming Events Report  Week 6

Week 5 comes to a close and Week 6 brings the first legislative deadline: the policy bill cutoff on February 21^st.   The fiscal committees will labor on for another week after, until February 28, and, due to the bleak budget outlook, a lot of bills will “die” for the session since there is no money to pay for bills with large fiscal notes.   A few bills that have useful titles that may be necessary to implement the budget will be immune to these deadlines.

The budgets deficits in both the operating and the transportation budgets are starting to cast a larger shadow.  The transportation budget has an estimated $4 billion shortage over the next three biennia.  Unless new revenue is passed, only those projects currently under contract will continue.  Everything else will be paused. That includes both state and local projects.

There is a rumor that bills necessary to make budget cuts will be introduced in the coming weeks; bills that are necessary to implement the budget cutting process that the state agencies have done.  State agencies have done budget exercises with four percent cuts, six percent cuts, and, I’m told, eight percent cuts.  When I asked one of the legislative leaders whether local governments can expect general fund budget help, I was told that bordered on delusional.

At this point, there are 1,753 bills introduced. That’s also the year, 1753, that a young George Washington traveled to the Ohio Country to demand the French withdraw their forces from the region.  We celebrate his birthday on February 17^th, President’s Day, although his birthday is actually February 22^nd.  HB 1446 would change the name of the holiday from President’s Day to George Washington’s Birthday.  Enjoy your holiday; I’ll be working.

Last Thursday, the House Transportation Committee held a hearing on HB 1921, the road users charge (RUC) bill.  Over 20,000 people signed up to have their position noted on the bill. The Senate Transportation Committee will take up the  senate companion bill, SB 5726, during Week 6, on Tuesday, February 18^th.

Those interested in keeping up with the daily events of the session can so by watching Legislative Review, at www.tvw.org  .  Regarding bills on the APWA tracking list, below are the hearings set for week 6.  As you will see, many of them are “exec session” which means the committee will consider amendments and vote on the bill’s passage from committee.  Bills with fiscal impacts of over $50,000 will be referred to a fiscal committee and likely die there.