The sixth and seventh weeks of the 2012 supplemental session are when everything trades places in Olympia.

Valentine’s Day marked a deadline for both the House and Senate. All bills orignating in the House or Senate must have passed their respective chamber and moved to the opposite chamber. The House had until the end of today to move bills from their respective policy committees to the floor or a fiscal committee. The Senate has until Friday, February 24 to move policy bills out of committee.

This will be followed by marathon fiscal committee meetings beginning February 24 and going through February 27.

This week the focus of the higher education related committees (i.e. House Higher Education and  Senate Higher Education & Workforce Development) will be to move bills forward to the floor or to an appropriation committee.

In the meantime, the appropriations committees (i.e. Senate Ways & Means ,  House Ways & Means, House Education Appropriations) will begin to take up the policy bills referred to committee in order to determine what bills will move forward to the floor by the next deadline – February 27 which marks the date by which bills must move from their respective appropriation committee and to either the Senate or House floor.