Today the Legislature met and passed another major deadline on the way to adjournment. All bills that were referred to a fiscal committee must have advanced from committee to the floor to be considered still in play.

There are a handful of bills that are deemed necessary to implement the budget that will be in play until the end, but for the majority of policy bills today was do or die.

Both the Senate and House fiscal committees held brief public hearings to advance a handful of bills to the next step in the process before the deadline this evening. The majority of time by both committees was spent taking action on the long list of bills that have been in front of the committees all week.

The Senate Ways & Means committee did not take action on any higher education bills related to the public, four-year institutions today. The House Appropriations advanced only a few, including legislation to remove tuition-setting authority from higher education institutions (HB 1696), align state residency laws for veterans with federal law (HB 1825), and creating a pilot project on performance-based scholarships in the State Need Grant program (HB 2041).

Next week the Senate and House will spend time on their respective floors to advance legislation from one chamber to the other chamber for further consideration.  Bills must have moved from their respective floors to the other chamber by the end of day on March 11.