This week, the Senate and the Assembly Appropriations Committees took up their Suspense Files. The Appropriations Committee is the committee in each legislative house that reviews policy bills and assesses the legislations potential fiscal impacts to the State. The Appropriations Committees of both the Senate and the Assembly have a separate file where they can place bills that have a particularly large State cost associated with them – this is known as the Suspense File. Each Committee then waits until the Governor's May Revision has been released, and the majority, if not all, of the Budget Subcommittees have met, to assess the costs of all the bills on the Suspense File. Legislative leadership is consulted, priorities of individual legislators are requested, and determinations are made regarding which bills are permitted to move forward in the legislative process, ostensibly based upon which bills the State can afford. Oftentimes, substantive amendments are taken to a bill to reduce State costs in order to get a bill off Suspense.
A number of key RCRC issues were addressed on the Suspense files this week, including medical marijuana, groundwater issues, mining, and Medi-Cal reimbursement rates. A complete list of RCRC-related bills and their current status can be accessed here, or in the Legislative Update section of this edition of The Barbed Wire.