Ways & Means reviews technical changes to H.955, schedules brief recess before planned vote

The Ways & Means Committee met April 10 for a final technical review of H.955 and agreed to take a brief recess before returning to vote, the committee chair said. Staff presented draft 4.1 and an updated timeline that reflected committee additions and changes to effective dates, contingency deadlines and new sections the committee added.

The committee discussed several substantive edits. Legislative council staff described a new requirement for facilitators working with union-school-district study committees to monitor ongoing General Assembly work and to share the most up-to-date fiscal modeling with study committees, a change added at a member's request so committees would have current numbers as they become available. Staff also noted changes to the bill's effective-dates provisions and said one contingency would require the Joint Fiscal Office (JFO) to produce data by Dec. 15, 2029.

Committee members pressed staff over how the foundation-formula contingency is written. One member said the contingency, as drafted, could allow the formula to be implemented without a subsequent affirmative legislative vote after analysis and proposed adding language that would require an affirmative vote on the foundation formula once the JFO and other analyses are complete. The chair said the committee would "sit with that" and continue through remaining items before…