Straight Talk From Steve

Last week the 107th Legislature came to an end. This year was the shorter 60-day session. For the past four years I have served on the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee; however, this year proved to be the most difficult year so far.

What made this year so difficult was that the Appropriations Committee had to appropriate $1.04 billion of federal funds from the American Recue Plan Act (ARPA).

In previous years the number of bills assigned to the Appropriations Committee never surpassed 50, but this year we had more than 120 bills to consider due to ARPA. These ARPA bills made requests tot...