Ryan Ray
The presiding officers of the Legislature’s two chambers, Senate President Andy Gardiner and House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, made a show of unity Tuesday after a turbulent beginning to 2015 Special Session A.
They issuing a joint statement early Tuesday afternoon saying they will allow budget conference subchairs to continue to work out their differences rather than have leadership take control of the process.
“Over the last three days, our budget conference committees have worked together to finalize key portions of our state budget,” wrote the bicameral duo, who battled all spring and into the summer over health care expansion and tax cuts.
“Each committee has made great progress toward finalizing its areas of the budget as well as proviso language and our implementing and conforming bills. With such progress being made at this level, we have authorized our conference committees to continue their work through the close of business this evening.”
Outstanding budget issues were originally slated at noon Tuesday to be “bumped up” for hashing out by Appropriations chairs Sen. Tom Lee and Rep. Richard Corcoran.
“We look forward to continuing this steady progress over the next few days, with the goal of finalizing the budget by early next week,” the statement concluded.
