The Governor will sign the budget into law this Sunday, June 30, and it will go into effect July 1. As I’ve mentioned before, the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau has published a number of interesting papers concerning changes to taxes and fees, non-policy items in the budget, and the budget’s impact on property taxes, among others. The Governor has the authority to veto particular language in the budget, but has not yet announced any changes he might make.

The Assembly is currently in its summer recess and, in accordance with state statute, will not reconvene until September. In the meantime, committees will still be holding hearings, and legislators and their staff will be researching new ideas for Fall. With the exception of July 4 and 5 next week, my office will still be open during regular hours throughout the summer, so I hope you will continue to stay in touch with me regarding your state questions and concerns. During the summer, I will send out e-Updates for weeks with noteworthy events and/or information. If nothing very significant happens in a given week, though, I will hold off for that week.

I want to thank everyone who filled out one of my Spring Surveys to help give me some insight into your thoughts on the 2013-2015 state budget. Your answers and comments helped me work with fellow legislators to lobby for changes to the Governor’s original proposal, and I think the budget bill in its current form is an improvement from where we started. In that vein, I wanted to share with you the numerical results from the survey. While it is hard to quantify a lot of the written comments, we did read them all, but they are not included in the graphical results.