Monday, May 09, 2011

Major amendments to the Growth Management Act

Wow.   Major amendments to the Growth Management Act were apparently adopted by the Legislature on Friday, at the tail end of the session.    It's over 300 pages, so analysis will have to wait.

Here's a link to the bill, (HB 7207).
Behind the scenes, there was major confusion on Thursday.   The House had adopted a version of the bill two weeks ago (HB 7129).  It was in a Senate Committee, along with a complete amendment from Bennett that (apparently) represented the consensus of what should pass.  However, Bennett's own bill was also waiting for action by the entire body, with a separate set of amendments that were similar but not the same.   On Thursday, the Senate took up Bennett's bill, passed the amendments and approved the amended bill.  Someone then realized that the Senate had in effect passed the wrong bill. 

On Friday, a conference committed report on a different bill was brought forward which had all of the agreed on language (that was also sitting in the Senate committee as the amendment to HB 7129).  The House passed, it, and then the Senate passed it as well. 

Given the other fights between the House and Senate on Friday, this demonstrates a significant amount of consensus.

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