Posted on 08/05/2004 8:29:26 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
SACRAMENTO – Lawmakers and lobbyists dashed around the Capitol's fourth floor Wednesday, bending ears, cutting deals, pleading for help to pass 499 bills before the Senate and Assembly appropriations committees.
"OK. We've gone through 56 bills and we've got 173 to do," the Senate Appropriations chairwoman Dede Alpert, D-San Diego, said four hours into her hearing.
The crowd in Room 4203 sighed like a leaking balloon. So many bills. So little time.
As the Legislature reconvened Wednesday for the first time since passing a hard-fought budget, it felt the pressure of the clock ticking toward the end of the 2003-04 session, the last chance for bills to clear the Capitol's version of "Survivor." Fail passage and get kicked off the island.
There were bills on school-bus cleanliness, confidentiality of police reports, ammunition sales and horse racing; bills on oak woodlands conservation, motel rates, voting machines, Internet piracy, fishing trawl nets, tugboat escorts and harbor air pollution - all seeking approval from the appropriations committees, which must ratify measures with a fiscal impact above $150,000.
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
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