The state legislature is now past the second funnel week of this year’s session and State Representative Ralph Watts expects that lawmakers will adjourn before their set deadline this year.
Watts says the implementation of “funnels” in the legislature has helped make the sessions more productive and more time efficient.
“It’s a very effective way of narrowing down the issues as the legislative time goes on. Without the funnel process itself legislatures in the past would go into May and June and debate would go on-and-on and it was hard to bring it to a close. The funnel process in itself is a restricting mechanism that both parties agreed upon and it’s a very effective way of narrowing the issues to get down to the core issues that we need to do in the legislature” says Watts.
While several bills are now considered “dead” for this session, Representative Watts says the big issues will still be addressed.
“I don’t know of any major issues that got narrowed out of the funnel. We’ve still got the bullying issue coming up, the Governor’s broadband imitative will be talked about and other than that the budget bill will be discussed.”
Watts says he fully expects the session to wrap up as much as three weeks ahead of the April 22nd scheduled end date.