The tax conference committee has an agreement and that could be an indication that things will be coming together in the other conference committees shortly. There is no guarantee of that, but it does create some sense of optimism and optimism has been sorely lacking throughout the session.
The agreement does contain the House provision that provides a credit to owners of agricultural property for the portion of their property tax bill attributable to school debt service. I have yet to see the language, but according to the spreadsheet, the program would cost approximately $90 million over the next biennium. This is a provision that SEE strongly supported both last year and this year and it is sorely needed to promote tax fairness in a number of SEE school districts.
No word on whether the omnibus supplemental appropriations conference committee will be meeting today. Until global targets are set (and they may well be set given that the tax conference committee has its target), it will be difficult for the individual subject areas to know how much money they will be having to work with. And even if the global target for the supplemental appropriations bill has been set, the target for each individual area will still have to be set.
And now I know you've been waiting for more "waiting" songs. This comes in as a request from Rich in Medford and it's a long distance dedication to Theresa in Madison, Wisconsin. The song is "Sitting, Wishing, Waiting" which I assure all of us are doing with glee over here at the Capitol complex.
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