Majority members of the Senate Rules Committee dispatched 28 budget bills in about an hour's time Tuesday, sending them to the full Legislature for consideration under strictures that should streamline floor action also. The Legislature is expected to meet next week.
Debate on the budget appropriations bills will be restricted to three minutes per side, and no amendments may be offered to any of them. Rules Chairwoman Anne Golden said the restriction will protect the integrity of the budget figures.
"You can't tinker with them on the floor. You've got to vote them up or down," she said. "It expedites the process."
Golden ran a tight ship in Tuesday's Rules meeting. She relied on majority colleague Sen. Gregory Bennerson to move the bills – the role Golden played last week in the Finance Committee – and Sens. Vargrave Richards and Judy Gomez voted with Golden and Bennerson to approve the measures. The other three members of the committee – Sens. Adelbert Bryan, Adlah Donastorg and Almando Liburd – were absent.
The committee dealt with the least controversial bills Tuesday, many of them simple fund transfers. It also approved the budgets for the Territorial Court and the University of the Virgin Islands.
It is scheduled to act on the most significant budget bills starting at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday. On the agenda is the Omnibus Act of 2001, a 213-page document setting in place a myriad of unrelated policy measures as well as the executive budget – the primary appropriations measure for all executive branch departments and agencies. Also on the agenda is a bill to restructure the Industrial Development agencies of the government and the Technology Enterprise Act of 2000.
Golden said after the meeting that if the majority caucus finishes with the Legislature's budget in time, it too will be on Wednesday's agenda.
The plan is for all budget bills to go to the floor with under the closed rule with the one exception being the Omnibus Act, Golden said.
