Carpi & Clay – Well, the Governor surprised us today – we were planning on doing a quick memo saying Happy New Year, we are looking forward to the Legislature returning and seeing what the Governor would be proposing in his 2012-13 budget, but the Governor jumped the gun and released his budget today rather than next Tuesday the 10th, as had been originally planned. The Governor claims the structural deficit is down to approximately $5 billion from the prior years of around $20 billion. Should his tax initiative (an estimated $7 billion will be collected in taxes) fail on the November ballot there are trigger cuts for many programs to further reduce spending. We are still reading through the details of the budget and a further analysis will be provided soon.

Some dates to note as this is the second year of the two-year session – January 13th is the last day for policy committees to hear bills from the first year of the session. January 31st is the last day for the floors of each house to pass bills from the first year of the session. February 24th is the last day for bills to be introduced for this session. Expect to see lots of new amendments as bills try to meet these January deadlines and lots of activity in these first few months of the session.