Legislative leaders have decided to temporarily adjourn the 2020 session until March 31st due to COVID-19 concerns.
Political analyst Bernie Pinsonat says initially the plan was for the session to continue but for social distancing to be enforced, and for those at the Capitol to be checked for fever at the front door.
“I don’t think they had any choice, I think temperature was ok but you have too many people walking in and out of the Capitol every day, you had meetings, you had functions going on, you had close contact,” says Pinsonat.
Pinsonat says it’s the right call because it only would have taken one positive test to shut down the Capitol.
“Giving it a couple of weeks was a much better decision and I’m sure most of the people at the Capitol, lobbyists and everybody else is glad because they were going into a very uncomfortable situation,” says Pinsonat.
Pinsonat says the compressed schedule is likely going to result in non-essential legislation being abandoned, but regardless of delays, the constitution still requires that a be passed by July 1st. To accomplish that the Governor could be headed for yet another special session.
“No matter what we run into we can always have a special session, which we will probably have to have based on declining revenues and how it affects the state budget,” says Pinsonat.
