Good News and Bad News: House is in Session

Recently, we wrote a blog post about the inaction on Beacon Hill and the lack of meaningful progress on important issues.

Well, we have good news and bad news.

Good news first: The House of Representatives will be in formal session today.

The bad news: They are coming in for the express purpose of spending money.

Some of this spending is necessary. For example, members will be voting on additional funding for snow and ice costs, a priority we've spoken about before. And, given Friday's unfortunate weather forecast, it's something that must be tended to immediately.

But, this funding is contained within a larger $325 million spending bill that includes things like mid-year pay raises and scores of new policy initiatives. The Boston Herald is running a good Associated Press story about more of what's in the bill.

If nothing else, it looks like members of the House still know how to spend lots of money.

What's not mentioned is that there was apparently an order passed by the House yesterday which sets forth how the bill would be considered today. Orders can typically narrow the scope of what is allowed to be debated or amended in bills. There is no text of the order posted online, so one has only to speculate what's in this order. But, in our experience, it's unusual for a supplemental budget to be considered with this sort of order in place.

Why did legislators choose to pass an order for this bill today? Perhaps we will find out later this afternoon.