2010 NC House proposed budget and “money report” posted

2010 Budget (SB 897 Bill Status History)

• New – Text – Proposed House Committee substitute for Senate Bill 897 to be presented to House Finance Committee 6/1/2010.                      (Table of Contents)

• New – Report – House Appropriations Committee Report on the Continuation, Expansion and Capital Budgets for Proposed House Committee Substitute for Senate Bill 897, 3rd Edition, June 1, 2010

NC Bill drafting requests still down 31%

Total bill drafting requests received by staff for the 2010 short session of the North Carolina General Assembly are down over 31% from the same point after convening of the 2008 short session.  There are two conflicting trends — 1) Requests to the Research Division are up over 14%, probably a reflection of more study committees meeting and recommending substantive legislation, and 2) Requests to the Bill Drafting Division are down over 40%, a reflection of a drop off in special appropriations bill requests.  The 31% drop is almost identical to that reported last week.

		2008	2010	CHANGE
				2008-2010
RESEARCH DIVISION		256	293	+14.45%
DRAFTING DIVISION		1196	711	-40.55%
GRAND TOTAL		1452	1004	-30.85%

2010 NC budget as approved by Senate committees

Here is the page to keep up with NC budget news at the General Assembly:

http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/News/NewsArchive.pl

This is the version of the 2010 Senate version of the NC budget approved by the Appropriations and Finance Committees May 18, 2010, to be considered on the Senate floor May 19, 2010.

New – Text – Finance Committee Substitute for Senate Bill 897 5/18/2010, includes committee amendments from Appropriations Committee.

(Table of Contents)

2010 NC Senate draft “money” report on the web

2010 Budget (SB 897 Bill Status History)

• Text – Draft Committee Substitute for Senate Bill 897, Appropriations Act of 2010, prepared for Senate Appropriations Committee meeting on May 18, 2010.
• New – Report – Senate Appropriations Committee Report on the Continuation, Expansion, and Capital Budgets for Proposed Committee Substitute for Senate Bill 897 — May 18, 2010

2010 Senate draft budget on the web

The draft budget bill for Tuesday’s Senate Appropriations Committee has been posted to the web:

 

2010 Budget (SB 897 Bill Status History)

New – Report – Draft Committee Substitute for Senate Bill 897, Appropriations Act of 2010, prepared for Senate Appropriations Committee meeting on May 18, 2010.

NC Bill Drafting requests down 31%

Total bill drafting requests received by staff for the 2010 short session of the North Carolina General Assembly are down over 31% from the same point after convening of the 2008 short session.  There are two conflicting trends — 1) Requests to the Research Division are up over 21%, probably a reflection of more study committees meeting and recommending substantive legislation, and 2) Requests to the Bill Drafting Division are down over 42%, a reflection of a drop off in special appropriations bill requests.    

		2008	2010	CHANGE
				2008-2010
RESEARCH DIVISION		221	268	+21.27%
DRAFTING DIVISION		1066	610	-42.78%
GRAND TOTAL		1287	878	-31.78%

New election law lets absentee ballots come in until Friday

A new law passed by the General Assembly in 2009 and effective beginning with today’s primary election made a number of changes relating to absentee voting — primarily extending the date for receipt of voted ballots.  Under the old law, ballots had to be received by the county board of elections by 5:00 pm on the day before the election.  Under the new law, ballots can be received up until 5:00 pm Friday after the election, a four day extension.  Civilian ballots received “late” have to be postmarked by the day of the election, while there is no such requirement for military ballots (many military installations do not postmark outgoing mail).

Each county board of elections has to post daily a list of ballots received the extra four days.  The “late” ballots can be counted by the county at anytime from this Saturday through the Tuesday May 11 canvass, with each county deciding when to count.

How many ballots are involved? For civilian ballots, here’s how many were outstanding* through Monday’s mail:

1,346 Democrats

   988 Republicans

         8 Libertarian

   102 Unafiiliated (these will be counted only for nonpartisan races, unaffiliated who chose a party ballot are included in the party categories above.)

I’m going to predict that half the outstanding ballots listed above will be voted by Friday. About 75% of all civilian mailout absentee ballots had already been voted as of Monday.

There were also about 8,500 military absentee ballots sent out, but 7,500 were sent out automatically as required by federal law to all military who voted absentee in 2008 (this was required by a federal law that has been repealed as of this fall’s general election as part of a bill improving other parts of the military absentee process.) As of yesterday, only 3% of those 7,500 ballots had actually been voted. While there are still about 8,100 military absentee ballots still out, I would be surprised if more than 250 more come in voted this week. I have not analyzed these by party.

*I analyzed the absentee data file absentee05xx04xx2010.zip  posted at the SBOE website

UPDATE 5/7/2010:  Tuesday and Wednesday the following ballots came in that would not have been counted under the old law: 437 civilian, 14 military, and 16 overseas ballots.   (Monday or Tuesday I will have information on what was received Thursday and Friday, the final two days)

UPDATE 5/10/2010: With Friday’s deadline for receipt of absentee ballots having passed, the new law resulted in a total of 763 absentee ballots counted that would have been rejected under the former law: 697 civilian, 31 military, and 35 overseas ballots.