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Monday, February 02, 2009
Ind. Law - This week at the General Assembly - Week 4 [Updated]
A few quotes from Bryan Corbin's weekly "Legislative Notebook" report today in the Evansville Courier & Press:
With Indiana's unemployment rate lurching up to 8.2 percent last week, the dual imperatives for state lawmakers and the Daniels administration are to put jobless Hoosiers back to work quickly and ensure them adequate unemployment benefits.[Updated 2/4/09] See this Corbin story today on the week so far.Lawmakers are crafting the next state budget amid plummeting revenues, even as Gov. Mitch Daniels has proposed cutting state agencies by 8 percent, higher education by 4 percent and flat-lining funding for K-12 education to avoid raising taxes or dipping into reserves.
What could change the equation considerably, however, is Indiana's potential $5 billion piece of the $819 billion federal economic stimulus pie,that Indiana could receive, if Congress approves the proposed stimulus in a few weeks. Having passed the U.S. House, it's now before the U.S. Senate.
Such a mammoth $5 billion payout to Indiana would be on top of the $28.3 billion general-fund state budget Daniels is requesting from the Legislature. Between $1.5 billion and $2 billion could be used for roads and bridges, mass transit, school improvements and clean water projects.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on February 2, 2009 08:04 AM
Posted to Indiana Law