March 23, 2011 Greetings from the Capitol! We’ll be putting in long hours this week as we finalize our budget bills by a self-imposed deadline of this Friday. A month ago we established targets for overall spending in each major area–such as education, transportation, agriculture, public safety–but now we have to put the meat on [...]

Greetings from the Capitol! I took my first major floor votes this week: a budget bill, which was our first step to reduce the $6.2 billion deficit; another bill to lift the moratorium on nuclear power plants; and a bill that sets up alternative pathways to teacher certification. They will be reconciled with House bills [...]