Inside the tricky politics of special legislative sessions

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Lawmakers in a handful of states have been unexpectedly busy despite—or, let’s face it, because of—an election looming in two months.

Several state legislatures have been called into special session by governors, many of whom want to see their top priorities addressed before the November general election. There are only 11 gubernatorial races this year, so most governors are not up for reelection But there’s still plenty at stake for them in the upcoming contests: ballot measures that could pass, the makeup of legislative majorities and congressional delegations, and, in one case, the governor’s own bid for U.S. Senate.

Colorado Compromise

It was a pair of ballot measures that spurred a special session in Colorado. 

Lawmakers there reached a deal this week that would keep property tax relief measures off the ballot this November and for the next six years. The grand bargain came together Wednesday, when Democratic Gov. Jared Polis signed a bipartisan package of tax cuts into law and the proponents of the property tax relief initiatives withdrew their ballot questions.

Property taxes for homeowners have spiked since 2020, when voters repealed a constitutional amendment that limited the amount local governments could impose on homeowners compared to businesses. Critics said the so-called Gallagher Amendment made it hard for rural areas to fund local governments, while big cities like Denver received only modest benefits for explosive growth.

The new revenue that resulted from the amendment’s repeal helped fund schools and local governments but made it difficult for many families to pay their tax bills. This spring, the Democratic-controlled legislature passed a $1.3 billion property tax relief bill, but two conservative groups pushed for more spending controls through ballot initiatives.

Instead, the deal Polis signed Wednesday cuts property taxes by about $255 million in the 2026 tax year, trims residential assessment rates, includes more business property types in the commercial rate cut from earlier this year and sets a 5.25% growth cap on the property tax revenue collected by local governments and school districts. In comparison, the ballot initiatives would have resulted in a $2.4 billion cut.

“This is really an example of bringing folks together, who may not see eye to eye on every issue, on a path forward that’s better for Colorado, taxpayers, schools, fire districts—and better for everyone than taking great risks,” Polis said.

Advance Colorado, one of the groups pressing for a ballot measure, also praised the deal. 

“Today, Colorado taxpayers are the winners,” Michael Fields, the group’s president, said in a  statement. “Coloradans across the political spectrum have made it clear that they need substantial and meaningful property tax relief. Today, that is what this new law delivers.”

West Virginia Looks to Boost Child Care

Republican Gov. Jim Justice, the wealthy owner of coal mining companies and a candidate for U.S. Senate in this November’s elections, is seeking to cut taxes, too. He wants to call lawmakers back into session by the end of the month to lower income taxes and to fund child care services.

Justice said he would announce the dates for a special session on Monday. The governor has previously called for lawmakers to reduce income taxes by 5% to help residents cope with higher prices caused by inflation. “I mean, for crying out loud, we’ve got 400-plus million dollars in the income tax reserve fund,” the governor told reporters. “If we want to put some more money in there, let’s do that.”

The session would also be a chance for lawmakers to find funding for the state’s child care providers because the emergency funding the state is using to pay them now could run out by the end of the year.

No Guarantees for Governors

Although special sessions can be a convenient way to head off some political problems, they can create their own headaches. Several governors felt the pain this year.

In Nebraska, Republican Gov. Jim Pillen fell short of his goal of scaling back property taxes during an August special session. After a 17-day session—the second-longest in the history of Nebraska's unicameral legislature—the governor secured modest reductions. Pillen wanted to cut property taxes by 50%; his efforts this year instead amounted to about a 20% reduction. 

The governor said he would wait until next year to renew the fight, rather than calling lawmakers back into session “‘til Christmas” as he previously planned. “I think I understand the math,” Pillen said. “I think to be able to call another session on property tax right now, before the end of the year, before Christmas, would be a mistake.”

In New Mexico, Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham blasted lawmakers from her own party when they adjourned a special session in July after just five hours without addressing her public safety proposals. The second-term governor wanted to restrict panhandling, increase penalties for violent gun-related crimes and impose harder penalties for possessing or selling fentanyl. Most Republicans backed the bills, but Democrats in the legislature largely did not. The Democratic lawmakers, the governor said, “should be embarrassed at their inability to summon even an ounce of courage to adopt common-sense legislation to make New Mexicans safer. … This was one of the most disappointing days of my career, and the public should be outraged.”

Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newsom faces an unprecedented challenge with a special session he called on the high price of gasoline: The state Senate isn’t showing up. It’s not clear what Newsom can do about it, though.

While California’s constitution gives a governor the authority to call the legislature into a special session, it does not indicate what should happen if lawmakers do not convene, David Carrillo, the executive director of the California Constitution Center at University of California Berkeley Law, told CapRadio. The most obvious thing to happen next would be for Newsom to take legal action against the Senate, but that could take too long to be effective.

“It's very unlikely that the issues could get resolved before this legislative session expires before November 30th,” Carrillo said. “So the Senate can simply try to run out the clock.”

Keep reading as there’s more news to use below, and if you don’t already and would prefer to get this roundup in your inbox, you can subscribe to this newsletter here. We’ll see you next week.

News to Use

Trends, Common Challenges, Cool Ideas, FYIs and Notable Events

Guns
Georgia lawmakers discuss gun safety bills. Gun safety advocates representing nonprofits, law enforcement and mental health specialists met Thursday morning with a Georgia Senate committee studying gun safety to discuss the urgent need to pass laws protecting young people in the wake of Wednesday’s deadly school shooting in Barrow County. The committee meeting was scheduled prior to Wednesday’s school shooting, which killed two students, two teachers and injured several others. Georgia senators and gun safety experts spent two hours discussing potential legislation, such as offering state tax credits to give people a financial incentive to purchase safes to securely store their firearms, strengthening laws around mental health evaluations prior to firearm purchases and making it illegal for parents who allow minors to access firearms that were kept in an unsecured place.

Corruption
Former aide to New York governors charged with being a Chinese foreign agent. Linda Sun, who held numerous posts in New York state government, including deputy chief of staff for Gov. Kathy Hochul and deputy diversity officer for former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, was arrested Tuesday morning. Federal prosecutors said Sun, at the request of Chinese officials, blocked representatives of the Taiwanese government from having access to the governor’s office and shaped governmental messaging to align with the priorities of the Chinese government, among other things. In return, her husband got help for his business activities in China—a financial boost that prosecutors said allowed the couple to buy their multimillion-dollar property in Manhasset, New York, a condominium in Hawaii for $1.9 million and luxury cars including a 2024 Ferrari.

Abortion
Florida health agency targets abortion rights ballot measure. The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration launched a webpage Thursday bashing the proposed state constitutional amendment to restore abortion access beyond six weeks, prompting Florida Democrats to call out the use of state funds against the measure. Florida Democrats responded that the webpage violates Florida statutes barring state employees from using their authority to interfere with an election. With just 60 days until the election, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration is ramping up its campaign against the effort to protect abortion access in the state constitution. On Wednesday, the Tampa Bay Times broke the news that the Florida Department of State is reviewing 36,000 signatures among the 1 million collected to place Amendment 4 on the ballot.

Finance
Maryland will cut $1.3 billion to patch transportation budget shortfall. For the second year in a row, Gov. Wes Moore’s administration is proposing to delay expansion of the heavily congested American Legion Bridge and other infrastructure projects because of a transportation budget shortfall of over a billion dollars, according to a new spending plan released Tuesday. The Democratic governor came into office in 2023 with ambitious infrastructure plans, including the use of only clean energy by 2035 and a Red Line rail project in Baltimore that was abandoned by his predecessor. A slow state economy, exacerbated by inflation and high construction costs, has limited Moore’s ability to act on his vision or even to fully maintain the current network of state highways. The state’s plan cuts $1.3 billion over the next six years for a total transportation project budget of $19 billion.

Public Health
Budget cuts and layoffs take hold in public health. Even as federal aid poured into state budgets in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, public health leaders warned of a boom-and-bust funding cycle on the horizon as the emergency ended and federal grants sunsetted. Now, that drought has become reality and state governments are slashing budgets that feed local health departments. Officials in California, Montana, Texas and Washington now say they face budget cuts and layoffs. In California, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed cutting the state’s public health funding by $300 million. And the Washington Department of Health slashed more than 350 positions at the end of last year and anticipated cutting 349 more this year as the state’s federal COVID funding runs dry.

Infrastructure
The collapse of the school bus. School bus systems nationwide are suffering from funding cuts and driver shortages. It’s gotten so bad that public schools in cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia are paying parents to drive their kids to school, with families in Philly eligible to net $300 a month. Declining bus ridership led to a milestone in 2022: For the first time ever, the majority of U.S. kids got to school in a private vehicle. Between 2019 and 2023, the number of U.S. school bus drivers fell by 15%. Those who remain still don’t make much money: an average of $20 an hour, with just 32 hours of work a week, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The collapse also reflects where schools have been built: school sites have been selected for cheap land, big parking lots and wide roads, rather than nestled within neighborhoods.

Housing
California governor vetoes home-buying assistance for undocumented immigrants. Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday vetoed a bill that would have helped some undocumented immigrants buy homes in the state, moving quickly to extinguish a potential flashpoint in the presidential election. The proposal, which would have expanded an existing loan program for first-time home buyers to include undocumented immigrants with Social Security or taxpayer identification numbers, had been widely criticized by Republicans. The Democratic state assemblyman Joaquin Arambula, who was the author of the California bill, had argued that the legislation was not about immigration but rather fairness in the face of the state’s housing crisis. He said on Friday that he was “deeply disappointed” in the governor’s veto.

Elections
A Democracy with everything but a choice. This November, voters in rural Perry County, Mo., will face a ballot with candidates for a bevy of local offices. What they won’t face is a choice. Each of the 17 downballot races in Perry County has only one candidate. Amid the feverish handicapping of an election often called crucial to the future of American democracy, Missouri tells a different story, repeated time and again across a deeply polarized country where it can feel futile to run as a Democrat or Republican in a stronghold of the other party. In half of all races for partisan offices, candidates are elected—often multiple times—without opposition. And Democrats are the biggest no-shows, according to an analysis by  three nonprofit groups that assembled a database of races in the 2022 election cycle for more than 29,400 partisan offices nationwide. Of those offices, 14,450 had but one candidate.

Clean Energy
Big waves off Oregon coast fuel cutting-edge effort to harness the ocean for electricity. Off the Oregon, cables that run for miles along the seafloor will soon connect to the local energy grid and hook up to wave energy converters. The technology, still in its infancy despite more than a decade of trial and error, isn’t yet commercially available anywhere in the world  But proponents believe it can provide power both on and offshore, sending electricity to cars, ships, homes, desalination plants, aquaculture farms and floating ocean platforms, among others. Developed and overseen by Oregon State University and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the effort is different from the contentious offshore wind leases planned along the southern Oregon coast. The wave test site—the first of its kind in the continental U.S.—is experimental, has a smaller footprint and could directly benefit coastal economies. It also was developed with community input, winning local support.

Transportation
How a California city launched America’s first hydrogen-powered passenger train. There’s a new train pulling into the station in San Bernardino, California. Inside, it’s unlike anything the region—or the country—has seen before. The $20 million zero-emission train, known as Zemu, uses a hybrid hydrogen fuel cell and battery system to propel itself and run other onboard electrical systems. The only byproduct of the fuel cell is water vapor, a welcome change in an area that suffers from some of the worst air quality rates in the country. The new technology will make Zemu the first hydrogen-powered, zero-emissions passenger train in the country when it goes into service early next year. It could mark the start of a clean energy rail movement in the U.S., which has traditionally lagged behind places like Europe when it comes to both train ridership and innovation.

Picture of the Week

Welcome to Connecticut!

We've updated the signs that greet visitors as they enter our state.

Basketball signs on I-91, I-84, and I-395 from MA
Pizza signs on I-95 and I-84 from NY
Submarine signs on I-95 from RI
‍Foodie signs on US Route 6 from RI pic.twitter.com/rV3vCeg8Mn

— Governor Ned Lamont (@GovNedLamont) September 4, 2024

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont announced this week the installation of new welcome signs greeting drivers as they pass into Connecticut. The signs have stirred up a little angst among the residents of neighboring states. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy even weighed in, asking Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on X if it is “legal to lie on road signs”? At issue is a sign reading, "Welcome to Connecticut, Home of the Pizza Capital of the United States," which has been placed on Interstate 95 and I-84 entering Connecticut from New York. Murphy also responded on X, replying to Lamont's announcement tweet by saying, "You're not even the pizza capital of the tri-state area." Other signs include, "Welcome to Connecticut, Home of the Basketball Capital of the World," which greets drivers entering Connecticut from Massachusetts, and "Welcome to Connecticut, Stop for a bite in the Foodie Capital of New England,” between Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Government in Numbers

1 minute

The amount of time it took for all 220 e-bike vouchers to be claimed by Denver residents.

In the last few years, the city's office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency has been doling out free money for e-bikes. The program has been wildly popular. On Tuesday at 11 a.m., Denver made an additional 220 vouchers available. At 11:01 a.m., they were all claimed. Emily Gedeon, a spokesperson for Denver's climate office, said there's been enormous demand. About 17,000 people tried to get a voucher on Tuesday, she told us, more than 77 times the amount available. Denver will offer more later this year, she said, and added that the state also offers $450 rebates at points-of-sale.