As the session enters its final weeks, most of the business of the Partnership for Safety and Justice is done. But every day some kind of eruption occurs. A bill we support seems dead; another bill we oppose comes back with a vengeance. Or one bill is completely substituted into another bill.

The latter is exactly what happened to Senator Vicki Walker’s SB 629 [1]. Scheduled for a floor vote for three days, the bill was suddenly pulled from the floor and sent to the Rules Committee, where bills late in the session often go never to be seen again. After a weekend of trying to figure out why the bill was pulled, we discovered that there was a minor conflict with another bill, HB 2311 [2].

The story has a happy ending. It turns out when HB 2311 [3] was amended in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Walker’s bill language – which prohibits the charging of interest on a judgment while a person in prison – was included in the amendments by a very smart person from Legislative Counsel. That bill passed the Senate easily and, with Walker’s amendments, received concurrence from the House and is now on the way to the governor for his signature. So while SB 629 [4] will now not pass, our goal is accomplished with HB 2311 [5].