The Senate Appropriations Committee held a preliminary hearing on ACSS' anti-compaction bill - SB 216 (Beall) - on April 22nd, and has since placed the bill on a "suspense file".
Though it may sound negative, the action is not unusual, nor is it necessarily a sign that ACSS' bill will face greater hurdles from Appropriations.
Any bill with an estimated cost greater than $150,000 is automatically placed on the Committee's suspense file for a hearing after the Governor's revised budget is presented in mid-May.
The committee's preliminary analysis of ACSS' bill - which would require the State to maintain its recommended 10% salary differential between supervisors/managers and the employees they supervise or provide justification for not doing so - clearly states the very real issue that compaction presents for the State.
However, the analysis contains one error:
2012's SB 1113 - a similar anti-compaction bill - was not defeated on the Assembly floor, it was held in the Assembly Appropriations Committee