Good afternoon, and welcome to the Almeida County Board of Supervisors Personnel Administration and Legislation Committee meeting for Monday, March the second, twenty twenty six.

May I have roll call, please?

Supervisor Fortune on a boss.

Supervisor TAM?

Present.

We have a quorum.

Thank you.

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Raise and lower lower your hand.

Um of course, top of mine is Iran and Congress is set to vote on bipartisan war powers resolutions this week, meant to limit President Trump's military operations uh in Iran.

The dual efforts in the House and Senate face uphill battles uh to become law, as previous efforts have failed in asserting congressional authority to declare war.

Um, if made law, the measures would block further U.S.

military action in Iran without congressional approval.

Um it's my understanding that the Senate could vote as early as tomorrow, and then the House would plan to vote on um the war powers resolution on Thursday.

Uh moving on just to Department of Homeland Security funding.

I know we've talked about it the last couple weeks.

Really don't have an update there.

Uh we still don't have an agreement between the House and Senate on uh FY26 Homeland Security appropriations.

So the the department continues to be in a partial shutdown.

Um again, we are hoping, I think the House and Senate could potentially vote later this week, but again, until they reach a deal, um, you know, there's nothing to really take up.

I know when we talked previously, we had said that it's when you know TSA and others start to miss paychecks.

Um I do believe that this week they will not be receiving full paychecks.

And so that may start to put some pressure uh, you know, moving forward.

But as of now, we don't have any sort of resolution there.

Um John, I don't know if you want to touch on housing.

I can I can keep going if you want.

Up to you.

Um, well, just real quick on housing.

Again, not much of an update there.

Um, I know Lynn reported last week on the the two different bills, uh, road to housing on um the Senate side and then the housing for the 21st century act on the House side.

And we did include a side-by-side uh with the notes last week.

Negotiations are continuing between the House and the Senate.

Um, and they continued through the weekend.

The Senate uh was working on a deal that can include a mix of some of the house housing priorities and an int institutional investor ban from purchasing single family housing, and then much of the original Senate bill, the Road to Housing Act.

Um the idea is to have a procedural vote this evening.

Uh as of earlier today, and it may have happened since we've been on the caller in the last hour.

Um, they were trying to release text prior to that uh procedural vote this evening, but I have not uh seen that just yet.

Um and then John, I can pass it to you for just that house farm bill update if that works.

Yeah, sure.

Um, and also confirming we have not seen text on the updated Senate language.

I was talking to a colleague that works in the Senate office, whether or not we're going to see text before this 530 vote, and they said we haven't even seen the text yet.

So it's TBD, whether or not that uh 530 vote still holds today or it might get punted to later in the week.

Um I think Lynn may have touched on this last week.

Um, but the farm bill markup on the House side did get postponed um to this week.

Um, just a brief summary uh on February 13th.

Um, the House AG Committee introduced its version of the 2026 farm bill.

Um they will start the markup of the bill tomorrow, starting at five, uh, and it will most likely roll into all day Wednesday.

At this point, it's uncertain whether the bill will make it to the House floor, as there are a number of fiscal conservatives who are opposed to the measure as drafted, as well as a significant number of Democrats who are opposed to the measure because of the SNAP program that was significantly reduced in HR one.

The Farm Bill's nutrition title authorizes the nation's uh nutrition assistance and feud distribution programs.

Um this bill um would largely remain or keep the program untouched, so it would not undo um many of the cuts that took place under HR 1.

Um it's possible that the bill does make it out of committee with the support of several Democrats um that represent farm areas um of the country, but um the likelihood that it sees floor action is still I think fairly low.

Um, and this is to say nothing of any potential action in the Senate.

There have been basically no negotiations between the majority and the minority um on the future of the farm bill.

Um the bill does expire at the end of the fiscal year this year.

The programs will lose their authorization at the end of the calendar year.

So we're likely to see um another at least year extension of the current farm bill, which is 2018 farm bill in the continuing resolution that will come up before the September 30th fiscal uh year deadline.