Erie County Executive Chris Collins, who remains in office until Dec. 31, has asked the county legislature to insert a provision in the budget using $6 million in stimulus funds and additional cuts to welfare programs to upgrade the polar bear exhibit at the Buffalo Zoo, the Buffalo News reports.
His request was rebuffed by the GOP-led state legislature, who inserted the hike in a manner which would've forced Scott to veto the entire budget had he remained stalwart in opposition.
A motion "to strike out 'National Legislature' & insert 'citizens of U.S.' " was defeated, with only Franklin's Pennsylvania dissenting.
"Normally, when there's a question of how to interpret a statute, legislatures don't insert themselves in private disputes and say, 'This is what we think,'" Nancy Polikoff, a law professor at American University Washington College of Law, told VICE.
Having become the laughing-stock of the country, North Carolina's legislature is now reworking the bill, inserting the "need for additional studies" that will take three to four years to complete.
On those occasions where the Council might have rightly drawn attention to differentiating measures in proposed Bills, the legislature has pre-empted this by inserting "notwithstanding clauses" in the Constitution.
McAuliffe struck language from the state legislature's budget that Republicans had inserted in the hopes of blocking a Medicaid expansion, which could provide health care to 400,000 uninsured Virginians.
The legislature overruled him.
The legislature remains solidly Democratic.
