By Kim Kalunian, WPRO News
It was a down vote on Article 5 that derailed the House of Representative's consideration of the FY 2014 budget.
After roughly 10 hours of debate, House Speaker Gordon Fox announced at 1:30 a.m. Wednesday that the House would recess until 2 p.m. the following afternoon.
"I don't know what we're going to do tomorrow, all I know is that we're $13 million in the red," he told legislators.
The down vote on Article 5 put the kibosh on the Governor's proposal to skip the $12.9 million payment into the state's pension fund. The House voted for an amendment that would make it a single-shot deal for FY 2014, but even with the passage of that the House refused to vote yes on the article.
Following the unusual no vote, the House debated a new article that would have prevented the repayment of the loans issued by the EDC to 38 Studios. After roughly an hour and a half of empassioned debate on that issue, the House voted it down.
It was at that point that Speaker Fox and House Finance Committee Chair Helio Melo announced that the House would recess, something that hasn't happened in recent history.
The Senate Finance Committee had scheduled the budget for potential consideration both Wednesday and Thursday, assuming that the House would vote to pass the $8.2 billion budget Tuesday night.
