State law now requires districts to pay 100 percent of teachers’ health insurance premiums.

Hickman said even he was confused when committee substitutes to House Bills 3213 and 3214 began appearing in representatives’ email inboxes shortly before 10 a.m. Tuesday, with the notation that they had been added to the agenda of a 1 p.m. Appropriations and Budget Committee meeting.

Then, just before the meeting was to begin, the bills were removed from the agenda.

“It created a firestorm,” said Chairman Earl Sears, R-Bartlesville. “Of course, it would have created a firestorm no matter what.”

Big ideas and shortened tempers were in evidence Tuesday as the mandatory May 27 legislative session adjournment approaches with the House and Senate at odds over how best to solve the state budget crisis.

The biggest ideas, in sheer potential scope, were the vanishing twin House bills, but there were other startling developments in the Tuesday afternoon committee meeting. These included a failed attempt to advance a 3-cent-per-gallon increase in the state fuel tax and the passage of a bill that would give the state auditor more oversight of county assessors and another that would double a half-dozen low-level court fees.