RICHMOND — It’s official: for the second straight year, the Virginia General Assembly is headed into overtime.
After protracted negotiations devolved late Saturday, the House and Senate extended to midnight the deadline to reach a deal on fixes to the current two-year budget, and pushed the deadline to adjourn to midnight Sunday.
“We’ve made some pretty good progress over the last hour and a half,” said House Majority Leader Kirk Cox, R-Colonial Heights, adding that “80 percent” of the issues had been resolved.
“Our goal is to finish up tonight, hopefully by midnight,” said Senate Majority Leader Richard Saslaw, D-Fairfax. “If all goes well, we’ll be out of here tomorrow night, knock on wood.”
If all goes according to plan, legislators will receive the final budget amendments by early Sunday afternoon for review. Each House agreed to reconvene Sunday at 5 p.m., after which the legislators would (in theory) take a final vote on the fixes.
Earlier Saturday it appeared as though general agreement had been reached on funding for major items like K-12 education and transportation, but budget negotiators hit a snag over several other issues, including $30 million for the intellectually disabled.
The 2011 session was originally scheduled to adjourn Feb. 26. Last year, lawmakers ran one day past schedule in crafting the state’s current two-year, $80 billion budget.
