RICHMOND — After prolonged, sometimes animated negotiations between lawmakers on the tenth floor of the General Assembly building in Richmond Saturday, House and Senate budget negotiators had reached an accord on amendments to the state’s two year budget in the wee hours of Sunday morning.
With college basketball highlights playing on televisions nearby, legislators hammered out the definition of the fine print, with some back-and-forth chatter arising over items accounting for mere slivers out of the two-year, $80 billion budget.
On Saturday, the House and the Senate voted to extend the deadline for the session, originally scheduled for an adjournment on Feb. 26, after budget talks ran into hurdles over spending on items like public safety and $30 million for the intellectually disabled, with some negotiators broaching the idea of simply adjourning without a deal and reverting to the budget adopted last year.
But late Saturday, the two Houses voted to extend the deadline for a deal on the budget to midnight (the compromise, in fact, came at about 1 a.m. Sunday).
The House and Senate were scheduled to convene at 5 p.m. Sunday in the hopes of voting on the amendments and adjourning by midnight – which will mark the second straight year and sixth in the past 12 the legislature failed to adjourn on time.
