Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell is readying a set of fixes to the state’s two-year budget plan, as advocacy groups make last-ditch pleas to undo provisions they say will damage salaries.
McDonnell’s set of tweaks to the document covering state spending through mid-2012 are due Tuesday. He has been mostly mum on the specifics, although he has signaled the changes won’t be major.
Police and schools groups want McDonnell to scrap a measure that would allow localities to mandate their employees foot a portion of their own pension contributions, as much as 5 percent. They equate the shift to a direct salary reduction.
“It harms the overall ability of the profession to bring in and keep good people,” said Kitty Boitnott, president of the Virginia Education Association.
“One of the few incentives, frankly, for folks who’ve been in the profession for 10 years or more is that they have a fairly decent pension to look forward to.”
Boitnott said those benefits were offered to public employees in lieu of a raise in the early 1980s.
“And so it feels like a take-back on top of everything else,” she said.
The pension change was
part of a hard-fought compromise between lawmakers in the
Republican-controlled House
and the Democratic-majority Senate.
It accompanies major cuts to K-12 spending and health care as well as a package of fee increases. The budget closed a more than $4 billion shortfall.
The Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police and the Virginia Sheriffs’ Association are also lobbying McDonnell to undo the pension provision.
McDonnell spokesman Tucker Martin declined to elaborate on what changes the governor plans to make this week. Last
week, McDonnell announced he would restore $1.8 million in
funding for the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in Norfolk.
