Late Sunday afternoon I made a critical error – checking my email. The inbox was overflowing with messages from Speaker Bill Howell’s office with news that the General Assembly had reached an agreement on state spending. It was a victory for common sense. A milestone for level-headedness. And such and such.
But as with all such agreements, it’s the compromises, large and small, that are of greater interest. Fortunately there was one additional email in the stack from Sen. Mark Obenshain. This one was a gem, because it contained that most valuable of commodities, a budget cheat sheet. No more wading through 200 pages of often incomprehensible amendments to find the compromises – some of which are quite telling. For example:
The General Assembly still likes giving money to Hollywood, but not nearly as much as the governor proposed. A request to pump-up the state’s Motion Picture Opportunity Fund by $1.5 million was reduced to $500,000. It’s still a half-million too much, but it does show that even inside capitol square, there’s a limit on some types of corporate welfare.
Obenshain’s budget bees also discovered this bit about an inconvenient state debt:
“Requests the Liaison Office to seek a continued deferment of interest payments on our Federal Unemployment Account debt; if unsuccessful, Virginia will face an unbudgeted $11.9M in interest payments.”
Virginia has borrowed several hundred million dollars from the federal government to cover unemployment payments. Those loans have come due. But rather than being repaying the debt, the state intends to plead for more time. This is doubly interesting because the General Assembly managed to finish its budget dance with roughly $6 million unspent…money it could have put toward this debt, but chose not to.
And we also learn that the constitutional ban on state grants to private nonprofit organizations was taken seriously. The Obenshain email tells us that the compromise document “Removes all direct funding for private non-profits like OpSail, food banks, etc.”
This is a victory for taxpayers. As a side note, I’ve been told that the constitutionality of these grants has been officially called into question in the past…but, unlike the opinion Del. John O’Bannon sought (at my request), this one wasn’t disappeared.
And in a move sure to warm the heart of “Barney” fans everywhere, the compromise “Restores 90% of funding for public broadcasting.” A token cut is better than no cut at all and through the amendment process, Gov. McDonnell still has an opportunity to zero-out this expenditure, as he initially proposed.
But I suspect that in the spirit of compromise, “Barney” will survive. But with fewer friends.
