Virginia lawmakers have two days to smooth out a handful of relatively mundane but nevertheless nagging budget disagreements after an embarrassing failure to conclude negotiations by this weekend’s deadline.
Despite facing what legislators said was a surmountable handful of unresolved issues, the team of conferees from each house made only nominal progress toward agreement on the $78 billion budget before Saturday’s deadline. The assembly resolved to extend the session until Tuesday.
The impasse revolves around a set of contentious spending items: the governor’s proposed expansion of pre-kindergarten, teacher raises, Medicaid funding for the mentally retarded and a proposal to tap the state’s “rainy day” fund to help close a $2 billion budget shortfall over the next three years.
Conferees on Saturday split into smaller groups to tackle individual issues, which legislators said was a good sign of progress. They did not, however, manage to send a budget to the floor for the full General Assembly to vote on.
Gov. Tim Kaine urged a quick completion of the budget talks so lawmakers could turn their full attention to a transportation disaster brought about by a Virginia Supreme Court ruling that gutted a large part of last year’s road and rail funding package.
Kaine also is heavily invested in the budget outcome because many of his priorities, especially adding millions of dollars in funding to expand subsidized pre-kindergarten rolls, are tied to the negotiations.
“Pre-K is not going to be the reason why you can’t find a balanced budget … the difference between $25 million and $43 million isn’t the difference about this budget being completed or being balanced,” Kaine said. “They can do that in 35 seconds.”
Republican opponents of expanding the program this year say the move would be irresponsible in light of the budget deficit and concurrent proposal to tap the rainy-day reserve.
“The Senate … feels an obligation to Governor Kaine to try to fund these new programs, which by its nature takes more money out of the rainy-day fund,” said Del. Clay Athey, R-Warren. “We feel like we’re in a hole already, we just don’t want to make the hole any bigger than it already is.”
