As the General Assembly enters the final scheduled day of its annual session today, passing a budget bill will be lawmakers’ top priority.
Budget negotiators expected to meet late into Friday night and possibly the early hours ofSaturday to agree on amendments to the
$74 billion biennial budget the General Assembly passed last year.
Unlike in recent years, negotiators have not had major issues tying up talks. There are still plenty of differences between the House and Senate amendments to resolve, and Gov. Tim Kaine has pushed legislators to restore funding for preschool expansion and other initiatives he proposed.
“We’ll have to see how it all fits together,” Kaine said Friday morning.
The House and Senate spent Friday approving conference committee reports — compromises between the chambers on various bills that resolved mostly small differences between the House and Senate versions of legislation. The most noteworthy conference committee agreement enacts Kaine’s proposal to reduce the number of low-income Virginians who pay income taxes to the commonwealth.
“I remain mindful that the money our government spends is not its money,” Kaine said when pitching the idea to lawmakers in December. “It’s the people’s money.”
Under the plan, which will cost the commonwealth $15 million a year, the personal deduction for all Virginia taxpayers would increase from $900 to $930. The minimum amount Virginians would have to earn to file taxes would gradually increase until it reaches about $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for married couples by 2012.
“In most cases we are relieving college students and people with low earnings from the requirement that they have to pay taxes,” Sen. John Watkins, R-Powhatan said.
Conference committees are still working on measures dealing with in-state tuition for illegal immigration, assistance for community college students transferring to four-year institutions, eminent domain, protecting the transportation trust fund and thefts of high-tech dog collars.
