Now that the dust has cleared, Virginia Democrats can look back on four months of budget wrangling as a successful exercise in sticking together to get their way, even though they fell short in winning more money for the Dulles Metrorail line.
The takeaway from last week’s whiplash ending to the budget saga — in which the longest-serving Senate Democrat cast the deciding vote against and later for a Republican state budget within a span of 24 hours — is that millions were restored to education and health care programs largely because Democrats withheld their support for a budget.
“When you step back and look at the big picture of everything that happened with the budget, we’re pretty well pleased,” said Sen. Don McEachin, D-Henrico, chairman of the Democratic caucus.
For months, Senate Democrats refused to back the budget, first demanding greater parity on committees and then for additional funding for their priorities. Republicans, who needed at least one Democratic vote to pass the budget in the evenly divided chamber, were forced to accommodate most of those wishes.
The final budget, awaiting Gov. Bob McDonnell’s signature, would add $212 million for K-12 education on top of what McDonnell proposed in his two-year, $85 billion plan, including $40 million for Northern Virginia schools to hire support staff and a $110 million block grant for schools to spend on retirement, inflation costs and pre-kindergarten programs. Democrats also won $4 million in additional financial aid for college students and $17.5 million for faculty pay raises.
Another $44.7 million was allocated to avoid proposed cuts to health care programs such as at-home care for Medicaid recipients, child advocacy centers and poison control centers.
Republican senators found most of the money Democrats sought by nixing McDonnell’s House-approved proposal to shift a portion of the state sales tax to pay for road repairs. Another $58 million came from a mortgage settlement fund won this year from large banks involved in the housing collapse.
Democrats hoped to secure up to $300 million for a new Metro line to Washington Dulles International Airport and beyond. But those efforts were undercut by Sen. Chuck Colgan, D-Manassas, who bucked his party and joined Republicans in voting for the budget a day after he voted against it.
Colgan said he supported the final compromise because Democrats had so many of their other demands met, a point Republicans tried to hammer home.
“Some of us who were empathetic with trying to work out some of these dilemmas kept feeling like the bar kept changing,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Walter Stosch, R-Glen Allen. “Even though they were well-intentioned, they ran out of opportunities to say, ‘This was essential.’ ”
