Virginia Governor Mark R. Warner has called the General Assembly into special session where they will remain until they pass a budget.
Lawmakers had extended the session for three days to attempt to reconcile the differences between the Senate’s version of the state budget and the House version. However, on Tuesday, at the end of that three day extension, the House voted to adjourn while the Senate voted to remain.
“When I addressed your opening session…on Jan. 14, there was widespread agreement that no issue is more important than addressing Virginia’s long-term fiscal condition,” Warner said to legislators late Tuesday. “Yet, 63 days later, Virginia still confronts the same fiscal challenges that I described in the State of the Commonwealth speech…
"Today, you have chosen to leave Richmond with your business unfinished, just as you did three short years ago. The Constitution clearly delineates the time in which you are to accomplish your responsibilities…Your decision to leave is particularly disturbing since it comes on the same day when the Senate offered important concessions, and one day after the House offered a concession as well. The House should have voted to extend the session, as the Senate did," said Warner to the Assembly.
“By voting to adjourn, the House has again abdicated its responsibility…It’s time to put an end to this pattern. Some have suggested that Virginia can afford to wait – that legislators should go home and “cool off” for a few weeks before resuming negotiations. That would be wrong. The people expect better, and they should not have to wait for vacationing legislators to return to work.
“Consequently, in light of the General Assembly’s failure to approve a budget, a few minutes ago, I exercised the authority given to me by the Constitution of Virginia to call the General Assembly into special session tomorrow…The people of Virginia do not care about the politics or turf battles between the House and the Senate. They elected public officials to prepare a budget that is fair and that meets the needs of our people. They expect you as legislators to accomplish that task. Virginia will ha e a budget…I urge you to resolve this stalemate with all due dispatch,” Warner concluded.
STATE DELEGATE Brian Moran (D-46) chairs the Democratic caucus. He said, “When the Senate offered some compromises and the House offered one or two, I was cautiously optimistic. However, after yesterday, the lines in the sand have simply been drawn deeper.
“I think what will happen is that we will reconvene as the Governor has ordered us to do, pass procedural rules governing the special session and then recess for a week or so, leaving the conferees to try and work something out. The atmosphere here is very partisan. A lot of people are very angry with the governor and with the Senate. I don’t expect that we will have a budget any time very soon,” Moran said.
That lack of a budget is already having an impact on the city’s own budget process, which is ongoing. “We have had to make some assumptions,” said Mark Jinks, the assistant deputy city manager for finance. “The schools, for example, made an estimate of their contribution to the Virginia Retirement System based on a worst case scenario. As we told Council last night,[Tuesday] depending on which version of the budget is passed, we could lose an additional million dollars or gain $3 million. Much of that is based on funding for education. We are luckier than many other jurisdictions because we only get 20 percent state aid based on the formula while some school systems in other parts of the state rely on state funding for up to half of their school budget," said Jinks.
“In May, Council is going to have to set the real estate tax rate. We need to know what’s going on with the State by then. Otherwise, without a State budget, real estate tax rates in many jurisdictions will be higher than they might if we had a budget,” Jinks said.
Moran said that there is also a concern about the state’s Triple A bond rating. “We have been on the watch list for a long time,” he said. “If we don’t have a budget by the first of April, we may lose that rating and that would have a very negative effect on our fiscal health. Unfortunately, we might not have a budget by that time.”