|
|
||
House, Senate trade budgets today Date published: 2/8/2009
BY CHELYEN DAVIS
RICHMOND-- On a wall in the basement of the General Assembly Building, near the bill room and the vending machines, young pages last week taped up pink and red construction-paper letters reading: "All you need is love."Within two hours, some more cynical observer had taped up an addition: "And money." It was a fitting note at a time when the legislature is trying to cut $3 billion out of the state's two-year budget. The lack of money has cast a pall over this year's session, as legislators face making cuts to health services, public education, police and other programs. Gov. Tim Kaine in December presented his proposals to cut the budget; the House and Senate budget-writing committees will meet today to unveil their funding priorities. Both chambers' budgets will reflect $150 million more in cuts than Kaine made. That's because both rejected an increase in the cigarette tax that Kaine had proposed to help mitigate reductions to Medicaid. The Senate budget, at least, will also differ from Kaine's on public education. Kaine had proposed capping the ratio of administrative positions in school districts. But Sen. Edd Houck, D-Spotsylvania, who sits on the education funding subcommittee of the Finance Committee, opposes that. Houck said that would be a permanent change to the state's Standards of Quality--the method by which the state determines what education services it will fund. He has introduced an amendment to eliminate the staffing cap in Kaine's budget, although Houck would have the state Board of Education study staffing standards. Houck prefers to make education cuts in other ways, such as delaying the purchase of new textbooks. He said he's trying to focus most of the cuts at the state level, rather than making cuts that localities would have to absorb. Complicating an already difficult budget process is the fact that legislators don't have final revenue numbers for January--which are expected to be gloomy--nor do they know what Congress is going to do with the economic stimulus package. Kaine says he expects that the federal stimulus money Virginia will receive will make up for any additional losses in January revenue. But some senators are leery of writing a budget without knowing just how much money the state has. They have suggested breaking the budget--normally done in two-year increments--into two parts.
1. Be respectful. No personal attacks.
|
|
||||||||||||
