BUDGET VOTE
The General Assembly reconvened on Wednesday, June 1, for the Special Session to vote on the Conference Reports on the budget: HB29 and HB30. The Conference Report was agreed to by the Senate on a vote of 32 to 4; the voting record is available HERE. Similarly, the House moved to adopt on a vote of 88 to 7.
BUDGET HIGHLIGHTS
Pay Increases for State Employees and Others: The Conference Report provides a 5% pay raise for teachers and state employees over each of the next two years, as well as a one-time $1000 bonus. Law enforcement, sheriff’s deputies, corrections officers, and mental health workers will also get a salary raise.
Public Education: The Conference Report includes $1.25 billion for school construction and modernization, increases funding for the At-Risk-Add-On program that helps students in school divisions with high poverty rates, and provides nearly $272 million to increase support staff positions in schools. Additionally, the new budget has allocated $100 million for lab schools.
Higher Education: The Conference Report includes over $170 million in new financial aid at public institutions; $30 million in workforce development investments; $43 million for public and private HBCUs; and increases in tuition assistance grants (TAG) for private colleges and universities.
Tax Relief: The standard deduction for single filers is increased from $4,500 to $8,000, and for married couples filing jointly, from $9,000 to $16,000. The Conference Report also authorizes rebate checks of up to $250 per single filer and $500 per married couple. It includes a partial repeal of the state grocery tax, eliminating the 1.5% of the state portion of the tax but preserving the 1% option for local governments, an option for which many localities strongly advocated. Tax relief for military retirees is also included in the Conference Report, as well as a boost to the state’s earned-income tax credit, providing tax relief to lower-income workers.
BUDGET SIDE-BY-SIDE COMPARISON
BUDGET PROCESS EXPLAINED
If you are like me, the process (and language/vocabulary) can be confusing and quite overwhelming. The budget process explained below is attributed to Senator Ghazala Hashmi.
Virginia operates on a biennium budget. That is, every two years the sitting Governor proposes a budget in the form of a bill and presents the identical bill to both the House (HB30) and the Senate (SB20). As the outgoing Governor, Governor Northam and his administration presented the budget as one of the final acts in office, in January 2022. As the incoming Governor, Governor Youngkin has the opportunity to communicate his priorities, as well as offer budget amendments through General Assembly members.
Similarly, the members of the two Chambers (both Senators and Delegates) can also offer amendments to the Governor’s introduced budget. Once the budget is passed by the two Chambers, it goes into effect on July 1, 2022, and runs through the fiscal year, ending on June 30, 2023. However, because it is a biennium budget, this budget will also serve Virginians from July 1, 2023 - June 30, 2024. Governor Youngkin will introduce the next biennium budget in January 2024.
Lawmakers also have the opportunity to amend the previous biennium budget through HB29 and SB29. These bills are often called the “caboose” bills, and they provide amendments to the previous biennium budget. These amendments may be necessary because predictions of revenues can fall short or be more than what actually occurred; other necessary adjustments may also need to be made.
The budget bills and any introduced amendments go through an intense process through the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee and the House Appropriations Committee. At the end of Session or prior to the end of June, the two budget bills must be reconciled through negotiations between the respective committee members of both Chambers. The end result is the Budget Conference Report which is then shared with the other Senators and Delegates who are not on the Appropriation Committees.
Because the Budget Conference Committee could not complete its work before they adjourned sine die in March, the Senate and the House were called back into Special Session on Wednesday, June 1, to vote on the conferees’ Conference Reports for HB29 (the Caboose Bill) and HB30 (the new biennium budget).
For Senators and Delegates who are not members of the appropriations conference committees, the vote is an “up or down” vote. That is, they cannot disaggregate the various items included in the budget bills; they do not have the option to vote for those items they support and vote against those they oppose. Senators and Delegates must vote on the Budget Conference Report as a whole.
