Update on the General Assembly Special Session
Everywhere I go, I am increasingly asked the question “will we ever have a budget?” This seems to be a most reasonable question in light of the fact that the General Assembly has a Constitutional obligation to complete a budget within the 60-day legislative session. That session ended March 11, 2006. The General Assembly has now broken all records for gridlock in the history of the House of Delegates, which goes back to the time of Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry.
As I have written earlier, the deadlock arises out of a basic dispute between the House, which is controlled by 57 Republicans, and the Senate, which is composed of a Republican majority of 22 (out of 40).
From the beginning of the session, the Governor, the Senate, and House Democrats (myself included), have been interested in adopting a long-term transportation solution for the Commonwealth based on a reliable, sustainable sources of revenue. There have been a number of proposals made during the session, all of which have been rejected by the House Republican caucus because they involved some increases in taxes and/or increases in fees.
The Senate has proposed a number of compromises to break the budgetary impasse, and recently acceded to the House demand to separate the Transportation Plan from the budget. To this end, the Senate passed a series of Transportation bills that would have established the ability of Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads, and the I-81 corridor to establish Transportation Authorities with the ability to raise their own revenue to solve their local transportation problems. In response, the House Finance Committee decided to table the bills for 90 days, with the result that these bills could not be passed prior to the June 30, 2006 deadline for a budget.
In the face of House Republican intransigence, the Senate, in another effort at compromise last week, passed a budget which included almost no new money for Transportation. The Senate’s budget also stripped out much of the House budget’s reliance on debt to finance transportation. This was important because building roads with debt requires repayment from the General Fund over many years, causing transportation funding to be in direct competition with funding for education, clean air and water, public safety and other core services. It also included additional funding for a 4 percent teachers’ raise and key money for a number of projects affecting this area, including the proposed UVA Cancer Center. I supported this Senate budget. That budget came to the House floor where, as was expected, it was rejected in a procedural vote. It is necessary for each body to vote on each budget bill to allow both the house and the Senate budgets to move to a conference committee. Hopefully the bills will be reconciled and we will have the budget by June 30.
By the end of this week, we will likely have a better idea of the prospects of compromise. The House and Senate budgets are no longer very far apart, and there is every reason to believe that we could see something emerging to close this session. Again, it will not include a Transportation component, and it remains to be seen when such a component would be further debated and possibly passed. There is some suggestion of another special session on Transportation this fall. Who says we have a part-time legislature?
In other news, I have been appointed by the Speaker of the House to the Disability Commission and to the Joint Subcommittee on Math, Science and Technology Education. The Disability Commission identifies and recommends legislative priorities and funding related to Virginians with disabilities and includes four House members and two Senators.
The Science, Math, and Technology Education Subcommittee is brand new, having been created in the 2006 legislative session. It is designed to examine curricula for math and science at all educational levels, and to recommend innovative ways to recruit students to enter the fields of science, math and technology. Given the presence of the University of Virginia, Piedmont Virginia Community College, the Virginia Piedmont Technology Council, and two high quality public school divisions in the Commonwealth within the 57th District, serving on this subcommittee is a wonderful opportunity to advocate for improving the quality of education in the Commonwealth, and recruiting students to the fields that will allow our Commonwealth and our country to remain on the cutting edge of economic innovation and change. I hope that you provide any insight and input on how best to advocate for these interests in the years ahead.
We are also attempting to improve and update our email address book. To that end, we would appreciate your assistance by replying to this mailing and confirming your name, email address, and mailing address. And feel free to pass this along to anyone who might be interested. In that way, we can provide better service to you and the community.
As always, I appreciate your comments and insights. Please feel free to email me at david@davidtoscano.com or call me or Jenny Hogan at 220-1660. We have also updated our website. The new address is www.davidtoscano.com. Please visit it and share your thoughts and suggestions.
