Toscano Report from the General Assembly -- March 1, 2006
As Delegate Ward Armstrong said on the House floor recently, the storm Clouds are gathering in the General Assembly. What two weeks ago began to look like a tropical depression is rapidly moving toward tropical storm status and will probably become a hurricane by the end of this week. All bets are off as towhen this Session will ultimately conclude and how the budgets from the House and Senate will ultimately be reconciled. Remember that the Assembly remained in session in 2004 for an additional 2 months. For those of you who do not know how it works, Governor Warner submitted his budget before he left office. Governor Kaine submitted amendments and adjustments to the proposed budget, including a provision to increase teachers’ salaries to the national average. The House and Senate have now passed their respective budgets. I voted against the House budget for many reasons, including that it had no long-term transportation solution. Since the budgets differ, there will be a conference of the House and Senate, with a small group of representatives from each side who will attempt to reconcile the budgets.
The good news is that state has a substantial surplus. This means that much of Governor Warner’s original budget remains in place. The problem, however, is that the House Republicans, in their zeal to prevent tax increases and their refusal to develop a long-tern source of revenue to address our long-term transportation problems, have essentially “raided” parts of the general budget and diverted that money into one time transportation investments. Admittedly, it makes some sense to spend a surplus on “one time” investments, and transportation is a good place to do it. The problem, however, is that the House Republican budget takes monies from key areas for short term gain. For example, House Republicans removed from the Governor’s budget $17 million for funding in K-12 education and failed to appropriate $39.5 million that would have paid for teachers salaries to reach the national average. The House Republican budget trimmed Governor Warner’s proposals about $16 million in Medicaid reimbursements for Virginia hospitals, another $2.8 million for clean drinking water initiatives, about $3.6 million in anti-gang initiatives, and over $24 million from the community college system.
In some good news, the House Republicans accepted Governor Warner’s proposals in K-12 education for local school divisions, which means that both Charlottesville and Albemarle will receive small increases over the last biennium.
The rubber will essentially meet the road, however, in transportation. The House Republican budget is a short term fix to our transportation problems and concentrates additional monies in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads. The House Republican budget would spend ¼ the amount ($56 million) Governor Kaine proposed for mass transit for the biennium and the transportation budget is inadequate; even the money reserved for Northern Virginia is not nearly enough for what is necessary to build what is needed in this high growth area of the Commonwealth. The Senate budget has a number of fee and tax increases in it which will establish a stream of income so that we can address our long term problems. All of the transportation initiatives are rolled into each body’s respective budget, with the result being that without a transportation plan, we will not have a budget.
On the floor, several Democrats fought unsuccessfully against language “hidden” in the House Republican budget that sets new social policy. For example, the budget includes language that would prevent Medicaid from paying for abortions at any Virginia hospital under almost any circumstance. Second, there is a provision that establishes tuition tax credits for certain categories of private schools. Both these provisions were never debated through a formal bill and have never been discussed on the House floor. In fact, the tuition tax credit provision was introduced to the Senate as SB 545 and was defeated in the Senate committee on Education and Health. In the budget debate, Democrats “stripped away” the language of each of these initiatives in order to have a separate vote on each. As has been the case throughout this session, the House Republicans have been very disciplined in pushing their agenda, and they were able to keep the language of both initiatives in the budget. We will need to see whether the Senate is successful in stripping this language. What is troubling about this approach is that policy is being made through the budget process without open and deliberate debate among elected representatives.
Although it is unclear what it will happen with our various budget plans, we are racing toward the end of the Session and are passing or dispatching a number of bills. There were some 2918 bills and resolutions introduced in the Session; of these 1012 were passed by the House and 751 were approved by the Senate. Some bills of interest include the Clear Indoor Act, which would have banned smoking in public facilities. It was passed by the Senate but was killed by a subcommittee in the House. Although there was no recorded vote (as per the new rules) the committee of four Republicans, one Independent and one Democrat voted unanimously for this motion. There were broad ranging arguments on both sides of the debate. A private citizen from Virginia Beach, speaking in opposition to the bill, actually testified that he had been unable to find research to substantiate the idea that second-hand smoke has negative health effects. We also once again have the Senate to thank for killing several anti-choice bills, including HB 189, known as the “TRAP” bill, and HB 1274, which required doctors to report complications from abortions. They were both defeated in the Education and Health committee of the Senate.
I will have new transportation and budget updates in the next report. Please pass this along to others with an interest and feel free to contact us at any time.
