The Shadow
RICHMOND (AP) – Senior Democratic and Republican senators met throughout the day Wednesday in hopes of resolving enough deep partisan differences for the Senate’s Finance Committee to consider the budget at a hastily convened meeting scheduled for Thursday.
Both sides reported progress on several contested areas of the $85 billion two-year master spending plan for state government, but others remained unresolved as the informal negotiations continued.
“Whether we have enough to report it out of Finance tomorrow, it’s hard to say,” said Sen. John Watkins, R-Powhatan. “But there’s been movement, and that’s good.”
The legislature’s 60-day regular session came and went with no budget winning passage in a 40-seat Senate riven by a bitter dispute between its 20 Democrats and 20 Republicans.
The current budget expires June 30, and without a new one, state agencies would shut down, workers would be furloughed and appropriations would not be available to pay bills and service the state’s debts. In 2006, a new budget was not signed into law until June 28.
Democrats, demanding changes to spending priorities for state government over the next two years and a greater share of Senate power, have held together and denied the one additional vote that the GOP needs in the Senate to adopt a budget.
Among their demands is restoring a state supplement for northern Virginia schools that’s used to keep non-teaching staff in public schools from accepting better-paying jobs elsewhere, restoring eligibility for more than 4,000 nursing home residents who could lose Medicaid benefits, and having the state pay for pre-abortion ultrasounds that become mandatory July 1.
Senate Democratic Caucus leader A. Donald McEachin of Henrico said Senate Democrats had settled on a list of demands that were not negotiable and others that could be expendable for the sake of a budget agreement. He declined to categorize them.
“I’m not about to show them (Republicans) whether I’m holding aces and kings,” McEachin said.
Wednesday also marked the first time the General Assembly reconvened in its special session since March 10, when the regular session adjourned. The House and Senate held pro forma floor sessions involving only a handful of lawmakers – a necessary procedural step in which no business is transacted.
It marks the fourth time in a dozen years that the legislature has needed a special session to enact a budget.
