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Virginia Governor Quickly Signs Compromise Budget Agreement
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Public schools will receive more funding, teachers and other government employees will see a pay raise, and Virginia’s tax policy will remain as it is under compromise budget legislation the Democratic-led General Assembly sent Monday. given to Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, who quickly signed it.
Youngkin and legislative leaders last week negotiated an end to its long-running impasse over the state’s next two-year spending plan, agreeing to use higher-than-expected revenues to help fund key priorities without implementing a hotly debated new sales tax in digital goods such as streaming services and computer software.
“This has been a lengthy process, but working together with the Senate and the governor, we have developed a product that all parties believe will meet the needs of the Commonwealth,” Del. Luke Torian, the lead budget negotiator in the House of Delegates, said in a speech on the floor.
Outlines of the agreement were announced on Thursday, with full details published on Saturday. The special session lasted just a few hours on Monday and featured limited debate. Minutes after lawmakers completed their work, Youngkin signed the measure on Capitol Hill.
The most recent version of the budget for the 2024-2026 biennium maintains virtually the same spending priorities as the iteration legislators adopted in March on the last day of the regular session, minus some technical adjustments, according to public presentations and team documents from the House and Senate monetary committees.
The plan includes what lawmakers said would be record funding for public K-12 schools and 3% raises each year for teachers and state employees.
It was possible to maintain these and other appropriations while getting rid of more than a billion dollars in expected revenue from the proposed new sales tax, in large part because revenue collections for fiscal year 2024 are far above forecast , said the House Appropriations Committee.
Year-end revenue collections could eventually exceed forecasts by more than $1.2 billion, and the budget approved by lawmakers on Monday will be balanced if revenues increase by less than half that amount – 525 million dollars, according to a Chamber presentation.
Other technical changes helped fill the gap, including updates to account for legislation that Youngkin amended or vetoed, such as eliminating funding set aside for a raise now rejected in the minimum wage.
The latest plan also calls for taking on debt rather than using $500 million in cash to finance capital projects, including construction and renovation initiatives.
Whether or not to include the proposed new tax on digital assets was the biggest point of contention between lawmakers and the governor, who spent months at odds over the budget.
young first proposed the idea in December, but combined it with other tax policy changes that Democrats withdrew during the legislative process, including an income tax cut, for an overall tax cut.
The governor then launched a public tour criticizing the Democratic version of the spending plan as “delayed” and said he would not sign legislation that would raise taxes.
Democratic leaders launched a tour own. The two sides finally agreed in April to lower the temperature and extend the timeline for negotiations Instead of sending Youngkin a budget, he would likely veto it. Without a deal by the start of the new fiscal year on July 1, they would have faced a government shutdown.
O Presentation of the house budget suggested that lawmakers may try to revisit the issue of “modernizing the tax system” next year.
The latest version lacks language that would force the state to rejoin a regional carbon cap and trade plan that Youngkin took Virginia away – a movement that is being challenged in court. A coalition of environmental defenders criticized what they called the “capitulation” of Assembly leaders to “reckless and bad public policies”.
The compromise agreement also fails to resolve one of the most heavily pressed issues this year – whether or not to legalize skill games, the slot machine-like betting machines that proliferated in businesses across the state before the ban took effect. Youngkin faces a Friday deadline to decide how to act on a bill to greenlight and tax the machines after the General Assembly rejected many of the your proposed changes tailored in April.
Supporters of the measure suggested they expected a veto. But they told reporters that the governor had given them a commitment to continue negotiating, with the expectation that lawmakers would return to Richmond at a date to be determined for another special session on the issue.
In other action on Monday, lawmakers adopted and Youngkin signed amendments to the so-called wagon budget, making small changes to the existing spending plan that runs through June.
Lawmakers also elected eight judges, and House Speaker Don Scott announced the creation of a bipartisan committee to study the intersection between free speech and public safety on college campuses following numerous demonstrations around Virginia over the Israel-Hamas war , including some which led to arrests.