RICHMOND--Budget negotiators achieved a breakthrough of sorts yesterday afternoon, agreeing finally--after spending 10 days on it--on the capital outlay portion of the state budget.
House and Senate budget conferees said they had an agreement to spend over $1 billion on capital outlay--which primarily consists of building and renovating state buildings.
The two sides had been stuck on that issue since budget talks reconvened nearly two weeks ago, and the senators did not want to move on to other areas of the budget until capital was finished.
Now that it is, lawmakers say they might reach an accord on the whole budget by the end of next week--which is already pushing the limit for when they can get a budget approved and signed by the governor before the current budget expires July 1.
The legislature has gone a record amount of time without a budget deal--lawmakers were supposed to craft a new state budget for the next two years before their regular session ended in mid-March, and they still haven't done it.
At issue has been transportation funding, with the Senate pushing for increased revenue for transportation needs and the House resisting. The Senate finally took its transportation taxes out of the budget a few weeks ago, but the issue is still the elephant in the room in budget negotiations, because the Senate refuses to discuss transportation at all--awaiting a later special session in which to focus solely on the issue--while the House wants to cram as much transportation money as possible into the budget now.
The transportation problem is unresolved, but lawmakers say breaking the logjam on capital outlay will move the whole process forward faster.
Indeed, after they agreed on capital yesterday, the negotiators went ahead and resolved most of their differences in the public safety area. They planned to start on health and human resources later last night.
"Progress is being made," said Sen. Edd Houck, D-Spotsylvania. "We basically have capital done, at least where everybody's satisfied. At least we're working through them. We're having meetings. It's the first time since we've started that I've felt we're making progress."
Del. Phil Hamilton, R-Newport News, agreed, saying yesterday was a "very positive day."
"I'm more optimistic today than I was yesterday," he said. "I'm very optimistic about the possibility of having this thing done the tone and everything is very positive toward wrapping this thing up by the end of the week."
Hamilton said House negotiators still think they and the Senate must talk about transportation money. The Senate included $339 million in a reserve fund that would go to transportation only if the House later agrees to more sustainable revenues for transportation, and the Senate negotiators are refusing to discuss adding any transportation money above that $339 million, although that's the general fund portion; insurance premium taxes dedicated to transportation push that number really above $500 million.
The House has held that nothing is non-negotiable in a budget negotiation.
"I think there still has to be a conversation" about that, Hamilton said. "You can't approve the budget without transportation in it. I don't think anybody's unwilling to compromise."
Most of the budget negotiators met with Gov. Tim Kaine yesterday morning for breakfast at the governor's mansion. Hamilton said they seemed united in their belief that they must finish their budget work in time to avert a government shutdown or a constitutional quandary over who has authority to spend money after July 1.
"To a person, everyone said we need to have a budget," Hamilton said. "We need to do our job."
To reach CHELYEN DAVIS:
Email: cdavis@freelancestar.com