Budget stalls; lawmakers face overtime

RICHMOND — The General Assembly appears headed for overtime Sunday because of the inability of the House of Delegates and Senate to agree on a budget.

Each extra day costs taxpayers about $25,000. This would be the fifth time in 10 years that the legislature has needed extra time to settle budget differences.

The 60-day session had been scheduled to end today but vast differences between the House and Senate over revenues and expenditures appeared likely to push back the timetable by a day.

While some legislators continued to hold out hope that a late agreement Friday night by the budget conferees could be put before the assembly today for a vote, most conferees thought otherwise.

“We are nowhere near,” Sen. Janet D. Howell, D-Fairfax, said of the differences separating the two bodies.

House Majority Leader H. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, warned his House colleagues early that the session likely would be extended.

The differences between the two bodies were evidenced late Friday afternoon, when the conferees, sipping soft drinks and munching on cookies, met on the ninth floor of the General Assembly Building in the House Appropriations Committee library.

They could not agree on the so-called “caboose bill,” the bill designed to fund the state’s operation until June 30, when the fiscal year ends.

Then they tackled the $30 billion bill to fund state government for the two years beginning July 1.

As the talks dragged on and legislators put a hold on minor budget items, Sen. William C. Wampler Jr., R-Bristol, glanced over at reporters and mouthed “not even close.”

Gov. Bob McDonnell on Friday morning made a personal plea for finishing on time when he made a surprise visit to the Capitol to talk to House and Senate conferees and the Senate Democratic Caucus.

“Bond rating agencies, constituencies, local governments all depend on the certainty of a budget being done on time,” he said.

“I know they’re working hard,” McDonnell said of state lawmakers. “This is the toughest budget of any of their professional lives that they’ve had to work on. I’ve been working with them publicly and privately for weeks and weeks now, and I think there’s a path to get there.”

Robert P. Vaughn, staff director of the House Appropriations Committee, said the two bodies are closer than they seem to be. They continued to meet Friday night to try to thrash out differences.

He said the House has backed off from a $60 million tax that would impact manufacturers, while the Senate has given up on two furlough days for state employees proposed for each year of the next biennium. The Senate no longer is insisting on making current state employees pay a portion of their retirement, something that state workers have not done for a long time, he said.

But Vaughn said the bodies have not settled on how much money to put into a reserve fund or how much, or whether, to fund the Virginia Commission on the Arts and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, which is based in Albemarle County.

Vaughn said the House recognizes the importance of K-12 funding to the Senate Democratic Caucus, a point McDonnell also made in his morning visit.

“Right now the budgets are about $500 million apart [on education] — that’s a lot of ground to cover,” McDonnell said.

The two bodies knew budget negotiations would be difficult from the outset because they had to close a projected $4 billion deficit with painful spending cuts.

Tyler Whitley reports for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Times-Dispatch staff writer Jim Nolan contributed to this story.