Week 9 Update—March 17, 2004

The House and Senate made fairly quick work of legislation on their respective floors last week, only to be stalled by budget talks that yielded no compromise and forced the legislature to extend the session by several days. The General Assembly adjourned without approving a state budget for fiscal years 2005 and 2006, but has been called back into special session on the budget beginning today. The legislature also will assemble on April 21 for its annual reconvened session to consider amendments and vetoes proposed by the Governor.

The Budget

The General Assembly spent much of Tuesday haggling over its next steps—including whether to extend the session another three days, whether to adjourn and convene in special session (and whether to then recess that special session for two weeks) and who can submit legislation during such a special session. Finally, the House and Senate adjourned just before 7:30 p.m., but not before Governor Mark Warner already had called for a special session, to commence at 12 noon Wednesday, to address the state budget crisis. He also indicated that he would resubmit his two-year budget he introduced to the General Assembly in December. In his message calling for the special session, the governor stated, “The failure to resolve this dispute has serious consequences. A continued standoff will hamper the ability of local school divisions to hire teachers for the upcoming school year. It will force local governments to raise property taxes just to adequately fund schools and police departments. Wall Street will look even more skeptically at Virginia's fiscal affairs. Perhaps worst of all, it will signal to potential employers that Virginia is not a stable business environment.

“The people of Virginia do not care about the politics or turf battles between the House and the Senate. They elected public officials to prepare a budget that is fair and that meets the needs of our people. They expect you as legislators to accomplish that task,” said Warner.

Last Saturday, the legislature had extended the session for three days in hopes of forging a compromise 2004-2006 budget, the issue that has sharply divided the House and Senate since before the session even began. En route to the current impasse, the House and Senate budget negotiators missed several self-imposed deadlines over the past week. Both sides have offered some slight movement from their positions on the budget in order move discussions along, but deep philosophical differences between the two spending plans over the scope of state services and ways to generate additional revenue to bridge a multi-billion dollar gap thwarted a compromise. Still, at this point, it appears that neither side is willing to move further.

Studies

The legislature has approved several studies of interest to the education community. HJR 105 creates a joint subcommittee to study state assistance to localities for school infrastructure needs. The panel is to examine, among other things, local school infrastructure needs, the availability of local funding to meet those needs, the priority of each of those needs and the level of needed and appropriate state commitment to supplement local efforts in meeting those needs. HJR 123 requests the Board of Education (BOE) to review its regulations for incorporating an alternative licensure route for principals and assistance principals, while HJR 124 continues the Commission to Review, Study, and Reform Educational Leadership in order to receive reports and information regarding BOE recommendations on alternative licensure and a two-tiered licensure system. The legislature also is directing a study of the Virginia Retirement System through HJR 34. The study establishes a joint subcommittee to examine, among other things, the current VRS benefit structure and adequacy of funding and blending of contribution rates. In the session’s final hours, no final action was taken on a pair of resolutions concerning the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. HJR 192 and SJR 77 urged Congress to amend NCLB to include a mechanism for a automatic waiver from its school accountability provisions for states such as Virginia that have successfully increased student achievement through their own standards and accountability reforms. The Senate had wanted to add a clause stating that any action anticipated to enforce NCLB be deferred until full funding to implement the law had been authorized. The House version did not include such a provision.

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Date Last Updated: 06/21/2002