RICHMOND, Virginia- As the legislature approaches its March 12 adjournment, legislators are working on budget negotiations, wrapping up their consideration of other bills, and continuing to return to pre-COVID-19 operations.
On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee advanced a number of bills from the House of Delegates, but at the beginning of the meeting Committee Chair Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) warned that the committee would add a financial contingency clause to several of the bills that aren’t currently funded in budget proposals. Health and Human Resources Subcommittee Chair Emmett Hanger (R-Augusta) presented the subcommittee’s report on many bills.
Addressing Howell, he said, “We had the issue that you referred to as you began the meeting where on a number of them, there was not an allocation of funds coming from the House. So, we’re going to have, obviously, resource issues as we enter conference in terms of whether or not we can support all these good ideas that we’re going to advance today with the clause.”
The House of Delegates has advanced a budget with substantial tax cuts, which reduces available revenue for spending. State Senators including Hanger are concerned about cutting revenue sources too quickly, and have advanced a budget with more spending, but fewer tax cuts. The budget bills will go into conference with legislators from each chamber, where they will work out a compromise. If that compromise doesn’t include funding for bills that pass with the financial contingency clause, those bills will not take effect.
“[The financial contingency clause] is often used, but this year it was used because the House has bills but they didn’t put any money in to fund them,” Howell told The Virginia Star. “That is unprecedented. I’ve been here 30 years. I’ve never seen that before.”
Doomed Constitutional Amendments
On Tuesday morning, a House Privileges and Elections subcommittee recommended killing two constitutional amendments. One amendment would have automatically reinstated felon voting rights once the felon was released. The other would have repealed Virginia’s defunct same-sex marriage ban. Both amendments passed in the 2021 General Assembly, but required passage again this year to be sent to a referendum.
The House had already killed companion bills to both amendments in committee; Democrats saw that as a move to block them from the House floor where they could get some Republican votes and pass.
No More Plexiglass
Senate staff removed the plexiglass boxes surrounding senators’ desks on Monday evening after State Senator Siobhan Dunnavant (R-Henrico) gave a floor speech on Friday asking for the boxes to be removed.
Most senators including Republicans and many Democrats have stopped wearing masks, although the staff still wears masks. In the Republican-controlled House, the plexiglass shields that were in place last summer were never installed during the current session.
“I would like to give the deepest gratitude to the clerk’s staff that were here late disassembling the boxes that were around our desks. I’m extraordinarily grateful and it is wonderful to see all of your faces. But they go above and beyond consistently, and I know that was a long one yesterday, so I wanted to make sure we all took a moment to thank them, because they do everything for us,” Dunnavant said in a Tuesday speech.
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Eric Burk is a reporter at The Virginia Star and The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
