Senior leaders of the General Assembly’s money committees are expected to meet with the governor this week to hash out a budget compromise.
The clock is ticking for members of a closed-door conference committee to strike a deal on the budget. One of the people working on it is Senator Jennifer Boysko.
"We will meet with the governor and present our offer, and we'll see where it goes from there," she says.
Democrats in the General Assembly and Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin could end up agreeing on a budget deal that has no new revenue, which means that a proposed new digital tax is likely to be unplugged. Delegate Mark Sickles says he hopes the final version of the deal includes funding for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which is viewed by some Republicans as a tax increase.
"Well, RGGI was a statute that was passed by the General Assembly," Sickles explains. "We don't have monarchs here, and he used his appointment powers to say, ‘Well, we don't want this.’ And that's not how government works."
No new revenues could be a selling point for budget negotiators, although Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell says he disagrees with that approach.
"We have a governor that wants to run for president, and as long as he continues to insist that he's going to veto a budget that has any kind of new revenues in it – it kind of puts us in a pickle in terms of how to fund K-12," he says. "Some people seem to believe we can fund K-12 with a magic money tree; that's not how it works."
Leaders of the money committees say they want to get all the details hammered out before the special session starts next week.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
