SENATE APPROVES BUDGET

By Chelyen Davis
Free Lance-Star

RICHMOND--The Virginia Senate yesterday approved a budget deal that was months in the making, wrapping up one of the last steps toward getting that budget finalized.

With little debate, the Senate voted 37-0 to accept the budget that House and Senate negotiators hammered out in recent weeks, after months of a standoff over the issue of transportation funding.

The Senate, which originally was pushing for nearly $1 billion in tax increases within the budget to fund transportation improvements, wound up insisting that only $568 million be added to the budget for transportation, and only $339 million of that is from the general fund.

The impasse finally resulted in a compromise on Friday, just two weeks shy of the expiration of the current budget. Now lawmakers must approve it and get it to Gov. Tim Kaine's desk in time for him to have seven days to review and amend it.

Because the budget is now a "conference report," legislators cannot amend it themselves. So yesterday's vote session was brief, and debate consisted primarily of comments from Sen. John Chichester, R-Northumberland, the lead budget-writer.

He told fellow senators that the budget was "outstanding" and contained no new debt for capital construction.

In a statement released after the vote, Chichester added that while "the budget process was far too long, the stakes were high. In the end, a solid, sound and responsible two-year spending plan is the result.

"No budget is exactly what any one individual, one caucus or one legislative body wants in its entirety. However, this two-year budget is one that meets our core responsibilities pure and simple and positions us in good stead for whatever the future brings," Chichester said.

Sen. Edd Houck, D-Spotsylvania, reminded senators that transportation remains to be resolved--part of the deal when the Senate took its transportation taxes off the table was that both houses will return later in the year for a session to handle long-term transportation needs.

"We adopted a responsible transportation package that initiative was defeated by the House of Delegates," Houck said. "We passed bill after bill after bill those bills are still languishing [in the House]. So on a key topic the Senate responded, the House did not."

There was more debate over another bill--one that repeals the estate tax and caps the conservation tax credit.

The estate tax repeal has been bandied about in the legislature for several years; both houses want to do it, but can't agree on how. Late in budget negotiations last week, lawmakers added that repeal into the budget and yesterday the Senate passed a stand-alone bill.

Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath, objected, saying that estate tax repeal does not fit the purpose of the special session. But he was overruled, and the bill passed 24-9.

The House of Delegates will meet today to pass the same legislation as the Senate. Both the budget and the estate tax bill will then go to Kaine.

Key features of the budget include a 4 percent pay increase for teachers, effective in December, for state employees and for college faculty; $3.5 million to the University of Mary Washington for the James Monroe Graduate Center; money to fill 70 state trooper vacancies and to help increase monitoring of sex offenders; $200 million to clean up pollution of the Chesapeake Bay; $9.7 million to help pay for more staff in commonwealth's attorney's offices; $1 billion for construction and renovation of state buildings; and $6.3 million to increase the pay for court-appointed attorneys.