(Updated w/ Conference Report) Virginia budget deal done: $100 million in fees; no tax increase

By JR Hoeft | Sunday, March 14th, 2010 | Policy

Update: The Conference Report

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So, while the Senate takes another full day of per diem for tomorrow Sunday (a day after the session was supposed to end), a budget deal will finally be reported out from the conferees tomorrow in the afternoon and voted on by their respective chambers tomorrow in the evening.

In the deal, a purported $100 million in fees will be added, yet funding to localities to pay for car tax relief is preserved. There will also be a reserve, just in case revenue predictions don’t materialize (which got up into this nonsense in the first place).

According to one source, Public Safety/Law Enforcement, K12, and Health and Human Resources will all be pretty close to splitting the difference between the House and Senate positions.

More details on the budget are sure to be out soon.

Update: Norm Leahy over at TQ wrote about an AP article by Bob Lewis that spoke of a deal that might be in the works. Lewis apparently editorialized a bit about the nature of the cuts, saying:

Any compromise will contain draconian reductions, ensuring thousands of governmental layoffs and pressure on local governments to boost their taxes to preserve some services.

To which Leahy responds:

Or, looked at another way, the cuts will likely take state spending back to about what it was in 2006.

Oh, that evil year…when budget surpluses were still flowing, state government was still growing, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were thriving and George Allen was in the Senate.

More specific details are available from Pilot on Politics.

Also check out Too Conservative’s and SWAC Girl’s take.

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