McDonnell releases budget amendments
By JR Hoeft | Friday, December 17th, 2010 | Policy- $54 million for Job Creation and Economic Development proposals including initiatives to grow Virginia’s innovation economy, revitalize economically distressed communities, expand small business and tourism and train workers for Virginia businesses.
- $150 million to jumpstart the Virginia Transportation Infrastructure Bank. Money will be coupled with $250 million from the VDOT audit to put $400 million into the Bank at start, with funding to rise to $1 billion by end of Administration. This is part of the Governor’s plan to inject $4 billion into transportation over the next three years. Other components include the issuance of $1.1 billion in federal GARVEE Bonds which do not add to state debt capacity and the issuance of up to $1.8 billion in already approved transportation bonds.
- $50 Million for Higher Education geared toward increasing college access and affordability and meeting the goal of awarding 100,000 degrees over the next fifteen years in the Commonwealth
- $191 million in Cuts, Savings and Reappropriations recommended by the Governor’s Commission on Government Reform and Restructuring, providing more state funding for core functions of government focused on job creation and economic development
- Reform of Virginia’s Retirement System (VRS) requiring all state employees to contribute 5% to their retirement plans. The reforms will put over $300 million in additional funds into the VRS system in FY 2012 alone and will add $4.2 Billion over the next 10 years. The employee contributions will be matched with a 3% pay raise.
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JR Hoeft
Conservative to the core; liberal with his opinion! J.R. has been involved in politics for over a decade and has worked on several campaigns in Hampton Roads. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Chesapeake and the Central Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia. He is also the director of “Blogs United” in Virginia. E-mail J.R.. Follow J.R. on Twitter.
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8 Responses to "McDonnell releases budget amendments"
$54 million for Stimulus Bob’s big government program of picking winners and losers while leaving your small business in the dust.
Does that save money?
The governor’s “reform” of the pension plan requires state employees to pay for the raid on their pension fund that the governor and the legislature carried out last year. There’s no amendment to begin repaying that more than $600 million, as promised.
Well, now they tell me, it’s seperate.
They’ll start paying the $620 million back in 2013 (just in time for a new governor to deal with it). But that money is in addition to the extra money from employee contributions.
Steve, I have to do some research into “how we got here”, but I can hardly believe the problems with VRS began in the first year of the McDonnell administration.
JR: I can help you out. The VRS fund has been underfunded for TEN out of the last EIGHTEEN YEARS.
The state VRS board sets the required level of funding and the lawmakers fund it. The lawmakers failed to fund it to the level their own VRS board set to sustain the fund. The Govenor failed to fund it to the tune of 620+ million by promising to repay the IOU back starting in 2013 so he could claim a “balanced budget.” ie: “Smoke & Mirrors” Sorry but its true…
Now the bean counters and politicians claim it is “unsustainable and underfunded”… Duh. Yes, it is.
They also forget the state and local government agreed to pick up the 5% for their employees inlue of no pay raises which saved the governments millions.
So the employees have been paying for decades into VRS. Don’t forget those pay raises the employees gave up would have recieved would be compounded each year and been worth a lot of money to the employees.
So now we have elected folks trying to change the deal and force the employees to pay even more. On the surface 5% doesn’t seem to be much of an issue. However if you know the history, the employees are getting the shaft as politicians, local government(citys & towns) and private local government organizations (VML & VACO) change the agreed to deal and committments that were given honorably as part of a cost savings plan. What happened to integrity?
There is more but I believe you’ve the Readers Digest version.
[...] more here: McDonnell releases budget amendments Tags: government, infrastructure Posted in: [...]
JR- You are absolutely right. I never said they did. In fact, as Rob Jordan of the Virginia Governmental Employee Association said to me today, “there’s no one party to blame, it goes through governors and legislators of both paries. There’s enough blame to go around.”
I just thought the governor, and the legislature in which both parties were complicit, should fix the mess they made last year.
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