Today’s Senate business in the General Assembly’s “Veto Session” was done by 1PM, yet even at this hour the House of Delegates soldiers on trying to get through bills at three minutes a clip.
“Most [Senate Bills] went through without a problem,” wrote Tom Cosgrove of the Senate Republican Caucus via email. “SB 128 (Clean Air Bill) which was expected to be controversial was approved 23-17 with five Democrats joining all 18 Republicans.”
However, the governor was also summarily dissed on SB406, Sen. Stuart’s bill, where the senate rejected the Governor’s amendment by a 3-37 vote.
Apparently the Senate was in recess most of the afternoon while the House was dealing with budget amendments.
According to a source in Richmond, the House began debating budget amendments at 1 p.m., but is going to be working well into the night.
“With all the bills they have to deal with following [the budget amendments], we’ve been informed that even if they take only 3 minutes per bill, it will take another 6 hours to go through everything!”
Yikes!
If you like this sort of thing, you can watch the live-stream.
Yawn.
Send coffee to Richmond!
Update – the session did finally come to a close and 92% of Governor McDonnell’s 213 amendments were agreed to. He issued no vetoes.
According to McDonnell, some of the key amendments passed yesterday:
· Restore funding for the job-creating Governor’s Opportunity Fund by $6 million in the second year of the budget and to free up nearly $10 million in the first year
· Reinstate a critical $10 million tax deduction for Virginia employers to help foster job growth
· Increase funding for Virginia’s growing commercial spaceport at Wallops Island
· Restore funding for the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in Norfolk
· Provide funding for the successful Commonwealth ChalleNGe program at Camp Pendleton
· Meet prior state commitments to major employers SRI and Bank of America, and increased funding for the Biofuels Production Incentive Grant Program.
· Equalize amendments to the state’s public employee retirement system to ensure current local and state employees are treated the same concerning payment of retirement benefits
Speaking about today’s reconvened session, the Governor noted, “I want to thank the members of the House and Senate for their excellent bipartisan work today and during this recent session of the General Assembly. Together we closed an historic budget shortfall without raising taxes. We focused on reducing government spending at a time when families and businesses are doing the same. While many states try to navigate these difficult times by significantly raising taxes on their citizens and businesses, Virginia has chosen to take a different and more fiscally responsible path. With an unacceptable 7.4% unemployment rate hurting our people, we now have invested wisely in job-creating measures that give us great new tools to compete in the global economy. With the session now concluded, I look forward to moving forward with important Commissions that will create innovative new policies to spur economic development and job creation, reform government to make it simpler and more efficient and to make our higher education system more affordable and accessible.”
