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Virginia General Assembly Fails to Pass Budget
posted 4:37 pm Sat March 08, 2008 - RICHMOND, Va.
With the House and Senate controlled by different parties for the first time since 1999, the session lurched past its Saturday adjournment deadline, held up by bickering legislators unable to pass a budget, their most basic duty.
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- Made the gruesome, underground spectacle of animal fighting a felony in response to football star Michael Vick's 2007 conviction and prison term for dogfighting;
- Repealed a law passed only a year ago that imposed fees topping $1,000 on most egregious traffic offenses, but exempted nonresidents from paying them;
- Imposed tighter limits on the number of short-term, high-interest loans secured by future paychecks that payday loan companies can extend.
- Required Virginia colleges to establish plans for dealing with potentially deadly campus emergencies, for notifying students and faculty promptly, a response to the Virginia Tech massacre.
- Stretch the life span of drivers licenses from five years to eight before renewals are necessary and boost the annual car registration fee by $5 if done in person at a Department of Motor Vehicles office.
Mostly, this was a year for minor, even technical changes, not legislation vast in its scope such as the abolition of parole in 1994, the 1998 car tax cut or the comprehensive tax reforms (and increase) of 2004.
It was highly partisan session with a measure of payback for last fall's bruising legislative elections. Some of Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's marquee initiatives fell victim to it, even though his fellow Democrats held a Senate majority for the first time in a dozen years and Democrats narrowed the GOP majority in the House.
Kaine's 3-year-old campaign promise to provide homeowner tax relief - allowing a 20 percent exemption on the taxable value of primary residences - died. His push to require instant background checks at gun shows to prevent firearms sales to criminals and the mentally ill was killed. His effort to ban smoking in bars was snuffed.
Kaine's proposal to substantially expand prekindergarten access for the children of working class homes remained a hostage Saturday in the dysfunctional and protracted budget talks. It was clear, however, that if there is any pre-K expansion, it won't approach his initial goal of nearly $60 million.
Other Kaine priorities were also in the budget, meaning some were in limbo.
"The most important policy initiatives I had this year we put into the budget," Kaine said, making it harder for his legislative adversaries to pick each off individually. "Things that are in bills have a way of getting killed."
Those include full funding of the costs of updating public school classroom standards, including teacher pay, bond packages for public colleges and universities, expanding the health care safety net for the indigent and elderly and reforms of the state's foster care system.
The governor, however, has used his veto to sink some GOP legislative initiatives. Among them: allowing holders of concealed weapons permits to go armed into bars and expanding the death penalty to cover people who assist with capital murders.
The 2008 session had the transportation dilemma it thought it had resolved a year ago thrust back upon it by a state Supreme Court ruling. The court decided Feb. 29 that half of the first major cash infusion for roads in a generation was unconstitutional because unelected boards levied the taxes in Hampton Roads and northern Virginia.
By Saturday, the House had dismissed out-of-hand the Senate's demand for new statewide taxes to pay for a highway maintenance backlog that threatens to devour all money for new roads within seven years. The House and Senate couldn't even agree on whether to try to resolve the transportation meltdown in a separate special session or the dying hours of the regular session.
There were, however, rare moments of unity, particularly on the most significant legislation offered in response to the April 16 tragedy at Virginia Tech.
On unanimous votes with legislators cheering, bills were passed to repair gaping holes in Virginia's mental health services safety net that could have prevented a disturbed student from killing 32 people on the Blacksburg campus before killing himself. Relatives of those killed and injured testified, often in tears, before legislative committees considering the issue.
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is expected to sign the bill into law.
The bill tightens criteria for identifying, detaining and ordering treatment for mentally ill people who are a threat to themselves and others. It streamlines the ability of mental health care providers to inform law enforcement, school officials and families, when necessary, to care for people in an unstable mental condition.
The $42 million to pay for the reforms is short of the amount mental health advocates sought, but it is safely embedded in the state budget.
Photos By BOB LEWIS AP Political Writer
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