Fourteen Days Left in the Fiscal Year… and Counting…

General Assembly conferees are reporting slow progress in negotiations to craft the next biennial budget, slated to begin July 1, but they haven’t finished the job yet. Tensions between the Senate and the House of Delegates are still running high. To quote the Washington Post account by Michael Shear and Rosalind Helderman:

Reading a missive from the House on Thursday morning, Chichester at one point exclaimed: “God, they’re dumb as rocks!”

After reading a letter from senators aloud, Robert Vaughn, the staff director for the House Appropriations Committee, threw up his hands in frustration. “They’re like an EKG,” he said, referring to the way the needle on a heart monitor bounces all over the place. “They’re going to give somebody a heart attack.”