Bacon's Rebellion

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The Budget Do-Over: A Game of Chicken?

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by

Bob Rayner
in , ,

by Jock Yellott 

Speaking off-the-cuff at a Charlottesville/Albemarle Bar Association lunch on April 18, 2024, Senator Creigh Deeds offered some pointed remarks about Governor Youngkin.

The Governor and the General Assembly had just the day before agreed to scrap the budget and the Governor’s proposed amendments and start over from scratch in May, averting a crisis. 

Youngkin’s more than 200 proposed budget amendments are evidence of a CEO mentality, Deeds observed. Compared to other governors the Senator has worked with, this one seems disengaged from the political process.  

Senator Deeds told his lawyer colleagues he anticipates that in May the General Assembly will vote essentially the same budget.  

Consider the implications of that.

To me as an outsider it had looked like the politicos starting over in a spirit of cooperation, this time with more realistic expectations. I was not alone in this: Steve Haner hoped they’ll “finally sit down like adults and negotiate the budget.”

Maybe we were naïve.

If instead the legislature sends the Governor essentially the same budget? It looks like the Democrats playing a game of chicken.  

That in effect could force Governor Youngkin either to swallow a budget he’d tried to amend over 200 times; or to veto it, all of it — and take the blame for the ensuing fiscal crisis. 

Senator Deeds noted Youngkin’s prior experience was in running a business. Not a government with a separate, co-equal branch. 

Did Youngkin just get snookered by that co-equal branch?

Jock Yellott is an Attorney in Charlottesville and an occasional contributor to Bacon’s Rebellion.  

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19 responses to “The Budget Do-Over: A Game of Chicken?”

  1. vicnicholls Avatar
    vicnicholls

    If he does, the R will revolt like crazy. I’d say push them. They didn’t win by a mandate – less than 2K votes.

  2. UVAPast Avatar
    UVAPast

    The Democrats do not have a mandate. They need to negotiate and respect the wishes of the large minority.

    1. Stephen Haner Avatar
      Stephen Haner

      I remain of the opinion that the only major issue is whether or not to raise taxes. The RTD story over the weekend confirmed that. Within the current revenue, both sides are very close on the main spending categories. As part of his wave of amendments, the Governor sought to remove many of the policy pronouncements he disagreed with, items he might not legally be able to veto anyway. Those will likely come back intact and he’ll have to swallow all those toads. The sales tax expansion may be the only toad he spits out, and he needs to. The RGGI tax is useless, but plenty of us in the upper incomes can pay it. The Dems screwing the little guy has entertainment value.

      Governors who have not served in the GA, who do not have a network of friends and advisers among the legislative ranks, start with a huge disadvantage. On top of that, it just has not been Youngkin’s style to reach out to potential allies. This session, and really only toward the end, that started to change. Better late than never, I guess.

      The Democrats have the narrowest of margins, but they also have a level of lock-step uniformity I have not seen. Deeds voting as left wing as he has been is the perfect example.

      1. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
        Dick Hall-Sizemore

        The RTD article raised all sorts of possibilities. Folks are all over the map and where they will end up is anyone’s guess. A lot of people, including the governor, are anxiously anticipating a wave of money coming in when state tax returns are filed between now and next week. Vivian Watts would like to use this opportunity to enact some tax reform–increase the sales tax and offset it with an increase in the standard deduction.

        Unless the Democrats just want to stick it to Youngkin for the hell of it, they can get all or almost all the funding they need for their priorities without a tax increase–use the additional GF freed up by Youngkin, use the GF funding he alloted for his priorities, and use the additional funding from the increased revenue estimates that Youngkin is likely to announce just before the special session. They could get all that, along with your policy “toads”, without a tax increase and Youngkin could do little but accept it.

    2. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      That’s pretty much where Youngkins amendments and vetoes came from. He swatted most down, knowing the Dems could not override.

      So what happens this go-around?

      Someone said “uncle” first. Who?

  3. William O'Keefe Avatar
    William O’Keefe

    As I have said on another blog, limiting the Governor to one term is contrary to the notion that we have two co-equal branches. And, until Saturday when the House of Representatives finally acted in a bi-partisan manner, our national politics was driven by the idea of enemies to be defeated instead of opponents to work with to govern.
    Henry Clay once observed that politics was about governing and if you can’t compromise you can’t govern. We will pay a very steep price if we don’t get back to governing by seeking common ground at both the state and national levels.

  4. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
    James Wyatt Whitehead

    I think both sides are just putting buckets in for the scoreboard, which will be useful for the next election cycle. There will be a budget by May. Too many paychecks, such as school teachers, on the line.

  5. SudleySpr Avatar
    SudleySpr

    Repeal the governor term limit, give the legislature some well deserved push back. (No, it doesn’t count that any governor can run more than once in non consecutive terms)

    1. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
      Dick Hall-Sizemore

      There are a lot of reasons for repealing the one-term limit, but it is not going to happen soon. It is analagous to the Electoral College provision on the federal level–the entitites that benefit from the status quo control the mechanism of repeal.

      1. DJRippert Avatar
        DJRippert

        I’ve heard the adage, “Never time to do it right, always time to do it again”.

        In Virginia, that adage needs to be changed. “Never time to do it right, never the courage to change it to be right. Just leave it wrong.”

        The gross incompetence and culpable negligence of Virginia’s governance system was on full display this legislative term.

        Case in point: the Monumental Sports deal.

        Killed in committee by a single 80 year old fossil who represents a district hundreds of miles from the proposed arena location.

        Maybe it was a good idea, maybe it was a bad idea. It deserved a full analysis and vote instead of being killed by a nasty octogenarian who figuratively stood on her front lawn shaking her fist toward Richmond screaming, “You’re not gonna get that GlennDome, Youngkin.”

        Virginia’s loss was DC’s gain. Muriel Bowser forgets more about urban economics in a day than Louise Lucas will learn in her lifetime.

        Her absurd decisions are illustrated by the so-called “skill-games” debate.

        “Look … I don’t want the gray machines in Virginia interfering with my casino — bottom line, end of subject,” Lucas said in 2019.

        Interestingly, she refers to it as “her casino”. Having received $250,000 from casino owners and casino interests in the last five years according to campaign finance reports compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project, maybe Lucas calling it “my casino” makes sense.

        But, her position changed.

        “I did further research,” Lucas said. “I realized that there was not going to have that much of an adverse impact on the casinos as a lot of people say they would. And so that’s the reason why there was a change of heart about that, and especially after I saw the adverse impact that was going to have on small businesses. And so having, you know, been an underdog myself, I just know I just couldn’t stand with that position any longer.”

        The casino owners missed Lucas’ epiphany.

        Rivers Casino itself joined the Virginians Against Neighborhood Slot Machines coalition, which spent more than $50,000 during a single week in February 2024 in the Hampton Roads TV market on ads linking skill machines to crime.

        Why, oh why, did Lucas change her tune?

        In the last year, she has received a combined $105,000 from Va Operators for Skill and Pac-O-Matic the manufacturers of the Queen of Virginia Skill Games.

        The Imperial Clown Show in Richmond™ is a disgusting, disgraceful, cabal whose members use:

        1. Unlimited campaign contributions
        2. Off year elections
        3. A one term governor
        4. Legislative election of judges
        5. (previously) very gerrymandered districts
        6. No term limits (for legislators)
        7. No citizen initiated referenda
        8. A strong implementation of Dillon’s Rule

        to consolidate all political power in the state among the 140 fop and dandy politicians-for-life we call a legislature.

        1. how_it_works Avatar
          how_it_works

          I would add:

          9: An apathetic, low-information electorate who continues to send them to Richmond.

          1. DJRippert Avatar
            DJRippert

            Especially from Northern Virginia, where our own representatives screw us with impunity.

        2. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
          James Wyatt Whitehead

          Love the trademark! Unfortunately, we can’t use the Imperial March theme song from Star Wars. But the Austin Powers theme song will do just fine.
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t0fZeySNck&t=33s

      2. Lefty665 Avatar
        Lefty665

        The one term limit on the Gov, the Electoral College (and the bicameral federal ledge allocated only in part by population) stem from our founders observations about human nature, reservations about what they mean for governance, and how that could go wrong.

        Those old boys had a very intense focus on the evils government can do and how the human failings and excesses of the governors can oppress the governed.

        We would to well to reflect on the wisdom of those observations and reservations rather than on repealing the governmental structures our founders instituted to protect us.

        1. DJRippert Avatar
          DJRippert

          49 states allow a sitting governor in his or her first term to seek re-election. One does not.

          I could live with Virginia’s one term governor if there were term limits for General Assembly members too.

  6. Rafaelo Avatar
    Rafaelo

    Deeds, and Toscano, both well connected senior Dem. statesmen have now said in advance, the Dems expect to get everything they want.

    Anticipating an impasse: Governor needs his team to put together a fall-back bare bones budget. Just essential state functions. Critical services.

    What’s critical? Police, fire, hospitals. Food stamps, whatever that is now re-named. Transportation: airports, trains, fixing bridges. Funding to pay bonds as due to preserve Virginia’s credit rating.

    Education beyond high school? May or may not be critical.

    But nothing for the non-essential. Like racism, in any form. Zero for any DEI department, or for affirmative action, in any state agency. Are “historically black colleges and universities” a relic of segregation? No funding. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People loses its Virginia nonprofit tax exemption.

    Far from an exhaustive list of what is critical to government functioning and what is not, but you get the idea.

    Once the Dems realize so much of what they care about is in fact a luxury, non-essential — maybe they will re-think a game of chicken.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      good stuff you’re smoking there! 😉

    2. DJRippert Avatar
      DJRippert

      Zero based budgeting? It was a good idea in the 1980s until the entrenched bureaucrats realized that it requires that they re-justify themselves every year.

    3. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
      Dick Hall-Sizemore

      When I was at DPB, one year we had to put together a contingency plan in case the new biennium started without a budget. As I remember, it essentially involved the governor invoking his emergency powers to keep essential parts of the govenment running. That included State Police, mental hospitals, and prisons, primarily. Because there was no authority to spend money, employees at those agencies would need to be paid with IOUs. Youngkin should indeed be thinking along these lines. A major problem he faces is that he does not have a Ric Brown or Paul Timmereck to guide him.

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