Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

What’s the Governor Waiting For?

—

by

Dick Hall-Sizemore
in , ,

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

At the reconvened session on April 27, Governor Youngkin returned 116 bills to the General Assembly with recommended amendments. Legislators accepted the Governor’s recommendations on 91 of those bills. The remaining 25 bills were returned to him as originally passed.

The Governor has three options for each of these remaining bills: sign it, veto it, or let it become law without his signature. The deadline for him to take action is midnight, May 27.

What is the Governor waiting for? Yes, he still has 11 days before the deadline, but it was only 25 bills and he has had 19 days to consider them. He already had a folder with notes on each bill. Actually, the batch sent back included several sets of duplicate bills; therefore he has fewer than 25 legislative proposals to act on. Furthermore, he probably knew before he returned the bills which ones he was not going to approve if his recommendations were not accepted.

Ordinarily, there would be no rush. But this year is different. The House and Senate are deadlocked over the budget and the clock is ticking on the June 30 deadline for the biennium.

The Democrats, especially the ones in the Senate, are especially miffed over the Governor vetoing many of their bills earlier. I suggested earlier that, before getting down to serious talks on the budget, Senate Democrats would wait until  they saw what the Governor did with the bills they returned to him. There have not been public reports of the budget conferees even meeting. Of course, a lot of these talks occur out of public view and through staff, but if any significant progress or breakthroughs had been made, word would have gotten out. The underground Capitol annex is not the only thing on Capitol Square that leaks.

The longer the Governor waits, the less time there will be to come to an agreement on the budget. Perhaps this is strategy from the Governor’s experience in business negotiations: give the other fellow a deadline and give him as little time as possible to act, with the idea that he will fold or compromise under pressure. If this is the strategy, it will be interesting to see how that gamble plays out.

Share this article

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

Comments

11 responses to “What’s the Governor Waiting For?”

  1. DJRippert Avatar
    DJRippert

    So, Youngkin takes 30 days to consider the returned bills and the General Assembly then has 33 days to pass a budget. So what? The state’s civil servants might have to scramble a bit to implement their budgets? Oh stop, my heart is breaking.

    1. vicnicholls Avatar
      vicnicholls

      Yes, it does take a bit to reprogram the software, document the changes. If it takes place after a particular time frame, you’ve got to figure out how to pay the back part. I’m in IT, you have to test this, this is peoples’ paychecks.

      You dont’ know what you run into.

      1. DJRippert Avatar
        DJRippert

        Thanks for the comment.

        I’m surprised that any software has to be reprogrammed for a new budget. I’ve worked for two companies with far more employees than the state of Virginia and I can’t recall re-programming software when we implemented our new annual budgets.

        1. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          If they’re still using stuff like COBOL or RPG, they have to!

          😉

        2. vicnicholls Avatar
          vicnicholls

          I know of some still using mainframes in cities. Yes it does. Even if you have newer software, you have to verify the pay for everyone, at least payroll wise you do for ours. I do the budget software and it has to match down to the penny, same with banking software I did. Not a fast change. So yeah, he’s way more than cutting it close. Now, you can be doing this in testing areas on preproduction systems, but there are 2 suggestions: 4% and 1% bonus, and 5%. So you end up testing at least 2 scenarios, not to mention the 1% bonus. Not just pay, that’s benefits also.

    2. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
      Dick Hall-Sizemore

      It is not as simple as that. If the two houses are still firm in their positions, with the House insisting on the Governor’s proposal to increase the standard deduction and the Senate resisting, the deeper into June the stalemate goes, the more time that the administration is going to have to spend on contigency planning, i.e. what to do in case there is no signed budget bill on July 1. Even if a compromise over revenues is reached sometime in June, time will be needed by the conferees to sort out the spending. After the legislature adopts the budget, it will be sent to the Governor, who can send it back with line item vetoes and recommended amendments. All that takes time to process.

      As vicnicholls points out there is considerable work to be done to implement the budget after it has been adopted. State employees have had to do this in the past and pulled it off well. In fact, in 2006, the budget was not signed by the Governor until June 30, the last possible day before the biennium began.

      This year, the implementation will be more complex, due to state employee raises. The practice in the past has been to make pay raises effective in December of the first year. This time, it’s different: the pay raises are made effective at the beginning of the biennium.

      Employees are paid on the 1st and 16th of each month. However, their pay is lagged–the paycheck they will get on the July 1, for example, will be for the period of June 10-June 23. Both House and Senate bills have provisions for pay increases, beginning June 10. The House is for four percent, the Senate, five. If the budget negotiations drag on beyond June 10, agencies will need to send in their payrolls at the current pay rates. Whenever the budget is finally agreed upon, they will have to reprogram those payrolls at the newer rate. It could be a mess.

      Actually, I just remembered that payday for the last period of the fiscal year is June 30, rather than July 1. That is because the money for that pay period is appropriated in the second year of the biennium and must be spent or committed in that fiscal year. Until th caboose bill is passed, agency payroll departments will not know which salary levels to use in preparing the last payroll of the fiscal year.

      My point is simple. Why delay the budget negotiations any longer than necessary? It certainly should not take the Governor 30 days to figure out what he is going to do about fewer than 25 legislative proposals. In fact, he probably knew what he was going to do when he first submitted his recommended amendments about a month ago.

      1. DJRippert Avatar
        DJRippert

        “Why delay the budget negotiations any longer than necessary?”

        I agree. But isn’t it he Dems refusing to proceed with the budget discussions while the Governor considers the bills that have been sent back to him?

        You wrote, “The Democrats, especially the ones in the Senate, are especially miffed over the Governor vetoing many of their bills earlier. I suggested earlier that, before getting down to serious talks on the budget, Senate Democrats would wait until they saw what the Governor did with the bills they returned to him.”

        Perhaps the title of your article should have been, “What is our state government waiting for?” rather than “What’s the Governor waiting for?”.

        1. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          Well, if he is waiting for the GA to change their mind with regard to a study of the consequences of the changes like std deduction – it’s gonna be a long wait. The GA has already decided they’re going to get a legitimate calibration rather than Youngkins PR happy talk.

          Beyond that, who is waiting for what?

  2. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    Just spending his 90% of time on the most interesting 10% of the problem. Maybe he’s waiting for his copy of “Governing for Dummies” to arrive?

  3. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    Given how far apart they are, I’d not be surprised they’re still behind the scenes hoping for better.

  4. Eric the half a troll Avatar
    Eric the half a troll

    Virginia violent crime rate is considerably lower than average. There were a total of 209 violent crimes reported for every 100,000 people in the state in 2020, compared to 399 per 100,000 nationwide. Hammer looking for a nail.

Leave a Reply

Read More