After an earlier breakdown in state budget negotiations, General Assembly budget negotiators and Gov. Glenn Youngkin reached a consensus on a two-year spending plan for Virginia that does not raise taxes.
House Appropriations Committee Chair Luke Torian confirmed the budget conferees reached a deal Thursday, though he said the full details of the plan would not go public until this weekend.
“It will not be released until Saturday; there are a lot of administrative things that need to be done,” Torian, D-Dumfries, said Thursday. “We just reached an agreement this afternoon.”
“I can say that the spending priorities that the House and Senate sent down to the governor in the conference report — all those things are still intact. We feel pretty good about it.”
Torian said the agreement includes no new tax increases. But it nixes a Democrat-backed provision that would have directed Virginia to rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
In a statement, Youngkin spokesperson Christian Martinez said the governor appreciated legislators’ efforts.
“Governor Youngkin is grateful for all the members of the General Assembly, as well as the leadership, and conferees for their ongoing efforts to deliver a budget,” he wrote. “He looks forward to finishing the work to deliver on our collective priorities for all Virginians next week.”
The General Assembly will reconvene in a special session Monday to vote on the proposal. Budget conferees were led by Torian and Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee Chair Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth.
Skill games advocates may be disappointed when the full plan is unveiled.
“My understanding is that skill games did not make it in,” Sen. Jennifer Boysko, a Fairfax Democrat and budget conferee, wrote Thursday to The Virginian-Pilot. “To clarify, that was a final discussion with the chairs and the (governor).”
Supporters of skill games were angered when Youngkin drastically amended a bill that would tax and legalize the slot machine-like devices. His amendments would ultimately ban the games across large swaths of the commonwealth. Advocates hoped the issue might be addressed in the budget, which can sometimes be used to resurrect legislation that has otherwise been killed off.
Budget discussions kicked off in December when the Republican governor released his original proposal that cut income taxes by 12% across all brackets while raising the state sales tax from 4.3% to 5.2%. It would have closed what Youngkin described as a tax loophole on digital goods and included those products as part of the sales and use tax base.
Legislators nixed the income tax cuts and the increase in sales tax in the plan they sent to Youngkin in March. They kept the new tax on digital goods and expanded it to include business-to-business software transactions. They also inserted language that would have directed Virginia to rejoin RGGI, a multi-state program that pushes a shift to renewable energy production by requiring energy producers to buy allowances for each metric ton of carbon they produce.
Youngkin then reversed his stance on the digital tax and removed it in his amended version sent back to lawmakers. He also scaled back funding for other projects, such as toll relief for Hampton Roads, and removed the language about RGGI.
After that, negotiations hit a rough patch that played out in public.
The governor blasted Democrats’ budget proposal, calling it “backwards” during a slew of interviews and news conferences across the state. Democrats responded in kind, embarking on a similar campaign-style tour dubbed Virginia Families First.
Both sides eventually agreed to start over last month and committed to improving communication and cooling the heated rhetoric.
Katie King, katie.king@virginiamedia.com
