By Burl Rolett
Cities and counties across Virginia might have to wait to finalize their budgets this fiscal year after the Virginia Senate failed to pass a budget before the end of the recent legislative session.
Political gridlock stalled the budget in the Senate three weeks ago, when an appropriations bill fell one vote short of the majority needed for passage in the General Assembly’s upper chamber.
Until a state budget is signed into law, Virginia’s cities and counties cannot adopt their budgets for the coming fiscal year. Lexington City Manager Jon Ellestad must submit a budget to the City Council by March 30. He said the absence of a state budget is just one more uncertainty in this year’s budget cycle.
“Budgeting, by its nature, is guess-timating,” he said. “We just go with the best information we’ve got.”
Both Houses will reconvene for a special session to work on the budget on Wednesday, but the session will be too late for Ellestad to use the final figures in Lexington’s budget. He said he would need final numbers about 10 days before the March 30 deadline.
“We will just have to adjust at a later date,” he said.
Senate Democrats and Republicans came to an impasse over the state budget on Feb. 23, when the Senate budget bill failed by a 20-17 vote. All senators who were present for the vote voted along party lines.
Almost a week late, the Senate voted down the House version, which had passed in the House with a bipartisan 79-21 vote.
Democrats are using the budget bill as leverage to try to reverse what they call a power grab by Republicans in the Senate.
The Senate is split exactly in half, 20 Democrats and 20 Republicans.
Earlier in the session, Republicans used Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling’s tiebreaker vote to pass controversial legislation and kick Democrats off committees, State Sen. Creigh Deeds said.
But Virginia law requires 21 “yes” votes in the Senate to pass a budget bill, nullifying Bolling’s effectiveness as a tiebreaker.
The delay will push back the first step of the Rockbridge County budgeting process as well, said Steve Bolster, director of fiscal services for the county. Normally, the county school board must submit its budget requests by April 1. But the school system cannot finalize funding requests until it knows how much money to expect from the state, Bolster said.
The Rockbridge County School Board’s deadline for budget requests will be pushed back to 30 days after the state superintendent of public instruction can give Rockbridge County an estimate of state funding, Bolster said.
Delays in the state budget are inconvenient, Ellestad said, but not uncommon.
“It affects us, it makes it more difficult, but it’s nothing new,” he said.
The General Assembly has needed a special session to finish the budget in two of the last three budget cycles. In 2004, a special session for the budget stretched into May. In 2008 the budget was not finalized until the final week in June.
The deadline for approving a new budget for Lexington is July 1, but Ellestad hopes to finalize the city budget in early May alongside the Lexington school division’s budget, which must be adopted by May 15.
Ellestad said changing Lexington’s budget to reflect a finalized state budget will require only minor modifications, as state money accounts for only about $2 million of the approximately $20 million budget.
“In the grand scheme of things, state funding is only a small portion of our budget,” he said.