Virginia lawmakers pass and Gov. Youngkin signs biennial budget after months-long battle

Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed Virginia’s 2024-2026 biennial budget just hours after it was passed by the General Assembly Monday, after a months-long battle over the spending bill between Democratic leadership and the Republican governor.

The $188 billion spending bill maintains $2.5 billion in new funding for K-12 education – that includes a 3% raise for teachers and state employees.

New tax increases, a proposal to modernize the tax code to include digital goods and services and language that would have required the commonwealth to rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, were not included in the final bill. The commonwealth had joined RGGI in 2021 and left the initiative in 2023.

The General Assembly passed the bill with a 94-6 vote in the House of Delegates and a 39-1 vote in the State Senate during Monday's special session. Sen. John McGuire, R – Goochland, who is running against Republican Rep. Bob Good to represent Virginia’s 5th  Congressional District, was the only no vote in the Senate.

McGuire said he voted against the budget because "Virginia is seeing record revenue, but we're not giving the people record tax breaks."

“The most important thing is that we were able to address and fund all of our priorities,” Chair of the Appropriations Committee Del. Luke Torian,  D – Prince William County, said in a statement. “We prioritized K-12 funding, we prioritized higher education – when the Governor didn’t include anything for higher education. The Governor only included a 1% raise for teachers – we included a 3% salary increase for teachers and state employees in the first and the second year. Every fundamental thing that needed to be done was funded in this budget.”

"This budget is a resounding win for Virginia, setting the stage for prosperity and progress for years to come," Senate Finance and Appropriations Chair Louise Lucas, D – Portsmouth, said in a statement.

"While the budget isn’t what a Republican House of Delegates would have produced, the document signed by the Governor today is a significant improvement over the budget sent to him at the end of the regular session," House Republican Leader Todd Gilbert, of Mount Jackson, said in a statement. "It reflects compromise, with both sides dealing in good faith to meet our most basic responsibility. Once again, Virginia’s leaders have demonstrated that Richmond is not Washington."

Frustration over scrapped RGGI, tax modernization efforts

Del. Richard Sullivan Jr., D – Fairfax, signaled his disapproval in the decision to concede on RGGI on the House floor Monday.

“The governor included in the budget we’re voting on today $100 million, a paltry sum compared to both the need and the amount of money that was coming to Virginia for flood mitigation from RGGI,” Sullivan said, and noted that the $100 million would come from taxpayers for the community flood preparedness fund.

“We wouldn’t need to do that, if we stayed in RGGI,” he said.

The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis, a left-leaning non profit, issued its frustration after the tax modernization effort had been cut from the biennium.

“By backing off of the proposal to modernize our tax code, lawmakers turned to a variety of tactics that may jeopardize our ability to support these critical investments in the future," Ashley C. Kenneth, president and CEO of the organization said in a statement before Monday’s vote.

“One of the biggest missed opportunities is the loss of $169 million that would have gone to public K-12 education as a result of modernizing our tax code,” she said.

The long and winding road to compromise

Youngkin and state lawmakers had agreed to entirely scrap the last iteration of the biennial budget on April 17 to begin negotiations anew after reaching an impasse.

Youngkin had embarked on a mini tour around the commonwealth to characterize the bipartisan budget passed by the General Assembly in early March as “backwards.” General Assembly Democrats responded by embarking on a tour of their own to counter that messaging.

In early April, Youngkin struck a conciliatory tone as he unveiled 233 amendments to the budget passed by the General Assembly in what he called a “common ground” compromise.

This article originally appeared on Staunton News Leader: Virginia lawmakers, gov pass biennial budget after months-long battle