During this fourth week of session, House members pushed to complete critical work to meet ‘Crossover’ on February 7 and passage of the House Budget on February 9. Crossover is the date by which the Senate and House must complete their respective bills. Your Republican-controlled General Assembly will process more than 2.200 bills and resolutions and pass a balanced budget during this short 45-day session. House budget preparation was completed this week and was announced on February 5. The House budget focuses on increases in two areas: compensation for our workforce and improvements in our mental health system. It also provides funding for economic development, domestic violence issues, operating the Library of Virginia, and a few other areas. It does not increase taxes or fees as proposed by Governor McAuliffe. Since I chair the House Compensation and Retirement Subcommittee, my most consuming focus has been the compensation package for our state workforce. We are proposing a meaningful raise of 3% for our state workforce, including higher education faculty and staff, and significant additional funding for the Virginia State Police and Capitol Police.
Both of the latter employee groups are short on staff to carry out their responsibilities and are losing officers, as their pay is not competitive even with many local law enforcement agencies in the state. There is also a “compression” increment for local sheriffs to alleviate the serious problem of having to pay higher salaries for new hires than officers with many years of experience. Our budget also includes a 2% pay raise for state-supported local employees, such as the constitutional officers. For K-12 education, we are proposing freeing up “where you have to spend it” strings attached to lottery proceeds (29 to 40%) so the local school divisions can use that funding for raises, to pay the increase in the local share of VRS payments for their employees, or even other purposes as determined by local division needs.
Last year, 123 of 135 school divisions in the state gave salary and/or step on the pay ladder raises, while only 12 did not. Most gave both salary and step raises. Again, this flexibility will facilitate local priorities. We also dealt with the special problems of Southwest Virginia, Southside Virginia, Northern Neck and the Eastern Shore where a decline in school enrollment has occurred. Death by opioid overdose has become a huge problem. When the final 2016 figures are published, the number of overdose deaths are likely to be greater than those caused by vehicle crashes. A package of bills passed this week to address this troubling issue. In the House Agriculture, Chesapeake and Natural Resources (ACNR) Committee, we denied two bills to free industrial hemp production from controls, as one would conflict with federal law (and cost a lot of money to implement) while the other dealt with a pilot project in which much of that proposed is already being done. I don’t think I know anyone against hemp, including myself, as it has much potential, but the timing of these bills vis-à-vis potential federal law changes and the results from our ongoing pilot program that is not available yet means the bills are premature. ACNR and the full House passed a good bill giving animal control officers the discretion to determine whether or not a dog is ‘dangerous.’ Also, I have had many complaints over the misuse of FARM license plates, so this week I supported a bill to increase the penalties for this offense. Two of my bills passed this week. HB2003 will require the chief elected and chief administrative officer (e.g., county administrator) of each jurisdiction to provide their notarized signatures on the annual financial statement to the state confirming the independent financial audit report has been presented to the governing body. This is a first step towards addressing situations like the City of Petersburg financial fiasco. HB2002 requires any refugee resettlement agency opening in Virginia to provide “non-identifying” data to the Virginia Department of Social Services (DSS), which is the Virginia agency that contracts with these agencies for state department sponsored refugees to do the work. The data is limited to the number of refugees, age, gender, country of origin, and jurisdiction where settled. DSS is to collect and report the data.
This bill is both for transparency and cost ascertainment purposes. Refugees are eligible like everyone else for benefits, so there is a state cost for healthcare (Medicaid) and TANF (‘maintenance of spending level’). We need the data to budget for these expenditures.
On the local level, DSS, local governments, school boards, medical providers and others that provide local services need the data to plan and fund education (such as English as a Secondary Language), interpreters in court and beyond, find jobs, provide housing, and so forth. As usual, the Senate’s proposed budget will differ somewhat from the House’s. “Budget Conferees” will settle the differences so we can vote out the budget before we conclude session, scheduled for February 25. To contact me, send an email to DelCPoindexter@house.virginia.gov or call (804) 698-1009 or write to me at P.O. Box 406, Room 802, Richmond, VA 23218.
