Budget Goes To Governor For His Approval

The state budget is one step closer to completion after legislative action Friday morning. 

Thursday evening, the Senate took up and amended the House of Delegates’ budget bill, House Bill 2024, and after some discussion in the House Friday morning, the state budget passed easily.

Senate Finance Chairman, Sen. Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, said the changes the Senate made Thursday night reflected the work both chambers have put into the budget.

“Those are agreements and arrangements and everything that we worked out with the House members all along the way, through all this legislation was passed,” Tarr said. “We had quite a bit of concurrence on the bill, so it was understood that it passed the House going out today.”

House Bill 2024 now goes to the governor’s desk for his approval and signature. 

Tarr said he was pleased to pass a budget in less than 60 days for the fifth year in a row. However, he also said the budget isn’t fully complete until the governor signs it.

“Because of it being the budget bill, if there’s something in there that he doesn’t agree with, he can’t go and change it, but he can go into the line-item veto,” Tarr said. “As he goes through the budget, I don’t know yet. We’ll see what he does with it. But that happens occasionally, so it’s something that we expect.”

A budget bill is the only piece of legislation required to be produced annually in the Constitution.

Tarr highlighted several projects funded by the budget, including money to shore up the state’s aging dams, as well as money to address deferred maintenance in higher education facilities and the state’s prisons and jails.

“There’s a lot of items like that in this budget that are the things that don’t get a lot of media attention, but just because they’re not the sexy things around politics these are the things that really, really matter and so a lot of that’s done in this budget,” Tarr said.