Last week members of the House and Senate conference committee delivered their biennium budget conference report. This budget includes many advances for Virginia, most significantly, additional funding for our public education system, a 2% raise for teachers and a 3% raise for state employees and University faculty.

The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis has prepared a helpful side by side analysis of all the budgets that can be found here.

Here is an update on where our priorities stand:

Childhood Hunger:

The conferenced budget includes the $2 million from Governor McAuliffe’s budget to support the Breakfast After the Bell Initiative. The conferees added clarifying language to the Breakfast-After-The-Bell program so that only elementary schools with more than 45 percent of their students who are eligible for free or reduced lunch meals may apply for the funds. This initiative is vital to the continuing success of our students across the Commonwealth, and VICPP is glad to see the funding included for each year in the biennium budget. For a news article from the Richmond Times Dispatch covering the program click here.

Healthcare:

Last week a bill to reform Virginia’s Certificate of Public Need Program (COPN) was continued to 2017 in Senate Finance. This bill would have removed some barriers for purchasing expensive equipment like MRI machines in exchange for providing a certain amount of free or charity care to low income individuals. Tied in with the COPN legislation was a provider assessment fee for hospitals. Once the provider assessment initiative was inserted into the COPN legislation, the measure was re-referred to the Senate Finance Committee and effectively killed for the year.

COPN is one piece of the healthcare puzzle which is far from solved. The puzzle has three main pieces: COPN, Medicaid expansion, and a means to provide the 10% of state funding annually for Medicaid expansion once the federal match decreases from 100% to 90%. Hospitals have proposed the provider assessment fee as a way of solving the three-piece puzzle. With the failure of the General Assembly to expand Medicaid, the puzzle remains incomplete.

VICPP is disappointed that the biennium budget does not include the Federal funding to provide 400,000 uninsured Virginians access to Medicaid. Virginia Consumer Voices for Healthcare program will continue to monitor these policy discussions.Stay tuned for summer activities to continue to highlight this moral imperative before our legislators.

Criminal Justice:

The Governor’s budget allows the state to invest savings from the closings of Juvenile Justice facilities into community based services. The conferenced biennium budget supports this measure and establish a workgroup on juvenile justice facilities. Community based services for juveniles have proven to be more effective at rehabilitating youth, and we support the Department of Juvenile Justice transformation.

Immigration:

Two bills, HB 481 and SB 270, introduced by Delegate Bob Marshall and Senator Scott Garrett have passed the House and Senate and are currently being considered by the Governor. These bills would prevent local jails from releasing immigrants who are subject to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers. Additionally, these actions may place burdens on localities as they would be forced to hold more people in jail as they await trial. VICPP has signed on to a letter to encourage the Governor to veto this legislation.

Links to bill lists by priority:

If you have questions, please email Becky Bowers-Lanier at: becky@B2Lconsulting.com, or Kim Bobo at kim@virginiainterfaithcenter.org.

 

Roberta Oster General Assembly, Uncategorized