Delegate Bloxom updates on end to official General Assembly session

By Delegate Rob Bloxom

Hi, this is Rob Bloxom with this week’s Capitol Report. We ended the 2023 legislative session Saturday, February 25^th, late in the day. The last day was long, waiting for deals to be completed. The most complicated deal was bringing electric utilities back under full control of the State Corporation Commission by 2025. This agreement had the Attorney General’s Office, the Governor’s Office and a slew of other stakeholders working through the night and most of Saturday morning before the full bill could be printed and explained. The other ninety or so bills that were in conference were being discussed all through the Capitol with Senators and Delegates huddled with lobbyists and legislative attorneys hammering out final details of the bill that would be the final product. This is truly where you must trust your fellow delegates to explain what the changes are before you vote on the final passage of the bill.

We completed our legislative work and passed what is called a “skinny” budget. Budget negotiations broke down late Thursday night when the two chairmen of the money committees failed to reach a deal on the revenue that we had available to spend. The Senate democrats walked back on the agreed upon tax relief that the House Republicans had put forward. Since the agreed upon amount was reneged by the Senate Finance Chairman, the House Appropriations Chair came into our conferee committee that was going over language amendments to the Health, Welfare and Institutions section of the budget and called off negotiations. We had gotten through approximately twenty pages of the seventy plus pages of language amendments. I only wish he had called off negotiations an hour before we went through twenty pages of mind-numbing language amendments. That being said, we are working off the second year of the two-year budget. The 400 pages of amendments to the second year were boiled down to four amendments. Since our state revenues were so high, it triggered two constitutional demanded events that we needed language to make sure occurred. The deposit to the rainy day fund was made along with an extra deposit to the Virginia Retirement System.  The third amendment was to put more money into the cost overrun pool for capital projects that are underway. Inflation has caused the cost of projects to escalate, so we didn’t want any state projects to halt construction due to insufficient funds. The fourth and final amendment to the budget was to correct an error in the funding formula for public school support. These were the only four amendments that we passed. I am not sure if we will attempt to restart negotiations or not with all 140 seats in the legislature up for reelection this fall.

This abrupt ending hurt us on the Eastern Shore. I had a few major projects that I had hoped to bring home in the budget for the 100^th District. I am still working with staff on how some of these could happen. The most important is the state fulfilling its obligation to Rocket Lab on the incentives package promised. This might happen with the Governor’s amendments to the “skinny” budget.

This session passed quickly, but I am happy to be back in the 100^th District. It has been a pleasure to represent you, and I look forward to seeing you and addressing any questions in person now that I am back on the Eastern Shore. As always, if you need to contact me, please call the district office at (757) 824-3456 or email me at [email protected].