February 08, 2019
Crossover, when action of the bills introduced in one chamber must be complete and those bills still in play “crossover” to the other chamber happened earlier this week. Action on those remaining bills will be mostly complete by the end of next week – but the big news is the Budget Bill. We already summarized the majority of the budget amendments and, where there are differences between the House version and the Senate version the items will be decided by the Conference Committee. We will have our talking points and letters ready for the conferees early next week.
Our focus will be on having the rate increase for Outpatient Services which was in the Senate version appear in the final budget and supporting the amendments which will block implementation of the Supports Budgets in the DD Waiver Services (which were in both the House and Senate reports).
It was not at all clear, in the past few days, if we would have a final budget – it was not clear if the House and the Senate could agree how to handle the issue of conformity for the Virginia Tax code – a problem brought on by the overhaul of the Federal tax code last year. That issue was resolved today! For those interested in the solution, here is the
link to Michael Martz’s article from the Richmond Times-Dispatch this afternoon.