December 18, 2017
Governor Terry McAuliffe presented his final budget to the Joint Committees this morning; notable, but not unexpected, are the following:
- While FY18 YTD revenues have exceeded the forecast by approximately 2.2%, much of the additional funding available to spend in the introduced budget comes from the inclusion of Medicaid Expansion effective October 2018. Expansion “will allow Virginia to achieve substantial savings, because the new federal funding will replace state-supported . . . costs” Governor-elect Northam issued a laudatory statement; Speaker-designee Cox issued a statement looking forward to developing a budget!
- There is considerable attention paid to K-12 education, teacher’s pay and related initiatives. State and local employees are in line for small raises, and there is continued emphasis on economic development.
- There are also significant deposits to the cash reserves – some mandated, but apparently some “voluntary.”
- Last, the revenue projections for the biennium are very fluid as the details and, therefore, the impact of the new Federal Tax Reform bill are not clear. Keep in mind that a tax savings means a revenue loss; unlike the federal government, Virginia can not have a deficit budget!
The details of the Health & Human Resources items which are most important to us is to be found
here. We will introduce the language revision to the EVV item, and have at least on item to add for rates for BH outpatient services. The process of crafting the 2018-2020 budget has just begun!