Senate budget coming next week
Sen. Linda Garrou, the Winston-Salem Democrat who is the chamber's senior budget writer, said this morning that the Senate would roll out its version of the budget next week.
The schedule, she said, would be subcommittees on Monday, full appropriations and finance committees on Tuesday and floor votes on Wednesday and Thursday.
She said that agencies would be given "negative reserves" to help balance the budget. That's basically like giving an agency a $1 million but only letting them spend $900,000 of it. It's also a different approach from that taken by the governor, whose "truth-in-budgeting" approach would have more tightly defined what agencies could and could not spend.
As far as what areas are spared from the most severe cuts (education and economic development) and those that aren't (everything else), Garrou said the Senate and the governor were largely simpatico.
"I think we're tracking with a lot of things the governor has," she said.
Comments (2)
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Mark,
Do you and the rest of the capitol press corp intend to hold the Democrats feet to the fire if they try any more of these 45 minute debates and procedural steamrolling of the Republicans?
JB
Posted on April 2, 2009 9:25 PM
I don't speak for the rest of the folks who cover the legislature.
If they use rules to rush the process again, I'll write about it again.
Posted on April 2, 2009 10:22 PM