As special sessions go, this one was not very special. It was supposed to be about the budget, but there was no budget document to vote on because House and Senate leaders are still at loggerheads over a data center tax exemption. The House wants to keep it; the Senate wants to ditch it.
Senator Mark Peake is a Republican from Lynchburg who says even with a trifecta, Democrats still can't govern.
"And we still don't have a budget! And more disappointing is we hear that the conferees are not conferring, that there really haven't been any conversations about the budget, certainly not for the public," Peake says. "Maybe some people are meeting with data center representatives behind closed doors, certainly not transparent."
Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell says the governor's amendments and vetoes are casting new doubt on the budget.
"Part of the problem is the governor vetoed about half a billion dollars out of the budget when she vetoed skill games, and the only way the House budget even balanced was with that money," Surovell says. "So, if you also start messing around with cannabis, if she vetoes cannabis, there is no cannabis money at all. So, you know, it's hard to build a budget when you have those kinds of variables in play until we know exactly what the governor's going to do."
The House and Senate have about two months before the new fiscal year starts in July.
