Thursday was pecking day at the General Assembly, as the Senate and House each passed a version of the budget and withstood last attempts by members to peck away at the fringes of the spending plans.
Neither chamber’s budget is drastically different from what Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) proposed in December, and none of the down-to-the-wire changes made much impact on the bottom line.
The legislature is fashioning the second year of a two-year, $105?billion spending plan adopted in 2016. Unexpected drops in revenue last year led to a shortfall of about $1.2?billion, so the haggling here is over how to patch that without causing too much pain.
