House Appropriations Committee Chairman Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, drove a new vehicle for Medicaid expansion onto the legislative freeway as the General Assembly entered the final week of its scheduled 60-day session.
Jones, the architect of a House budget that includes Medicaid expansion, commandeered a bill on Monday that was the model for the limited expansion of Medicaid services that the Senate included in its version of the budget without money to pay for it.
The committee stripped a financial contingency clause — linking enactment to funding in the budget — out of Senate Bill 915, proposed by Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant, R-Henrico, and whisked it to the House floor on an 18-0 vote, hours before the deadline for committees to complete work on all legislation.
