On the fourth day of Governor Terry McAuliffe’s budget impasse, Virginia’s fourth largest locality is joining a growing chorus of local governments calling on the Governor to separate Medicaid expansion from the budget debate and pass a clean budget.
Loudoun County Board of Supervisors Chairman Scott York sent a letter to Governor Terry McAuliffe urging the Governor to “separate [Medicaid expansion] from the entire state budget and deal with it separately at another time.”
For the full text of the letter, click here.
Without timely action on the state budget by both the state legislative and executive branches, local government budget decision-making is nearly impossible to finalize, and the threat of a July 1 shutdown of nonessential state operations a real possibility. Furthermore, the practice of passing additional state-level responsibilities and commitments to localities continues to increase to the point where many localities are forced to choose between annual real estate tax increases or reducing services required to serve its citizens.
We respectfully request that you not allow any single issue, including consideration of Medicaid expansion, to prevent you from working with the General Assembly to enact a state budget. Specifically, if the Medicaid issue cannot be resolved at the conclusion of this session as scheduled, then the issue should be dropped and the entire state budget should move forward and be adopted. Therefore, we request that you separate this particular issue from the entire state budget and deal with it separately at another time.
Loudoun County joins a growing chorus of local governments urging the Governor to separate the issue of Medicaid expansion from the budget.
The City of Virginia Beach passed a resolution Tuesday night urging the Governor to “separate the issue of Medicaid expansion from the budget so that a budget may be promptly adopted by the General Assembly.”
New Kent County, Shenandoah County and the City of Colonial Heights have all adopted similar resolutions.
From across the Commonwealth, the message being sent to the Governor is loud and clear: Virginia should pass a clean budget and then consider the issue of Medicaid expansion separately.