I just received an email from Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell in which he discusses the need to change the budget development cycle to odd-numbered years.
The Governor made his proposal with only 28 days left in his single four-year term, carrying out his obligation as determined by our current budgetary calendar. Unfortunately, the current budget development process leads to a situation, repeated every four years, in which the consideration, debate and adoption of one governor’s proposed budget takes place during the Administration of his successor.
Yep. But not an original idea, despite McDonnell’s inclusion of the item in his platform. I suspect the problem lies in the very body he used to be a member of: the House of Delegates.
Will the Republican-controlled House give the Republican governor what he wants? Or will we see this effort stymied in the Democratically-controlled Senate?
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
I’m not sure why this needs to be a partisan issue at all, this is an efficiency issue. The McDonnell proposal, which HAS come up before, is a good idea. You’d get the same result by going to annual budgets. Either would be better than the current system.
It doesn’t need to be a partisan issue – and it shouldn’t be – but it will turn into one. It’s the only reason it hasn’t passed in the past.
I understand why the budget cycle is now. A newly-elected House of Delegates wants a fresh budget, and they want the off-years to be the short session so they can start campaigning for re-election. Who wants to spend the summer in a budget special session in an election year?
If the budget years were switched, we’d spend the next year under Kaine’s budget anyway.
The change could be made, but it does make things different for the House.
BK-That’s a good point. Except that the General Assembly now spends so much time EVERY year on the budget, either trying to get it to balance in bad years or plundering the surpluses for the next budget in good years, that we might as well just write a new budget each year anyway.
I think that would also improve accountability becuase it would remove some of the accounting tricks –moving a pay date from one year of the budget to the next, etc. — that legislators currently use to pretend the budget is “balanced.”
Except for the last two years of Allen’s term and the last two of Warner’s term, Virginia’s budget hasn’t actually been balanced in years. We’ve just had a rolling deficite we’ve been kicking from budget to budget.