House Appropriations Committee reports HB 29 with amendments tying tax conformity and a $1,500 employee bonus to the caboose budget

The House Appropriations Committee reported House Bill 29, the biennial “caboose” budget, with a package of nine amendments on a 15–7 vote. Speaker 2, presenting the package, said the bill folds in revenue changes from the latest full revenue forecast and includes language adopting federal tax conformity that the presenter said increases revenues by about $200,000,000.

Speaker 2 said nine amendments are before the committee, including: updating the bill’s front-page resource enumeration to reflect the federal tax conformity bill; delaying a July 1 reporting deadline for election audits established by 2022 legislation to December 31 to give localities time to comply; replacing a proposed 2% bonus for teachers and state-supported employees with a $1,500 flat bonus (the presenter estimated an additional $11,100,000 cost in K–12 and a $7,000,000 savings for state employees, for a net $4,000,000 cost); granting higher-education institutions and local school divisions until Sept. 16 to provide flexibility on bonus timing; striking capital outlay language relating to disposition of the DMV headquarters on West Broad Street and moving that discussion to House Bill 30; restoring language that had previously limited use of funding for abortion services consistent with federal law and extending analogous state-law provisions; replacing the administration’s tax conformity language with proposed language from Delegate Watts’s House Bill 977 as received by appropriations; and revising 2026 primary and filing schedules (including an Aug. 4 primary and modifications tied to the Commonwealth’s 11 congressional districts.

Doug DeWilder (Speaker 3) voiced opposition during the questions period, urging the committee to vote against the measure and invoking the 2019 redistricting commission and related process concerns. No additional amendments were offered on the floor of this committee.

A motion to report HB 29 as amended was moved and seconded and carried on a recorded vote, 15–7. The chair declared the bill reported and the committee adjourned to reconvene later in the afternoon.

The bill, as described in committee, preserves other spending and savings proposals included in the governor’s introduced budget that were not changed by the nine amendments. The committee record on this date does not specify the full legislative text of the substituted tax conformity language beyond referencing the provision from HB 977.

Next steps: HB 29 will proceed per the General Assembly’s normal procedural schedule; the committee did not set a further local deadline or effective date beyond the changes described above.