The Governor is recommending four actions to provide money to fully fund school construction and to provide the City of Norfolk with a direct appropriation. Inflation adjustments of this sort are routine actions during budget development. A second technical amendment to adjust appropriations for institutions of higher education for overfunding of faculty retirement benefits and for the actual number of payrolls that will occur during each year of the biennium. An amendment to remove the second year funding for all nonstate agencies, pending the development of policy guidelines for the funding of these nongovernmental entities. Amendments to fund 1,400 new elementary teachers to reduce class sizes and to revise the methodology for faculty salary increases The 1998 General Assembly s action to fund additional teaching positions does not guarantee that new teachers will be hired and class sizes reduced.
Localities can simply use the funding to pay for existing teachers.
The Governor proposes to fund the 1,400 new elementary teachers with savings from adopting an updated statistical methodology to calculate the 60th percentile goal for faculty salaries at institutions of higher education. The addition of the Secretary of Administration to the newly created Commission on Reform of the Classified Compensation Plan. The deletion of the requirement that the State Corporation Commission request its actuarial consultant to review the Essential and Standard Health Benefit Plans. A technical change to remove erroneous language that places a moratorium on funding for locally operated juvenile detention centers. This section presents details of the Governor s proposed amendments to the 1998 Appropriation Act.