Today Governor McDonnell
announced that Virginia has a $403.2 million surplus for the end of
the fiscal year. The state collected $228 million more in revenues
than expected and spent $175 million less than budgeted.
However, all of the surplus is already spent and the money is legally
required to go back to transportation, a 3% state employee bonus on
December 1st, and other one time expenditures.
Governor McDonnell also
discussed the $265.6 million Virginia will receive in an extension of
the increased federal match for Medicaid (FMAP) funds. Of that
total, there are $177.5 Million in legally required restorations
(either state or federal requirements) of health care cuts that were
passed by the General Assembly in February.
As you may recall,
the General Assembly cut physician's Medicaid payments by 3% as
of July 1st. The FMAP money will be used to fully
restore the 3% cut from October 1, 2010 through June 30, 2011.
However, on July 1st
2011, the scheduled 4% cut in physician payments will still go into
effect unless we can successfully advocate for the General Assembly
to restore the funding during the 2011 General Assembly
Session.
We will make it a
priority to continue our work with the McDonell administration and
the General Assembly to prevent next year's scheduled cuts.
