Delaware lawmakers approve new budget
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
By: Bill Cook
bcook@whyy.org
It was the last legislative day and by far the longest, as Delaware lawmakers worked past the deadline to close an $800 million dollar deficit and approve a budget for the new fiscal year which starts today.
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Delaware lawmakers are finally finished with a $3 billion dollar budget. After getting out of the house of representatives about 9 o'clock Tuesday night, the budget bill didn't pass the senate until after three a-m this morning. The holdup? A tax on alcohol that would have generated about $4.8 million dollars. The money was later taken out of the capital budget and at 4:30 p.m. Governor Jack Markell signed the budget.
Markell: When you're dealing with a budget shortfall of this magnitude, when you have to ask of people what we asked of them here this is not something to be celebrating it's just move on I'm glad this process is over but literally the process of figuring out how we can make government even more effective and efficient starts immediately.
To balance the budget lawmakers had to approve more than $200 million dollars in tax and fee increases.