Cutting a little here, raising fees a little there, it will all add up to a balanced budget, officials hope. Except this bill would raise fees by a lot…to the highest in the nation, in fact. The highest lawsuit filing fee would raise from $160 to $1,000.

If Republicans want to save some money, they could ask the governor to save the approx. $10 million cost to open Virginia’s 19 rest stops. They’re tapping into the emergency maintain reserve fund–the fund where we get extra money for snow removal. I can’t imagine there could be much left in there after this winter; better pray we don’t get any more snow.

As legislators grapple with state money, at least officials have had federal money to keep them occupied. Even though Virginia has been comparatively slow to allocate stimulus money, looks like at least the transportation money has been obligated. The reward? We might get stimulus money from other states.

And here’s a way cool graphic from the National Journal. They’ve posted their annual ranking of congressmen and senators from most to least liberal and conservative.

At the most liberal end we’ve got Jim Moran, ranked 47th. Apparently he couldn’t have voted any more liberally on social or foreign policy. On the other end we’ve got Eric Cantor, ranked 37th most conservative. He’s got a 100 percent conservative record on just foreign policy.