Hampton adjusts budget to cover vetoed gun violence prevention funds
But Hampton officials said this week they plan to scale back spending elsewhere in the city's 2026 budget proposal to cover the loss in state funding.
The General Assembly's budget plan allocated money for gun violence prevention through the Safer Communities program, including $2.5 million each for Hampton and Newport News. The funds were set to support Hampton's violence intervention tools, including its Violence Interrupter Program, Hopeful Hampton Divergent Program and housing stabilization program from Riverside Hand-In-Hand.
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'We proceeded with the budget under the assumption that the grants would be available,' said Hampton City Manager Mary Bunting of her work on the city's 2026 budget proposal. 'Unfortunately, while he didn't line-item veto everything the General Assembly had given him with the budget, he did choose to line-item veto the state for grants.'
Youngkin nixed the Safer Communities funding on Friday, citing a 400% funding increase for the program from fiscal years 2023 through '26, with 'no measures being provided demonstrating the effectiveness of these programs.'
'Additional funding for these programs should be considered in the next biennial budget, and not in FY26, when the effectiveness of these programs can be better evaluated,' Youngkin wrote in his veto message.
The Safer Communities grant program was established during the 2023 legislative session and has previously extended funding toward Richmond, Roanoke, Portsmouth and Norfolk.
The Safer Communities veto was one of 37, and altogether the cuts will work out to a roughly $900 million surplus the next legislature should have available.
Bunting said if the city wanted to continue those programs, the money would have to come from somewhere else.
'Those things we had assumed we would be funding out of our grant fund, we could either not do, which I truly would not recommend. We have had a lot of success in bringing down our fatal and non-fatal shootings,' Bunting said. 'Or we have to find a way to replace those.'
The city is going with the latter.
A new plan to cover the $2.5 million in Safer Communities funding through Hampton's general fund includes several reductions to balance the city's budget.
Newport News did not respond by deadline with information on what they plan to do about the cuts.
Housing stabilization for Riverside Hand-In-Hand is proposed to see its funding halved to $100,000 for fiscal year 2026. That number keeps the program at a 'renewable level,' according to Hampton Interim Budget Manager Angelique Shenk.
The original budget plan also provided roughly $115,000 for a new main branch library manager, which the new plan eliminates while the library director fills those duties.
Cemetery maintenance grants would also see a 50% reduction to $86,000, as well as the nixed funding for 10 summer intern positions. Shenk said the city already has advocacy groups helping maintain historic cemeteries, and the funding was meant to help assist those groups. It remains to be seen how a funding cut would affect maintenance for the city's 18 cemeteries.
Additionally, the plan would shave $30,000 off Hampton's annual Holiday Wonder Walk near Coliseum Central, where there were plans to expand the event. It will also eliminate the city's $40,000 in special event advertising and would rely on existing internal resources for its marketing department, and cut nearly $37,000 in general contingency funding.
'It pains me to have to take any of these out,' Bunting said. 'I wish we were not in the position of having to look at this. But if I look at all of the additions to the budget in sum total, the violence reduction efforts are the most critical because they save lives.'
The council will formalize the budget amendments when they vote to adopt the budget Wednesday.
Devlin Epding, 757-510-4037, devlin.epding@virginiamedia.com
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