Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 8, 1991 TAG: 9102080426
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WARREN FISKE and BILL BYRD LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
As senators and delegates debated the recession-pinched budget at the Capitol, Wilder used a speech to the Virginia Municipal League to attack Senate efforts to cut in half a $200 million emergency reserve fund and to finance new construction projects by borrowing $462.7 million.
"Fiscal responsibility is and shall remain the cornerstone of this administration," he said. "The people deserve it. The Virginia Constitution demands it, and I intend to fulfill my obligations to both." He said only a "handful" of legislators failed to agree with him.
But as Wilder spoke, the Senate repeatedly beat back attempts by his allies to preserve his recommendations for the state's $26.2 billion spending plan. After a grueling, seven-hour debate, the Senate voted 27-11 to approve a budget bill loaded with features Wilder finds objectionable.
A House budget bill, adopted Thursday in that chamber, also challenges some of Wilder's spending priorities; but the governor made it clear that his biggest objections are to the Senate plan. Senate and House differences will be worked out in a conference committee later this month; the budget then goes to Wilder.
The Senate bill calls for cutting the reserve fund to $100 million and contains language that would restrict Wilder's ability to change state spending policies without Assembly approval. It also rejects his call for 15-day furloughs for all state employees, replacing it with a provision that no state worker could be forced to take more than six days of unpaid leave as a budget-balancing device.
Wilder loyalists even failed to get one of his chief targets - a $140,000 appropriation for restoration of the ship Susan Constant - deleted from the Senate bill. The money would be used to outfit the replica of the 17th century vessel that brought the first English colonists to Virginia. The Susan Constant, which is moored at Jamestown, is widely viewed as a pet project of a leading Wilder rival, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Hunter Andrews, D-Hampton.
"This is the only silver bullet the folks [in the governor's office] could find to take a shot at the leadership of this body," said Sen. Joseph Gartlan Jr., D-Fairfax County, one of Wilder's most vocal critics.
The governor this week conducted an intense lobbying campaign, seeking to line up enough Senate support to preserve the $200 million reserve and make other alterations to the spending plan recommended by the Senate Finance Committee last Sunday.
He failed. Wilder allies conceded that they knew they did not have enough votes to overhaul the committee's plan, and the full Senate adopted it virtually intact.
With the debate under way in the Senate chamber, Wilder told the municipal league that Senate leaders had loaded their proposed budget with pet projects at a time when he was trying to overcome a $2.2 billion revenue shortfall without raising taxes.
Wilder took particular exception to the appropriation for outfitting the Susan Constant. He also railed at the Senate for proposing $350,000 for a Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Virginia, asserting that the center would "enable professors to take a respite" from teaching. A university spokesman later called the center "the single most important factor" in attracting nationally prominent professors to the college.
And the governor blasted a $550,000 Senate amendment to renovate "a guest house" at Clinch Valley College. A spokesman later said Wilder was referring to a project that would convert a dormitory into administrative offices.
"Opting for bricks and mortar before people and their pain is unconscionable and unacceptable," Wilder said. "If the legislature wants to spend money in this way, it will have to do so over my veto. . . . They are not priorities; they're not even necessities."
Wilder appeared most concerned about preserving the reserve fund, perhaps the cornerstone of his administration. Wilder said he wanted to hold onto the money as a hedge against further deterioration in the state economy.
By tapping the fund, several senators said they hoped to avoid Wilder's plan for putting state employees on up to three weeks of unpaid leave before July 1992. But Wilder, in comments to reporters after his speech, suggested the demise of the reserve could force a tax increase.
The governor stopped short of pledging a veto for a Senate-backed plan to sell more than $465 million in general obligation bonds for college and university buildings, but warned the measure could damage Virginia's credit rating. The bond issue is Andrews' brainchild.
Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY
by CNB