Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 11, 1991 TAG: 9102110040
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROB EURE POLITICAL WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
It is a political issue because Gov. Douglas Wilder has staked his national image as a tight-fisted manager maintaining a $200 million reserve fund. He has threatened to veto a budget that does not protect the fund.
It is personal because Wilder's arch rival in the legislature, Senate Finance Chairman Hunter Andrews, D-Hampton, crafted the Senate's budget version by cutting the reserve in half. Wilder and Andrews have battled for years, and Wilder's veto threat was pointedly aimed at Andrews' budget.
In the House of Delegates' budget, Wilder won support of the full reserve fund he seeks.
The fight is trivial because Wilder's national ambitions are not likely to suffer if he eventually is rebuffed on the reserve issue. The House and Senate generally have concurred with Wilder's plan to cut $2.2 billion without raising taxes.
Moreover, the so-called rainy day fund is not money that can be spent on local schools or used to defer state worker furloughs. In fact, a number of legislators say the money does not exist, except as anticipated revenue that the state may never see.
But the budget and the lines being drawn over the reserve have taken control of the General Assembly session, pushing the crush of other legislation into the background.
"It's rare that a legislative session crystalizes this early on a single issue," said Del. Ford Quillen, D-Gate City, a 22-year veteran of the legislature. "And it's kind of sad that personalities have taken over the issue of the reserve."
"The only differences that exist are in the media and in personalities," said Sen. Virgil Goode, D-Rocky Mount, a member of the Finance Committee. "In terms of substance, there is less difference between the budgets than in any year I can recall."
With Wilder's threat of a veto and the Senate's growing insistence on denying him the full reserve fund, some leaders believe the chances are increasing for a stalemate between the Wilder-loyal House and the Senate over the fund.
"It's as dangerous as I've seen it," said Del. Richard Cranwell, D-Vinton. "The Senate appears to be unable to coalesce behind any single position."
Wilder spent much of Tuesday and Wednesday lobbying senators in preparation to fight Andrews over the budget on the Senate floor Thursday. But the fight never materialized on key votes.
Wilder's supporters in the Senate realized they lacked enough votes or would have to count on support from Republicans to succeed.
So, Wilder shifted fronts and, in a speech to the Virginia Municipal League, delivered a stinging indictment of the Senate budget and threatened a veto.
The last governor to veto portions of the state budget was Gov. James Price in 1940. Legislators appealed his power to do so to the Virginia Supreme Court, which upheld Price's action.
That gives Virginia's governor the upper hand in a fight with the General Assembly and leads most legislative veterans to believe Wilder will emerge with his budget largely intact.
"I think the odds are that we will have a budget that resembles much of what the governor wants," Cranwell said.
"As powerful as the governorship of Virginia is, and the short time we have to consider the budget, I don't see any way the governor won't win," said Del. Lacey Putney, a Bedford independent who has served longer than anyone else on the House Appropriations Committee.
"The bottom line is going to be that Wilder wins; that's the one thing I am sure of," said Sen. Dudley "Buzz" Emick, D-Fincastle.
Several legislators wonder if Wilder might delight in handing the legislature a veto. With the support he enjoys in the Senate, where Wilder held a seat for 16 years, Wilder backers could easily sustain a veto, handing Wilder the ultimate victory of whipping his Democratic colleagues back into line.
Andrews scoffs at the reserve fund as nothing more than a new name for the surpluses that Virginia traditionally has enjoyed at the end of fiscal years.
Also, Andrews points out that after being granted a reserve fund last year, Wilder proceeded to deal with a revenue shortfall of $2.2 billion - the largest in the state's history - without using the reserve.
Moreover, a handful of legislators maintain that the revenue reserve does not really exist.
"There is not now, nor has there been, nor is there likely to be any kind of reserve," Emick, a member of the Finance Committee, said flatly.
"Surpluses and deficits in Virginia are always determined after the books are closed at the end of the year," Emick said. "In the meantime, discussion of the issue is left entirely to the politicians."
by CNB