Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 26, 1992 TAG: 9201290311
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: D-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BUDGET BLUES
THE CHIEF roadblock to a significant state tax increase isn't the people of Virginia so much as the politicians.Poll after poll has shown that, for the right purposes, the public will go along with tax increases. For example, 82 percent of those surveyed in the 1991 Roanoke Valley Poll, conducted for this newspaper by Roanoke College's Center for Community Research, said they're willing to pay higher taxes for public education.
The quality of public education is the single most important factor in determining any society's future welfare. If our tax proposals were implemented, about two-thirds of the new revenue would be earmarked for schools.
It isn't beyond Virginia's reach to have the finest public schools in the country - much as Virginia's colleges and universities for years have been among the nation's best (or were, until recent budget cutbacks).
Virginia's mix of state and local school control, in some respects unique to the country, affords double-level accountability. Potentially exciting reforms are in the air that stress programmatic outcome rather than mere spending. Getting a fairer distribution of state aid among rich and poor districts is less a matter of changing basic formulas than of fine-tuning - and funding - them.
Another $420 million in each of the next two fiscal years wouldn't make Virginia's schools the best in the nation. But it would get the state back on track, and help stop the erosion of the gains of the '80s.
Still, some politicians seem mesmerized by fears left over from old "read my lips" presidential campaigns. In Richmond, it is considered an act of great courage simply to propose a penny-ante tax or two so that another Band-Aid can be slapped on the budget. All the tax bills that've been filed combined come to no more than a half-billion or so for the biennium.
That's not enough. Our tax proposals call for more than double that amount. And what's wrong with that? Virginia's young people need to be educated. So, apparently, do Virginia's governor and lawmakers.