Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 19, 1992 TAG: 9202190369
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
VIRGINIA'S BUDGET FAILURES
THE TWO budget bills that moved this week from the General Assembly's money committees to the House and Senate floors are, in a word, failures.They fail to reflect sufficiently the fact that the state must pick up slack created by the federal government's abdication of responsibility.
They fail to reflect sufficiently the fact that Virginia, a low-tax state, can afford to do more without unduly burdening its taxpayers.
And above all, they fail to provide sufficiently for the social investments desperately needed today if Virginia is to have a prosperous tomorrow.
Though better in some ways than the budget submitted by Gov. Wilder, the assembly's budgets are worse in other ways.
The worst example of what's worse is in the area of health care.
Gov. Wilder's proposed tax on health-care providers wasn't the best idea in the world. But at least he was making an effort to address the escalating cost of health care, which via Medicaid is a prime state budget-buster.
So what do the House and Senate committees do? Not only kill the governor's proposed tax, but also reject any increase in the obvious alternative, Virginia's absurdly low tobacco-products tax, the lowest in the country.
The governor's plans for health-insurance coverage of poverty-stricken babies, and for raising from 10 to 18 the age limit on which low-income children are eligible for Medicaid, wouldn't by themselves have ensured bright-eyed students and a healthy future work force. But they would have been steps at least in the right direction.
So what do the House and Senate committees do? Kill the baby-health plan, and, in the Senate, lower the proposed new Medicaid age limit from 18 to 14.
What are Virginians to think? That the official policy of this great state is to encourage smoking and sick babies?
Granted, the assembly budgets aren't all bad. The committees restored some small-ticket but important items - materials-acquisition money for local libraries, money for public television - that the governor had cut.
Credit the Senate for giving bipartisan support to raising the top income-tax bracket - from 5.75 to 6.25 percent - on taxable income of more than $100,000 (for a couple). That's worth roughly $100 million for the 1992-94 biennium. But also keep in mind predictions that the proposal will meet its demise in the House.
Credit the House for supporting a half-cent increase in the sales tax. But also keep in mind that implementation, in an act of political cowardice unusual even for the General Assembly, was made subject to voter approval.
And new sales-tax money, rather than being tied to a $1-billion bond issue, should have been earmarked for local school districts.
The Senate budget would add $116 million in school aid over the next two years; the House, about $41 million. Either amount is chicken feed, compared with the $1 billion that the state Board of Education says would be needed - just to get state schools back on track after the budget-cutting derailment of the past couple of years.
Both the House and Senate bills would raise state workers' pay by 2 percent. Wilder's budget would not have raised state salaries, which have fallen significantly behind salaries for equivalent work in the private sector.
To "find" the funds, however, the committees assumed that higher portfolio value of the state's retirement fund meant lower employer contributions were necessary. Maybe, but haven't the lawmakers heard that interest rates, and thus the yield on many investments, are down?
At least Virginia's politicians aren't so trapped by unkeepable "read my lips" promises that talk of new taxes is totally taboo. Absent, however, is the sort of tax increases, such as those proposed in this space last month, that might make a significant difference.
That, we suspect, is in part due to a failure to appreciate fully what Virginia must do if it is to hold its own in an economy gone global. Here's a clue: Keeping many of Virginia's children unhealthy and undereducated isn't the answer.