Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 22, 1992 TAG: 9202220407
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY ROB EURE AND GREG SCHNEIDER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
BOND BILLS FACE BIG FOE
Gov. Douglas Wilder promised Friday to veto any bond proposal that is linked to higher taxes, saying he believes the state can finance new facilities, including highways, without reaching deeper into citizens' pockets."The only bond bill I am prepared to sign is one without a tax attached to it," Wilder said in a statement the day after the House of Delegates killed his own proposal for a $585 million borrowing program.
Wilder's package, which has passed the Senate, would provide money for college, park and mental health facilities. A House-passed bill sponsored by Majority Leader Richard Cranwell adds another $500 million in transportation projects but requires a half-cent sales tax increase to pay the debt.
Wilder said he would consider a road-building plan, provided it has "Republican and Democratic support" and is not tied to his basic bond proposal. Northern Virginia legislators, in particular, have pressed to have road projects included in any state borrowing program.
Wilder's comments would seem to doom Cranwell's plan, which sits now in a hostile Senate Finance Committee.
"I would think Cranwell's package would have a very difficult time passing the Finance Committee,"said senior committee member Stanley Walker, D-Norfolk.
Any borrowing plan would require final approval by the voters.
Wilder has publicly worried about an increase in the sales tax, which he calls regressive. But in private meetings with Cranwell last month, he never flatly opposed the House program.
"I wanted to let the legislative process work, but that ended yesterday as far as I'm concerned," Wilder said Friday. "Now, I think it is incumbent for me to say what I would do. I will not have any tax associated with a bond. There's no need for it in the bond proposal I sent down."
"There can be absolutely no linkage," he added.
The Senate committee held a public hearing Friday on Cranwell's bonds, and almost all of the speakers were road builders or Northern Virginia residents who supported it.
That didn't stop committee chairman and Senate Majority Leader Hunter Andrews, D-Hampton, from tossing out unfriendly questions and occasionally needling Cranwell.
"Sit down and relax, Mr. Cranwell," Andrews snapped at one point. "Don't be so nervous."
When he finally got to speak, Cranwell delivered an impassioned plea for action on long-delayed state building projects. He did not insist that the House package be passed unaltered, but said any borrowing program must include money for transportation and must provide a mechanism for repayment.
"If my way is not the way that suits you, then come to me with an alternative," Cranwell said. But "if we are too timid to act, then we are turning our backs on the trust the people put in us."
The committee could have killed the bill outright, but simply tabled it until Monday. "That to me [shows] there is some desire to try to see some accommodation reached between House and Senate," Cranwell said.
Andrews declined to speculate on what Monday, the deadline for final action in each House on revenue bills, would bring. Cranwell, chairman of the House Finance Committee, is holding hostage in that panel a Senate-passed tax raisefor the wealthiest 3 percent of Virginians. The $106 million it would generate is vital to Senate plans to provide increased aid to public schools. Typically, in the final weeks of the Assembly, each House holds tax bills passed by the other as bargaining chips in negotiations over the budget.
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