Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 7, 1992 TAG: 9203090194
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Granted, huge revenue holes and a state economy in the gutter don't an easy session make. Coping has been the order of the day.
And there were flashes of fortitude, including from some of this area's lawmakers.
Credit Sens. "Bo" Trumbo of Fincastle and William Wampler of Bristol, for instance, for busting out of the No-Tax-OK Corral (where GOP leaders herded other Republican senators) to vote for a modest income-tax increase for wealthy Virginians.
Credit House Majority Leader Richard Cranwell of Vinton for pushing a tiny 5-cent-a-pack increase in the state tax on cigarettes.
Credit Republican Steve Agee and Democrats Vic Thomas, Chip Woodrum, Creigh Deeds, Tom Jackson and Joan Munford for having the pluck to vote for the tax, despite overbearing pressure from the tobacco lobby.
(And shame on Republican Tommy Baker, independent Lacey Putney and Democrats Ward Armstrong, Willard Finney and Roscoe Reynolds for caving in to the cancer causers.)
Credit Cranwell for insisting on including money to address school-funding disparity in his economic-revival package. (Wait a minute, take that credit away again: After the Senate didn't go along with his bond-issue bill, he helped defeat the Senate-passed income-tax proposal that also would have helped rural schools.)
Give credit to the new House speaker, Tom Moss, for streamlining the legislative process in the House; and to Moss and Cranwell, who were rivals for the speakership, for apparently forging a working partnership.
This year, Republicans and younger Democrats had more of a role in legislative matters, including the budget, than they've customarily had. For this, credit the desire of Moss and Cranwell to cut down a few veterans' monopoly on power - but credit GOP election gains as well.
A lot more credits are deserved, we're sure. But, alas, the session's liabilities dwarfed its assets.
Heap scorn on the assembly, for instance, for defeating the statewide cigarette tax proposal. Even if some local cigarette taxes are authorized, the operative principle is state lawmakers' evasion of responsibility.
A round of raspberry cheers, too, for the same principle at work in the lawmakers' decision to hinge their road-bond proposal on voters' approval of a gas-tax increase.
The new roads are needed; the bond package is needed; the gas tax is an entirely reasonable way to finance debt service on the bonds. But it is legislators' responsibility to raise taxes. Instead, they ducked again.
Let's also not thank Gov. Wilder for his leadership during this session. To thank him, you first have to detect some indication of leadership. Let's see; it must be here somewhere.
The governor offered a plan to bridge the disparity gap among school divisions; he just forgot to suggest a way to pay for it. He lobbied intensely for a health-provider tax that would bring in slim revenues and went nowhere in the assembly; meanwhile, by flaunting his opposition to other tax increases, he got in the way of legislators' own efforts to address disparity.
They did find ways, including more accounting tricks with retirement funds, to put about $80 million toward the school-inequity issue. That's a drop in the bucket of what's needed.
Which is troubling. When it comes to education, child health, anti-poverty efforts and the like, the governor has consistently talked a good line, but failed to back it up with needed resources. And lawmakers haven't rushed to take the lead.
These are, after all, the same folks cowed by the National Rifle Association into defeating modest gun-control bills. (It took the shooting of two teens at a Norfolk high school before legislators would even agree there should be tougher penalties for having loaded guns in schools.)
These same lawmakers also passed a bill authorizing elected school boards but without including provision for granting them fiscal authority.
We know legislators did some good things this session. But at the moment, we're underwhelmed by their productivity. Their finest hour may be their leave-taking today.
by CNB