Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 2, 1993 TAG: 9301040264
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Staff
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
THE TASK FACING VIRGINIA
FOR AMERICA, a presidential election that transferred presidential power made 1992 an important political year. But for Virginia, what counts is the year after a presidential election.That's when Virginia governors are elected. And a gubernatorial election here always means a change of administration because, curiously, Virginia governors are barred from succeeding themselves.
High on the Virginia agenda for 1993, then, will be the election in November of a successor to Gov. Wilder. But before then, there's much else Virginia should do.
Getting it done will take more courage than the state's political leadership has displayed during the hard times with which Wilder has been forced to cope throughout his administration.
The task is to (a) invest in programs and policies that show strong promise of helping to maximize Virginia's long-term potential, and (b) limit the resources that must be diverted toward less-productive ends.
The two goals are complementary, not contradictory. Many steps that could be taken toward these goals already have been identified. Yet few steps have been taken. To do so requires thinking that goes beyond a preoccupation with avoiding short-term costs and not raising taxes.
Over time, for example, the recent - and modest - recommendations of the poverty commission headed by Lt. Gov. Don Beyer could bring a considerable payoff to Virginia. Establishing an earned-income state tax credit would be adminstratively painless, and could spell the difference between self-sufficiency and dependence for many of the hundreds of thousands of working-poor Virginians who would benefit. A targeted training program, another commission proposal, could get hundreds of families off welfare each year.
But at an initial cost to the state of $66 million (mostly forgone revenues due to the tax credit), the commission's recommendations may well face rough sledding in the '93 General Assembly.
Or consider health care. Medicaid costs to the state rise, then rise again. In Wilder's proposed budget amendments for the 1993-94 fiscal year, Medicaid shows the second biggest spending increase - $61 million - of any item.
At the same time, however, the administration refuses to propose, or the legislature to pass, any raising of Virginia's lowest-in-the-nation tax on tobacco products that could help offset higher Medicaid costs - and also encourage behavior that would help limit medical costs.
Prisons, the item of biggest increase in Wilder's budget amendments, are another example. More than $100 million is to be spent for new corrections facilities, which everyone concedes still won't meet the "demand."
To a degree, of course, prisons are an unavoidably necessary expense; some criminals are simply too dangerous not to be incarcerated for long periods. But prisons also may be the classic example of nonproductive, even counterproductive state spending. Little "correction" actually takes place. Too often, prisons are simply schools for more crime once their "students" are returned to society.
Virginia has been too slow to develop alternative forms of sentencing for nonviolent offenders, and too reluctant to undertake initiatives - community policing, stronger schools in high-crime neighborhoods, in-prison education and vocational-training programs - that help keep crime from happening in the first place. But such things cost money up front, which obstructs the view of the long-term savings they could effect.
And what could be more important to Virginia's future than the quality of its public schools and higher-education institutions?
Yet ground gained by Virginia's public schools during the '80s, as the state sought to catch up to the rest of the nation, continues to be yielded during the '90s. Per-student state support for Virginia's system of higher education - not long ago regarded by many as second to none in the nation - continues to decline.
Perhaps Wilder and the General Assembly get too little credit for managing as well as they have the revenue crunch wrought by recession. Nor is it necessarily a bad thing when hard times lead people to rethink how things are done, to look for better and more efficient ways to operate.
But when Virginia is forced to spend 80 cents of every new revenue dollar on nonproductive prisons and Medicaid, as Wilder's budget amendments propose, isn't it time for more than mere belt-tightening?