Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 5, 1993 TAG: 9309050034
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DALE EISMAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Particularly when it comes to money, the taxes by which it's raised and the programs on which it's spent, Terry and Allen are backing and filling.
Outgoing Gov. Douglas Wilder, whose penny-pinching has won his administration national attention, now estimates that over the next two years, the state will need $500 million more in taxes than it expects to collect.
And that's just to maintain current services, plus confine the additional prisoners our increasingly tough criminal sentences are putting behind bars.
Throw in even a modest raise for state workers, whose inflation-adjusted income fell during Wilder's term, and give colleges enough new money to stop the upward spiral of tuitions, and you can push the shortfall up another $100 million.
Add the $400 million-plus probably needed to settle legal claims by federal retirees who were unfairly taxed in the 1980s, and you've got a $1 billion problem.
The money crunch doesn't have the voter-grabbing quality of Terry's pleas for gun control or Allen's tough talk about parole. Confronting it means talking seriously about cuts in government programs and increases in taxes.
But because everyone's for cuts - except cuts to programs that help "me" - and no one's for more taxes, Terry and Allen dodge financial questions with vague rhetoric about saving millions with various efficiencies and reorganizations. Then they promise, usually without providing price tags, a bevy of new programs.
In mid-August, our Richmond staff sat down with each candidate for two-hour, cover-the-waterfront interviews. We tried to draw them out on solutions to the cash crunch and the cost of their own programs; neither would bite.
"During my administration," Terry said, "we're going to have an audit of all boards, agencies and commissions. And I believe that out of the $28 billion biennial budget, it's realistic to believe that . . . we can reduce the budget by at least a quarter of a billion dollars.
"Beyond that, we have over $300 million in taxes due the commonwealth . . . If we will pass finally legislation linking the driver's license to payments of fines and costs and develop an interstate compact amendment with the states that we now do business with, we can position ourselves to collect overwhelming percentages of the fines and costs that are now being unpaid. . . . "
OK. Suppose an audit could save a quarter-billion, and suppose you could collect all $300 million in taxes due; that still leaves the state just treading water. Terry's "Agenda for Action," copies of which she's been giving away all summer, is brimming with programs that would cost more money but includes not a single price tag. She was no more specific in our interview, talking instead about "adjusting the culture" of government to produce savings and generate cash for new programs.
Allen was willing to put a price tag - $119 million - on his most ballyhooed program: parole reform. He would hope to cover half that with savings in state prison administration, but he didn't tell us how those savings might be realized. He'd also look into turning over prison administration to private companies and putting more convicts to work in profit-generating industries. Again though, he's got no figures on how much those steps might save.
"We'd have to analyze each and every one of these central offices," Allen said. "I think that we in the Department of Education can cut 80 people in the central office . . . get that money back to the localities, reprioritize that spending. . . . You can do the same thing with social services, with other central offices. What those savings are, I don't have hundreds of employees to determine all of these. All I'm telling you is what my priorities will be and what we'll take care of first in our state budget."
Terry and Allen both have been knocking around state government for a decade or more. Each is smart and energetic and surely has more specific ideas than these about what she/he would do as governor. To afford all the new things they say they desire, what would they have the state stop doing? And if taxes had to be raised, which ones?
Voters aren't getting the answers.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB