Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, December 29, 1994 TAG: 9412290130
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE AND TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Moran, a longtime county supervisor who gave up his seat this year after a series of strokes, expressed his displeasure with Gov. George Allen's proposal to cut $12.2 million from the state's agricultural research and Cooperative Extension service, which includes farming research and 4-H youth programs.
"The Extension Service here in Henry County is the only thing that's kept the farms alive, and we can't do away with the few farmers we've got left," Moran said at one of two legislative hearings held Wednesday to air Allen's budget plans.
Moran is not alone in his concern for the Extension Service. As he spoke at Patrick Henry Community College in Martinsville, people 200 miles away at Southwest Virginia Community College in Richlands were equally upset.
Joining Extension Service supporters were representatives of community action agencies, programs for youth and seniors, and a smattering of local officials wondering how they would pick up the slack from Allen's budget plan.
Allen wants $400 million in cuts in next year's budget to pay for nine new prisons and a proposed tax cut that would triple the personal exemption and eliminate the local business, professional and occupational license tax. The $2.1 billion tax cut would be phased in over five years.
In all, more than 200 people spoke at both hearings, attended by well over 500 citizens.
In Martinsville, a straw poll of the 100 people left after four hours indicated how the administration should pay for prisons. Unanimously, the group selected a pay-as-you-go plan that calls for a half-cent sales tax increase phased in over three years.
Proposed cuts to the Extension Service and social service agencies dominated the hearings.
R.J. Wilson, a Henry County farmer who drove Moran to the hearing, said quick advice from Henry County's Extension Office helped save his peach crop when a fungus attacked it last year.
"You can't wait one or two days to get someone else to help you," he said. "That one or two days can kill a peach crop."
To the farmers of far Southwest Virginia, pulling the plug on Extension is, as retired coal miner Kenneth B. Mullins put it, like taking away the rescue squad.
"I think the Extension office is like 911 to the farmer," he said.
Pulaski farmer Robert Guthrie called the Extension Service the agriculture business's research and development arm.
"It seems the nation and state are after agriculture programs," said Jack Childress, president of the Southwest Virginia Agriculture Association. "Too few people are farming; they figure it's easy pickings."
Farmers at the Richlands hearing predicted the Extension Service could hobble along for another year or two with the cuts, but no longer.
Social service workers and beneficiaries, who seek out the needy with no heating in winter or call to add their names to Meals on Wheels delivery schedules, lined up to plead their cases at both hearings. Several programs worth millions of dollars are on the chopping block, although administrators still are assessing the impact of the losses.
A group of women who have successfully rebuilt their lives through programs offered by Total Action Against Poverty traveled from Roanoke to Martinsville to speak.
One of them, 18-year-old Crystal St. Clair, said she had to quit school after her two daughters were born. She's now working to earn her high school equivalency diploma through TAP - a program that could be dropped if state block grant funds are reduced or eliminated.
"I personally don't want to end up living out of a box on the street," she said. "But that's where I'll be without the service TAP provides."
Community action agencies, facing a $2.2 million cut for their office operations alone, galvanized forces to lobby their case at the Richlands hearing, which was led by Del. Robert Ball, D-Richmond, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. A parade of people advocated heating-assistance programs or business-starter loan programs. And the community action cuts, which pay for many transitions off the welfare rolls, come at a bad time - especially since so much work is under way to reform welfare, said Harry B. Scott, a Christiansburg priest who works with community action.
"Most, if not all, of the people I work with want to be productive citizens. They do not want to be wards of the state," he said, pleading for the agencies.
Other speakers asked legislators to support current or additional funding for education, state medical school programs in Southwest Virginia, libraries and the arts.
Sen. Hunter Andrews, D-Hampton, the Senate Finance Committee chairman who led the Martinsville hearing, was reminded by a speaker that Virginia ranks 49th among the 50 states in per capita contributions for the arts. Texas is last.
"Yeah, I wanted to get us up there above Arkansas," Andrews quipped, "but we couldn't even do that."
Not everyone was unhappy with Allen's budget plan.
Don Calaman, 77, waited six hours to get his chance to speak. Calaman, of Martinsville, fought in the front lines at the Battle of the Bulge during World War II.
"I was lying there with shells falling all around me, and I prayed to Jesus that he give me a roof over my head and something to eat," he said. "That's all I asked for. All I've heard today is complaint after complaint. Well, I like Governor Allen's plan."
Frank Nunez, a member of the State Board for the Aging, also backed Allen's courage to cut. But, as Nunez himself said, "Everybody has their particular niche they want to protect," and his is services for the elderly. They've paid their dues to society, he pointed out. Why cut items such as $900,000 from Elderly Services, which helps the aged live independently? he asked.
In the end, many at both hearings seemed to agree with Jim Harper, director of Virginia Mental Health Consumers Association. The Bland County resident had compared the impact of the proposed cuts to the tax savings in his own bank account.
"Personally, $300 to $500 isn't worth it," he said.
by CNB