
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 23, 1995                   TAG: 9508240029
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WHIPPING BOY

IN AN ERA when sloganeering often passes for political discussion, "unfunded mandates" is a favorite whipping boy. Whether imposed by the federal government on the states and localities, or by the states on the localities, "unfunded mandates" are frequently reviled as unadulterated evil.

They are certainly a problem - and a big burden on states and local governments. But as Adele MacLean makes clear in the July issue of the News Letter of the University of Virginia's Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, the issue isn't quite as clear-cut as some folks would have us believe.

Or as they themselves believe. In a 1994 National League of Cities survey, unfunded mandates tied with infrastructure needs as the second most-mentioned cause of municipalities' fiscal distress. (Most frequently mentioned were health-benefits costs.)

But, as MacLean - a lawyer and policy analyst with Virginia's Commission on Local Government - points out, attacks on the cost of unfunded mandates often fail to take into account the intangible benefits of, say, federal child-labor proscriptions; or the many other factors that can contribute to fiscal distress; or the expenses that would arise in any event; or money received from state or federal sources that partially or wholly offset the cost of mandates from above. In Virginia, for example, the nearly $5 billion annually in direct aid to the localities adds up to almost half the state's general-fund expenditures.

Nor is there a precise definition, MacLean writes, of either "unfunded" or "mandate." Is it funded or unfunded, for example, if a state mandate is accompanied not by a direct appropriation from state-collected taxes but by authorization for localities to levy a new tax? Do federal or state policy changes that create new demands for local services, even in the absence of a formal order to provide them, constitute a mandate?

If the current hostility toward "unfunded mandates" leads to the abolition of unnecessary regulations, the modification of flawed policies, greater flexibility for local decision-making within properly defined standards, and an improved relationship among levels of government - so much the better. But "unfunded mandates" shouldn't be condemned with just a jerk of the knee; the issue is more complicated than that, and deserves better debate.

by CNB