Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 3, 1995 TAG: 9510030080
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
House Majority Leader Richard Cranwell looked out on an audience of Roanoke Rotarians, a conservative-leaning group of business leaders whose members might be expected to be reflexively against more government spending.
So Cranwell hit them with the dreaded C-word.
Carolina.
Why is it, he asked the group, that North Carolina is creating high-wage jobs at a faster rate than Virginia? After all, North Carolina's corporate income tax is the highest in the Southeast and Virginia's is one of the lowest in the country.
The answer, he said, is that North Carolina spends more on higher education than Virginia does. "The businesses know that they have quality education and that they're turning out quality students," he said.
Virginia may have been one of only two states to make it through the last recession without a tax increase, Cranwell pointed out, but it did so partly by slashing spending on higher education. As a result, Virginia's per-student spending on higher education is now one of the lowest in the country. To make up for that, Virginia looks to students to foot more of their college bill - so the state's average college tuitions are now the second-highest in the country.
Which state has the lowest tuition? That's right: North Carolina.
The point is, Cranwell said, Virginia should take advantage of a healthy economy and begin to "re-invest" in higher education.
If Cranwell's pitch sounds familiar, that's probably because it is: Just about every Democratic candidate for the General Assembly this fall is pushing for more spending on education.
And just about every Republican legislative candidate this fall is pushing for a tax cut.
If Cranwell and the Democrats want to talk about how more education funding eventually translates into more and better-paying jobs, Trixie Averill, his GOP challenger, and other Republicans are just as eager to talk monetary policy and how tax cuts translate into immediate economic growth. "Tax cuts always stimulate the economy," Averill says. Besides, she says, "it's our money first."
Chimes in state Sen. Brandon Bell, R-Roanoke County, "I want to see our citizens keep their money, to spend as they see fit; families know best how to spend their money, not the bureaucrat in Richmond."
Few things offer voters a clearer picture of where their General Assembly candidates are coming from than the subject of taxes and spending. But the candidates aren't always clear about how their fiscal priorities add up.
Democrats have chartered a yellow school bus to tour the state to call attention to their proposal to spend $266 million over the next two years to hire more teachers and reduce class sizes, to put a computer in every classroom, to increase funding for higher education. Where will the money come from? The Democrats say they're confident the cost can be covered by the natural increase in revenue that comes from an expanding tax base in a growing economy.
Republicans talk tough about cutting "wasteful" spending but are vague about just what that means in practice. Bell says only that the state must "control" the growth of government. Averill singles out the upkeep on the state yacht, the redecorating of General Assembly committee rooms and "double-digit pay increases to college presidents who already have six-figure incomes" - high-profile items that constitute only a sliver of the $32 billion state budget.
None of the Republican candidates in Western Virginia, when asked what they'd like to see cut from the state budget, mentioned the more controversial cuts Allen proposed this year - to social services such as the Meals-on-Wheels program for the elderly, to the Virginia Tech Cooperative Extension Service, to state funding for various local cultural and economic development projects.
Two Republican candidates from Montgomery County ducked the question altogether; both House challenger Larry Linkous and Senate challenger Pat Cupp said they hadn't had time to study the budget yet. (Democratic Senate candidate Barbara Coleman from Lynchburg said the same thing.)
But Democrats are eager to talk about Allen's proposed budget cuts. At a rally of hometown supporters in Vinton last month, Cranwell read a long list of Roanoke Valley institutions that receive state funding - the Hotel Roanoke Conference Center, Center in the Square, the Transportation Museum, Virginia's Explore Park ... . Then, with a dramatic flourish, he ripped up the sheet of paper. "If George Allen had had his way, that money would have been gone," Cranwell declared.
But many Republican candidates say they'd have opposed those cuts, too. Democrats contend their GOP rivals are trying to have it both ways; but enough Republican candidates have distanced themselves from Allen's budget cuts that some political analysts wonder whether those cuts would hold up even in a GOP-led legislature.
"Many of the issues in Allen's agenda are controversial," Virginia Commonwealth University political analyst Bob Holsworth says. "The question is, will a slim Republican majority be sufficient? I'm uncertain."
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB