ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 20, 1996 TAG: 9610220115
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
THE NEXT gubernatorial and House of Delegates elections in Virginia aren't until 1997, and state Senate elections aren't until 1999. But in most other places, the Nov. 5 ballots will have contests not only for president and Congress but also for at least one house of the state legislature. In some states, governors and both houses of the legislature will be on next month's ballots.
With the trend of devolving power - and responsibilities - to the states, the outcome of legislative elections elsewhere has more meaning for Virginia than it used to. The success or failure of many a nationally significant experiment will be determined by how well states cope with them. If welfare reform is a flop in, say, Michigan, then the federal government may have to restore its previous welfare role over all the states.
Nor is welfare the only responsibility in which power is devolving from the federal government; questions about local telephone access and other telecommunications decisions, to cite another example, have been pushed down to the states by Congress. Regardless of which party wins the presidential and congressional elections, the trend is likely to continue.
Today, the GOP controls both houses of the legislature in 18 states, compared to 14 for the Democrats. In many states, however, control by one party or the other is by only a handful of seats. That, too, is enhancing the importance of statehouse races.
Behind the short-term question of partisan control of statehouses lie more fundamental challenges.
By and large, state legislatures today are more effective, more professional and more representative than the malapportioned, rural-dominated bodies of old. In big states like California and New York, lawmakers have become full-time officials akin to members of Congress. But in most states, Virginia included, they still try to adhere to the concept of the part-time citizen-legislator. As power continues to devolve to the states, they'll need to address more seriously such issues as:
* Campaign reform. While some states have undertaken reform more stringent than the campaign-finance laws governing federal elections, other states - and Virginia is among the worst - set virtually no limits on the amounts of money a corporation, union or individual can contribute to legislative campaigns.
* Tax reform. Virginia, with its reliance on a state income tax, does better in the area of tax fairness than some that depend more heavily on regressive sales and property taxes. But as its responsibilities and expenses rise, Virginia needs to work on fiscal reforms such as abolishing the sales tax on food, raising the tobacco tax and finding replacements for local property taxes as the principal source of school funding.
* Sound management. On this, Virginia traditionally ranks high. But, in some states, the right political affiliation still outweighs merit in hiring and retaining public employees; government remains encrusted with change-resistant bureaucracy; state budgets are inadequately controlled.
The premise of devolution is that many things can be done better more efficiently on the state than on the federal level. This is often true; it's true more often than not. But it is not automatically and universally true, and devolution is raising the stakes for a state's failure to meet the standard.
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICSby CNB