THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 24, 1995 TAG: 9512230005
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: By HUNTER ANDREWS
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
Secretary (of Finance Paul) Timmreck did me the courtesy of briefing me on the substance of the governor's budget recommendations.
It seems to me that the budget recommendations the governor has offered reflect in large measure the priorities that many of us have been advocating and that the General Assembly has funded for a number of years - improving our public schools, increasing our investment in higher education, preserving aid to localities and maintaining public safety. The budget attempts, I think, to respond to many of the fundamental responsibilities of state government.
In that, I think the governor deserves credit. This proposed budget is a far cry from the polarizing and ideological litmus test contained in the amendments submitted last year, which the General Assembly rejected.
There are, to be sure, things to take issue with and recommendations to question. There is very little margin for error in many of the assumptions and projections the budget is built upon.
For example, there are risks associated with the assumptions about Virginia Lottery profits. The budget assumes a growth rate for Medicaid that is lower in each year of the next biennium than Virginia has experienced in any year in the past 15.
This budget relies to a troubling degree on one-time resources. It assumes passage before the fact of bills deferring certain tax-policy changes - which are themselves one-time revenues. It takes only a small bite out of the problem of prefunding the cost-of-living increases granted Virginia Retirement System retirees.
The proposed budget steps away from rewarding employees based on their performance. And there is in these recommendations a lot of packaging which will be seen to be less than it appears as time goes on.
From my perspective, this budget is much more progressive than I expected, and much less confrontational than I feared. It is not a bad budget for the General Assembly to begin with in shaping the commonwealth's spending priorities for the next two years.
What troubles me most about this budget, and about every budget I have seen since 1990, is that we continue to increase spending more for programs and facilities that drain our resources than we do on institutions and people that increase our economic vitality.
There is more additional funding in this budget for adult and juvenile corrections than there is for higher education. More of an increase is proposed for secure confinement than for equipment and technology. More for repairing leaks than for rewarding and encouraging employee productivity.
At some point in the last six years, we have taken most all of the budget actions I know of to stretch our resources and reduce our costs - all in an effort to preserve the progress we have made over the past 15 years - to hold together with patchwork and expedient fixes budgets which required a longer-term view and more lasting solutions. And so we find ourselves facing the same thing in 1996-98. I submit that in spite of our efforts, much of the progress we have made in the past 15 years is eroding.
Virginia is a growing, dynamic state. And yet we lag many of our less-fortunate neighbors in funding areas that are central to our long-term prosperity.
Until we wrench the shape of the state budget back to where we invest meaningfully in higher education, we regularly and routinely fund the changes in public education which demonstrably improve student achievement, we expand access to technology, we regularly reward employees for their performance and we fund the renewal and improvement of our physical facilities from existing revenues, we constrain and limit Virginia's future in a way none of us would have sanctioned or agreed to even five years ago. MEMO: Democrat Andrews of Hampton, outgoing chairman of the Finance Committee
of the Virginia Senate, was defeated in last month's General Assembly
election after many years as the state's most powerful senator.
by CNB