THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 26, 1997 TAG: 9701250031
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: Margaret Edds
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: 79 lines
There is no evangelist so fervent or persuasive as a convert.
It took a Republican president - Richard Nixon - to open the diplomatic door to China.
It took a Democratic president - Bill Clinton - to confirm that ``the era of big government is over.''
And it may take a Northern Virginia mega-developer and Republican campaign bankroller to force Virginians to sit up and take notice of state government's dirty little secret, which is:
The $35 billion budget has been held together with Band-Aids for much of the 1990s, and that points the state toward an unhealthy launching of the 21st century.
John T. ``Til'' Hazel Jr. may be an unlikely apostle of this view. But in the three years since he became a self-appointed spokesman for higher education, he has evolved into a true believer that Virginia needs the unspeakable, a tax increase.
This week he is bidding to broaden his audience in an essay published by the University of Virginia's Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. In eight pages replete with charts and graphs, Hazel lays out a pragmatic, no-nonsense case. (See excerpt below.)
His blunt conclusion: ``Virginia is at a critical fiscal crossroads. The fiscal direction the Commonwealth takes now will determine the state's vitality, level of prosperity, and quality of life for decades to come.''
It is a potent message from a 66-year-old crafter of multimillion-dollar deals, once described as the man who has done most to shape the Washington area since the city's original designer, Pierre L'Enfant.
What Hazel does not do in the piece is call directly for a tax hike.
Instead, he lists an array of needs, from the $6.2 billion that public school administrators say is required for construction and renovation to the $300 million it will take by 2006 to build and operate new prisons.
He identifies the ``Band-Aids'' used by budget-makers to patch up the state's ailing fiscal condition. Among them, last year's one-time settlement with Trigon to a growing dependency on the lottery (now the state's fourth largest source of income) to increased reliance on public debt.
And he supplies context. According to the most recent rankings of State Policy Research Inc., for instance, Virginia ranks 49th of 50 states in total state and local expenditures per $1,000 of personal income.
Hazel concludes by calling on elected officials and the business community to saturate the public consciousness with these facts. And he relies on the good sense of Virginians to recognize that two plus two doesn't equal five.
In person, Hazel is just as clearly focused and even more blunt.
``They've scraped all the piggy-banks clean. It's taken me this long to figure out that there isn't any money over there,'' Hazel said in a telephone conversation from Florida, where he was vacationing last week.
The conclusion is obvious. ``And I will eventually say that. Taxes,'' he added.
But first, Hazel is pursuing a two-pronged strategy he hopes could make his voice one of many. His first goal is to get a bipartisan group of legislators to recognize the truth of the message and create, before the General Assembly adjourns, a blue-ribbon panel to lay out the fiscal case.
``I don't mean the kind of feel-good commission they do because they don't know what else to do,'' he said. ``It needs to be honest, quick, well-informed. They need to do it now and get the results by summer.''
If politicians are too cowed by polls showing the public opposed to tax increases, however, Hazel has an alternate plan. He hopes to form a coalition of prominent business leaders and civic groups to push state finances to the forefront of the public agenda.
At a minimum, he intends to see that gubernatorial hopefuls Jim Gilmore and Don Beyer are made to confront the risky topic forthrightly. ``We will make finances `the' agenda item in the coming election, as long as I've got a breath left,'' Hazel pledged.
For sure, this is not an ideological crusade. It is grounded in the good sense of a man who has built a life and a fortune finding the right balance between quality and the bottom line.
What his analysis tells him about the future of a beloved state is this: ``Virginia cannot become a properous, progressive state in the next decades if bound by a financial system that is totally inadequate.''
Virginians should consider the messenger and heed the words. MEMO: Ms. Edds is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot.