Kaine, Assembly Leaders Face Hard Fiscal Decisions

The News & Advance
Published: September 27, 2008

The old adage “If it’s not raining, it’s pouring” fits perfectly for the budget crisis Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and leaders of the General Assembly face.

Last week, the governor updated top legislators and business leaders on the state’s worsening revenue picture. Early estimates of a shortfall up to $1.9 billion had grown to between $2 billion and $2.9 billion as the national economy has grown more sour. The state just began its budget biennium July 1 with a revenue and spending plan of $77 billion.

By Friday, at the governor’s order, state agencies submitted to his office plans for budget cuts of 5 percent, 10 percent and 15 percent. By mid-October, Kaine and his financial advisers will have determined just how bad the state’s revenue outlook is and which set of cuts to go with.

Though social services and state aid to public schools have largely been protected from past rounds of spending cuts and reductions, there’s the distinct possibility no line in the state budget will be spared in the looming cuts. That’s how bad the state revenue picture is.

Kaine’s advisory panel attributed the revenue shortfall to plummeting sales and income tax revenues, the bellwether signs of an economy in recession. According to Media General News Service, those tax revenues make up to 72 percent of the monies in the state’s general fund, out of which the government pays for such services as public education, social services, emergency services and law enforcement.

Virginia’s fiscal horizon looks dark and stormy, as the governor and legislators take in the full scope of the problems they will face. Where to cut, what programs to delay or eliminate, what services to trim: These are definitely not the favorite chore of any elected official.

But that’s why the 140 members of the Assembly and Gov. Kaine were sent to Richmond, to make the tough decisions and hard choices. It’s called leadership and the ability to take the heat from the folks back home when the cuts affect them.

It’s also what’s been sorely missing in the halls of the state Capitol for many years. State spending has been on an upward trajectory since the early 1990s; Democrats and Republicans share the blame for the host of state programs that are straining the Old Dominion’s budget.

Abolishing parole was a good campaign idea for Republican George Allen running for governor in 1993, and the Democrat-controlled Assembly followed him lockstep. But building and staffing all those new prisons wound up costing a king’s ransom. Four years later, Republican Jim Gilmore latched onto another good campaign idea — the abolition of the so-called car tax — that legislators bought hook, line and sinker. That’s a political gimmick state taxpayers are still footing the bill for.

Not that the Democratic governors — Kaine and his predecessor Mark Warner — didn’t have their pet programs inserted into the state budget, too, but by the time they came to Richmond, the cost of dealing with the Republicans’ messes had sapped the money supply dry.

In dealing with this projected shortfall, no one is going to emerge unscathed: Education, police, social services … it’s all on the table.

Harping on gimmicks such as whether a police chaplain can mention the name of Jesus Christ when praying at a public, nonsectarian event do not serve the best interests of the citizens of the commonwealth.

It’s going to be a time for some leadership to be on display from our elected officials in Richmond, a time for reaching across the political divide to craft solutions to the problems, a time for politicians to become statesmen and forget whether there’s an “R” or a “D” after their names.