Bob -I read your commentary piece Saturday evening about the outgoing governor’s budget proposals. I would make the following suggestions for you and others to consider:
I think the car tax rebate was a means for conservatives to force a change in the structure of our state and local budgets.
The economic crisis has created a compound fracture for our state and local government finances, given what has happened to our fiscal affairs and the impact of the car tax rebate on these matters.
A tax increase in good times would be hard to sell in Virginia and it is even more difficult to achieve in this climate.
There is a risk that the new Governor and General Assembly are going to have a hard time passing a new budget given the divisions within the General Assembly.
I agree with a commentator who wrote recently that Bob McDonnell’s style is very similar to that of Jerry Baliles’.
The new governor needs to do three things for the state:
- He needs to formulate a task force, as he proposes to do, to bring together our best and brightest talent to rethink our economic development efforts to facilitate the creation of new jobs (I read about a week ago in The New York Times we have lost 8 million jobs in this economic crash.)
- He needs a similar group to tackle our transportation issues- which I think needs to encourage streetcar, light rail and rail services, new development that is transit oriented and uses older, underutilized real estate for new development and a new means to finance this vital service.
-He needs a third group to examine state and local government services and structure. We do need to reduce the size of administrative staffs in our government at all levels, some of that could be done in school systems and in merging services provided by the constitutional offices with local governments and state government and merging other local government services into regional programs.
Thanks for your work.
I think the car tax elimination scheme was a means for Jim Gilmore to get himself elected Governor.
Nearly a year before the November 1997 election, Don Beyer had the polling numbers that demonstrated the scheme’s almost unparalleled ability to sway voters. He also had the financials which showed that transforming this source of local revenue into a responsibility of state government would, ceteris paribus, radically and negatively reduce the state’s ability to provide the services its citizens had come to expect. To his everlasting credit, Beyer chose not to promise what couldn’t be delivered.
With each new chapter of this continuing sorry saga, I’ve wondered if anyone would ever pick up all three walnut shells simultaneously to reveal there wasn’t a pea under any of them. Bravo to His Excellency Tim Kaine for doing so.
“… (I read about a week ago in The New York Times we have lost 8 million jobs in this economic crash)” You are referring to national stats, correct?
To your third point. There are so many programs w/i state gov’t that can be merged that would be meaningful to state services while reducing costs. And a great place to start, as you well know, is k - 16.
Maybe you could author a post outlining what “administrative” cuts and mergers you might recommend by using your experience at VCU. Who knows, such an exercise might get the proverbial ball rolling.
Dr. Cathy -
You are correct the 8 million jobs lost
is a national stat … I worked in the
Holton administration. Gov. Holton
assembled a group that took on this
task for his administration. We need
to do this again.
Re: local government - there have been at least a dozen studies done on local government structures, relationships, & taxation by the legislature, higher education, and private entities; it would be a waste of time & tax $ to reinvent the wheel.
To do anything with constitutional officers would likely take an amendment to the constitution, the will of the incumbent officers and the GA.
There are laws already on the books that enable the merger of every service provided by local government, but ultimate control of any merged service stands in the way. Just look And there are scholarly studies that show that the cost savings are generally the greatest in capital-intensive services. For example, in the Alleghany Highlands, where there are too few resources, they have been trying to merge Covington and the County since 1980 at least 3 times and the current effort is not making much headway with the elected officials up there. The state even paid for a blueprint to just merge the school systems, but to no avail.
Dear Bosun -
I am aware of those studies and some
of the efforts you mentioned. I think
our current worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and the fact that
our economy is going to be subject to a long painful recovery process will make Virginia’s local and state government to
rethink how we fund and operate our
governments. We are not going to have
the money to continue to maintain the
status quo.
Not sure even a crisis of that magnitude can overcome local politics & personalities. The state needs to mandate service consolidation as first step, but let localities keep any savings in state support funds for fixed time afterward as a reward or handle unexpected expenses. It may only delay the firing of say, two heads of social services, but there needs to be a carrott with the stick.