Time for Tough Budget Choices Has Arrived

The other shoe dropped in Richmond last week, and it was a 12EEE, heavy-duty work boot.

For weeks, Gov. Bob McDonnell and his advisers had been closeted away with the leaders of the budget-writing committees in the General Assembly, working to pare an additional $2.1 billion from the state’s two-year budget.

Outgoing-Gov. Timothy M. Kaine had submitted a $75 billion operating budget for the 2010-12 biennium.

To close an approximately $4 billion gap between expenditures and revenues, he opted for a combination of additional cuts and one-time revenue enhancements, believing that the $10 billion in cuts he had instituted over his four years in office were all the state budget could handle.

Two of his new revenue streams were a one-time surcharge on the state income tax and the suspension of the so-called car-tax cut, instituted in the late 1990s under Republican Jim Gilmore.

Republicans in the House of Delegates, with McDonnell’s backing once he took office, immediately killed both proposals.

And hence the current crisis the state and localities find themselves in today.

The biggest shock Thursday was the size of the hit public education would take: $731 million. And that’s on top of the hit 93 of the state’s school divisions would take by the unfreezing of the Local Composite Index, which determines how many state dollars flow to localities for education.

The governor also proposed cutting more than $300 million from social services programs, including emergency housing aid and free medical clinic support.

The state’s hardworking employees also take multiple hits, including furloughs, reduced support for the Virginia Retirement System and higher costs for benefits.

To call the governor’s cuts “austere” would be like saying “Central Virginia has had a little bit of snow this winter.”

The lion’s share of the attention has been paid to the cuts to public education in the commonwealth.

Just over a week ago, Bedford Schools Superintendent Douglas Schuch detailed his budget recommendations to the county School Board.

Two elementary schools — Body Camp and Thaxton — closed. More than 120 employees laid off. Class sizes increased.

And that was the result in the change to the Local Composite Index.

This past week, Lynchburg City Schools chief Paul McKendrick informed School Board members, that due to looming cuts in state aid, to be prepared for a cut of $17.8 million.

Folks, that’s a cut of almost 20 percent of the entire school budget.

If nothing changes in Richmond, if the budgets to be unveiled today by the House of Delegates Appropriations Committee and the Senate Finance Committee dovetail with McDonnell’s proposals, this year will be like nothing local governments have ever experienced.

What we are seeing transpire in Bedford County now will be the order of the day across Central Virginia, as localities attempt to devise their 2010-11 budgets.

Schools will close. Teachers, aides and support personnel will be laid off. Class sizes will increase. Programs will be cut. The face of public education in the commonwealth will be totally different from what it is today.

While the initial impact will definitely be negative, there is opportunity in crisis. Education leaders should take this time to rethink and reshape public education from top to bottom.

But that’s for the longterm. This coming year will be one of pain. Lots of it.

And every single member of the State Senate and House of Delegates is acutely aware of one thing: They’re up for re-election in November 2011.

Just six months after parents and children across the commonwealth endure the first school year under the McDonnell administration.