Letters to the Editor for Sunday, March 7, 2010

Government priorities are misguided
I’m not sure that Gov. McDonnell sees the big picture. No self-respecting new business will relocate to Virginia if the state doesn’t support and offer a good quality of life for its employees.

A good quality of life for citizens encompasses educational opportunities for their children, localities that offer artistic opportunities for people to participate in and to enjoy, and a sound state infastructure.

Instead of finding ways for Virginia to help its current citizens retain their quality of life, the governor is focused on providing tax incentives and dangling our tax money to “as yet unnamed large employers” to create hypothetical jobs.

Gov. McDonnell is quoted as saying that he has “great faith” that local schools will find a way to “reduce costs in administration, in overhead ... but make sure that we keep our focus on the classrooms ...”

He is passing the buck here. Local schools have been trimming the fat for years. Is he so out of the loop that he doesn’t realize that schools are in danger of being closed, teachers are in danger of losing jobs and students are in jeopardy of losing school-sponsored sports?

I urge all who are able to write their local state representatives and let them know in no uncertain terms that this is not the way we want our state tax money spent.

Providing services to our citizens, a quality education to our children, taking care of our state’s resources, continued funding for the arts, and maintaining a sound infrastructure: These are priorities. Businesses will come to a state that offers all of this. Eliminating state funding for these “quality of life” services to create funding to lure business to Virginia is foolhardy.

LISA PITCHER
Forest

Save the arts
Virginia legislators spend our money funding tobacco subsidies, enforcing antiquated and expensive marijuana laws, providing tax breaks for big business. But when it comes time to cut the budget, they put education and the arts on the chopping block.

They claim to represent the voice of the people. Support of tobacco and big business while standing on the necks of the citizenry, then cutting funding for education and arts doesn’t represent the wishes of anyone I know.

Does it represent your wishes, dear reader? If not, speak up. Lynchburg’s blossoming reputation as an arts community has been key to relative stability in tough timess. Cut that funding by half this year and eliminate it next year and how many of those Northern Virginians are going to keep coming here?

With no plays at the Academy of Fine Arts, no shows at the galleries, no music at the Ellington, and the resultant inevitable closing of those cutesy little art shops that currently populate our downtown, how much charm will Lynchburg really have for the non-resident?

How on earth is Virginia going to keep existing businesses here, let alone lure new business, if we can’t promise a well-educated population from which to hire? Would you want to move your family to a state like that?

The time to sit back, watch the news or read the paper and cluck-cluck about the foolishness of the politicians is past. After so many years with the voters not caring about much of anything, the people we’ve elected to run things no longer have any idea of our priorities. If we don’t tell them, they’re going to continue funding things without thought to the future or to the realities of our lives.

Call, write, and e-mail your representatives at every level of government. Otherwise, they won’t represent you, they’ll represent either the lunatic fringe or the deep pockets, whoever yaps the loudest. And aren’t we all tired of that?

LIB ELDER
Pamplin