In just about three months, the 2012 session of the General Assembly will convene in Richmond, and Gov. Bob McDonnell will present his first biennial budget.
Unfortunately, there are already clouds on the horizon that suggest all will not be smooth sailing. And bodes ill for Virginia’s local governments.
This two-year budget will be the first fully drawn up by McDonnell. It will also be the first without any federal stimulus dollars that states have used to cover operating shortfalls.
Last week, The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis, a nonpartisan policy thinktank based in Richmond, issued a report raising a red flag of the possiblity of an $800 million shortfall in the coming budget. Though Finance Secretary Richard Brown dismissed talk of a shortfall of those proportions, the likelihood that all will be peachy keen for Assembly budgetwriters is between slim and none. In both the 2010 and 2011 Assembly sessions, legislators have struggled to close budget gaps even after massive spending reductions.
The low-hanging budget fruit was plucked in the administration of McDonnell’s predecessor, Democrat Tim Kaine. McDonnell, beginning in 2010, pruned what was left.
The greatest threat to the state’s longterm economic strength is the still-unsolved, partially addressed transportation crisis. Though the state plans to borrow $3 billion to pay for a number of critical projects in the coming months, the root cause of the crisis has not been addressed: the fact that sooner, rather than later, maintenance costs for Virginia’s highways will leave nothing for any new initiatives.
According to Transportation Sean Connaughton, in just five years that will be case. One of the possible proposals to address the maintenance crisis would have the state turn over responsibility for such work to the counties. How Virginia’s cash-strapped counties would pay for it is anybody’s guess.
State legislators, particularly many Republicans in the House of Delegates, would rather eat glass than raise taxes, even the stagnant-for-25-years gas tax which was designed to pay for highway maintenance. Make local elected officials walk through fire is their reasoning.
Public education has already taken a knife in the belly at the hands of the Assembly. Transportation may well be next. “But we won’t have raised taxes” our so-called state leaders will say. How, though, is refusing to make difficult decisions leadership?
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