Pay attention, Gov. Kaine

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine again has been compelled to slash money from his two-year, $77-billion budget, this time whacking away $1.35 billion. To his discredit, the effort was required as a product of his predilection for overestimating revenues. More important, to his credit, the governor has balanced the budget without raising taxes. This has required the same restraint needed to avoid driving straight at the first hairpin curve on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Who wants to be remembered as a governor who raised taxes in the middle of the worst recession in more than a quarter-century? Still, count us as thankful the governor did not see the cliff and hit the gas. Politicians north of Mr. Kaine, inside the Beltway, frequently lack this discretion. There’s more to praise than this. The governor delicately navigated the pain cuts invariably produce and dispersed it sensibly. Public K-12 education was shielded, for the most part. There were no cuts to state subsidies but sales-tax revenues, some of which go to schools, will be $37 million lower than Mr. Kaine projected. Higher education felt a deep pinch — $105 million in cuts to state colleges and universities. But those schools have options to increase revenues that K-12 schools do not. Another 581 state workers will be laid off, half of them Department of Corrections employees at the Juvenile Correction Center in Natural Bridge and at lockups in Brunswick and Botetourt counties, all of which will be closed. Many of the remaining layoffs will affect administrative jobs. In addition, Mr. Kaine saved $50 million through reductions in state money to local governments. A testament to the wisdom of the governor’s fiscal pruning was his support from Republicans for his plan to use $280 million in rainy-day money to balance the budget. That’s been a thorny issue in the past, but not this time around. House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stanford, called it “a prudent move.” This marks the fourth time that Mr. Kaine has been forced to cut his two-year budget, putting the total reductions at $7 billion. That’s mostly the result of the national economy slipping into freefall, an event that produced fiscal calamity in some states, though not here. But the governor cannot escape altogether culpability for a recurring predicament. He repeatedly has ignored the ring of alarms sounded by Republicans over his revenue projections only to wipe egg from his face later. Mr. Kaine also has spent the last half of his term with eyes cast elsewhere, last year on helping pal Barack Obama take Virginia and win the presidency and this year on his duties as Democratic National Committee chairman. He’s not the first governor to hold the roles of chief executive, presidential cheerleader, vice presidential contender and party boss, but the timing, given the fiscal state of things, was poor. Virginia needed his attention here. In one of his final movements as the state’s commander-in-chief, Mr. Kaine played well a bad hand. Here’s hoping the governor’s successor will learn from him the importance of budgeting within means and fixing his gaze less on the national stage and more on the needs of those whom he is elected to serve. Adapted from the Waynesboro News Virginian
Published: September 21, 2009