Goals worthy of praise, but can we afford?

We like the way the House is leaning. But…

The House of Delegates is looking at a state budget proposal that will help local schools by restoring funding to cover inflationary costs, paying for employees’ share of increased contributions to the retirement system — which for some localities amounted to an unfunded mandate — and otherwise providing more aid for early childhood education efforts.

The funding amounts to $140 million.

The budget proposed by the House Appropriations Committee puts money into education that Gov. Bob McDonnell’s budget had eliminated. The committee’s impulse to boost education is a decidedly healthy one.

Mr. McDonnell’s budget had eliminated aid to cover inflation, putting the burden of rising costs onto localities.

It also increased the amount employees are required to pay toward their retirement. Properly funding the retirement system is a critical need, and there are reasonable arguments for asking employees to share more of that responsibility. But the change put many local governments in an untenable position. These governments pay their school employees’ retirement as a local benefit. Already financially stressed from other directions, they now would have been compelled to pay this extra share of retirement or discontinue the benefit, causing financial and morale problems for their employees.

The House budget wisely seeks to shield localities from these additional fiscal burdens imposed under the governor’s budget.

But … there are two problems.

One involves the political process itself.

It falls into the “reap what you sow” category.

As a result of the fall election, the Virginia Senate is equally divided between Republicans and Democrats. At the start of the legislative session, Republicans voted against sharing power with Democrats, opting instead to authorize Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling to serve as the chamber’s tiebreaker. That gave the Republicans effective control of the Senate, and has been bitterly resented by the Democrats ever since.

Now, in the House, Republicans have broken with the Republican governor and offered a budget that does not follow his directive. To overcome the House version and reassert his own budget as the path the state should take, Mr. McDonnell needs the Senate on his side.

And Mr. Bolling cannot help him. The state’s constitution specifically prohibits him from breaking ties on appropriations bills.

Suddenly, Mr. McDonnell needs the votes of the Senate Democrats — opponents whom he and his administration deeply alienated by the original tiebreaker vote.

As this is being written, the outcome still is in doubt.    

The second problem is fundamental to the budget itself: Where’s the money coming from? 

Significantly, the House committee hasn’t yet said how it would pay for the new and restored education funds. That information is supposed to be released today.

Although supporting education and reducing impact on localities are praiseworthy goals, we must know what it will cost to achieve those goals. Only then can informed judgments be made, in the House or in the Senate, about whether to pass that budget or reject it.