Partisanship, Not Principle
In Virginia, an eminently solvable budget battle

Thursday, February 21, 2008

THE VENEER of gentility that once marked the proceedings of Virginia's General Assembly has faded badly this decade, giving way to spiteful partisan bickering over the budget. Three times the legislature has gone into overtime, forced to extend its regularly scheduled sessions because showdowns over tax and spending priorities eluded compromise. The specter of another such impasse is again casting a shadow in Richmond, not least because Republicans who still cling to control of the House of Delegates find delight in dealing setbacks to the state's popular Democratic governor, Timothy M. Kaine. But Virginians should have little patience for deadlock this year, because the distance between the competing budgetary visions is in reality so small.

As in most states, Virginia is facing an austere budgetary season. Mr. Kaine has attempted to spread the pain equitably, proposing trims in state subsidies for local governments as well as cuts in school construction spending and state agencies' budgets. At the same time he tried to put his stamp on the biennial budget by proposing a number of modest initiatives, including expanded funding for pre-kindergarten education, mental health services and foster care.

In early skirmishes, Republican lawmakers solemnly warned that the governor's new initiatives would certainly not survive given the general economic downturn. They also rejected his proposal to draw some funds from the state's $1.2 billion reserves -- popularly known as the "rainy-day fund" -- to cover a projected shortfall in the current budget, which ends this summer. And they expressed horror that Mr. Kaine would reduce state spending on education by scaling back school construction.

So what proposals has the GOP-controlled House offered instead? Well, they sound a lot like the governor's own blueprint: new initiatives, a drawdown from the rainy-day fund and cuts in education spending.

True, there are differences. On education, House lawmakers would slash new spending on operating schools (by $167 million on a proposal of $940 million) while preserving construction funds. On pre-kindergarten education, they would spend somewhat less than Mr. Kaine would like while still expanding it. They would dip less deeply into the rainy-day fund ($220 million rather than $423 million). And on mental health services, they would boost spending even more rapidly than the governor had in mind.

These are defensible positions, even if they don't square with the Republicans' initial rhetoric. But in the context of a two-year budget in the neighborhood of $75 billion, they do not amount to a fundamental philosophical clash with the governor or the Democratic-controlled Senate. You'd never know that by listening to the heated protests of Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee, who broke with years of tradition on that panel by opposing the budget en masse. In fact, their dissent was a display of partisanship, not principle.

Ignore the rhetoric. There is no great ideological battle underway in Richmond this year. What little in new taxes has been proposed by the Senate -- 5 cents added to the cost of a gallon of gas over five years -- is too meager a flag for either party to rally around. Virginians should expect all sides to give a little and come to agreement, without the standoffs that have threatened to become the norm in recent years.