Grocery
and NPR Problems Trump Budget Stalemate
Marc
Fisher’s Potomac
Confidential online chat on the Washington
Post web site is usually a reliable Richmond-bashing
venue. With the
General Assembly budget deadlock seemingly intractable,
a torrent of abuse from Fisher and his readers might
have been expected on Thursday, March 25th.
Surprisingly,
not a negative word was uttered.
The burning issues were union versus non-union
grocery wars in the Metro DC area and NPR’s firing of
long-time morning host Bob Edwards. Wegman’s versus Giant trumped Chichester versus
Howell.
Could
it possibly be that some Virginians aren’t obsessing
over the lack of a budget?
Not
the pundits and pontificators.
Jeff
Schapiro of the Richmond
Times-Dispatch, reading e-mail from state employees,
claimed they “feel that legislators are messing with
their lives.” Lynn
Jones, Jr., a businessman writing in the Roanoke Times, said, “The House Republicans are holding the lives
of all Virginians hostage.”
University of Virginia Professor Larry Sabato
paused from gazing into his national Crystal
Ball long enough to criticize
the General Assembly’s “ugly mood” in historical
terms:
“You
had people who were willing to compromise to do the
right thing for Virginia. Apparently, we don’t have
many of those people anymore.”
Bob
Gibson
of the Daily Progress urged voters to give
legislators “a piece of your mind.”
This request for input apparently does not
include allowing citizens to express their views in a
referendum. Gibson
seemed to favor Lynchburg Republican Del. Preston
Bryant’s proposal
that Gov. Warner broker a compromise.
Virginian-Pilot
columnist Margaret
Edds criticized the Republican House for
collecting per diem during the budget stalemate and
claimed that while low taxers would win a debate with
high taxers, the people of Virginia “aren’t that
gullible” and “it’s not that simple.”
Melanie
Scarborough
came to the defense of the Republicans in the Washington
Post.
Noting that Gov. Warner was blaming the GOP for
the budget impasse, she wrote:
The
lawmakers are doing their job. They were elected
on a promise to restrain taxes and spending, and they
are remaining true to their word. Is it their fault that
Warner has done just the opposite and expects them to
follow suit?
Scarborough
also found specific spending in Governor Warner’s
budget that she considered bloated, such as $9 million
for specialized services to 77 state facility patients,
$117,000 per patient.
One
pundit saw a silver lining in the budget mess.
Nelson
Graves of the Staunton News
Leader suggested that the stalemate might lead to
localities combining services to improve efficiency and
reduce costs.
The
most balanced, complete, and insightful commentary on
the General Assembly situation came from Bob Holsworth
of Virginia Commonwealth University.
In a Washington Post online chat, he
reviewed the positions of the important players, the
two parties, and the factions within the parties.
Read it all.
Allen
v. Wolf
Republicans
disagree in Richmond; Republicans disagree in
Washington. In the
Richmond Times-Dispatch, Senator George Allen urged
official recognition for Virginia’s Indian tribes
under legislation that he has introduced while Rep.
Frank Wolf worries that casino
gambling might come to the state if tribes are
recognized. Allen claims his bill won’t lead to
gambling because Indian tribes don’t sponsor bingo
now.
Southside
Plan
It’s
always refreshing to see a column on economic
development with specific suggestions instead of tired
bromides. Retired
textile worker Mel Cartwright, a resident of
Martinsville, proposed
several ideas in the Roanoke
Times to revitalize the distressed Henry County
area, including marketing the Southside community as a
retirement destination. Speaking
for the area, he said, “We must reinvent ourselves.”
He might have noted that reinvention should
include exorcising local government scandals and
disastrous flirtations with overpaid economic
development officials.
Your
Tax Dollars at Work
The
most frequently asked question during cell phone
conversations seems to be “Where are you?”
In the Washington
Post, David
Holland of George Mason University notes that
Interstate 95 now includes mileposts every tenth of a
mile, allowing cell phone users to respond to the
inevitable question with a “crisp ‘I’m at Mile
135.7.’” Holland
links this development with the ongoing tax debate:
How
can any rational Virginian not see the need for tax
increases? Expanding the tenth-of-a-mile signs to
include all state roads and highways has to come next.
And the minds that conceived of mileage markers every
tenth of a mile surely have many other deserving
projects just waiting for our tax dollars.
If
a tenth of a mile is good, wouldn't a twentieth of a
mile be better?
--
March 29, 2004
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