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To
regain a General Assembly majority and remain viable
contenders in the increasingly Republican-
leaning
statewide vote, Virginia Democrats need -- because
our children need -- an innovative K-12 education
plan: one that is honest and forward-
looking.
If it's politically risky, so be it. The status quo,
consisting of certain politicians and certain
interests mouthing all the right
"promises" soon followed by all the
repetitive lame excuses, needs to be publicly
challenged.
Any
education plan, by necessity, must start with a
founding principle that organizes the various parts
into a cohesive, understandable and compelling
whole. Naturally, it must consist of several solid,
if need be bold, initiatives. (See last
week's article on the first-ever K-12 state
General Obligation School Construction Package.)
So
today, I propose enacting a new law, with teeth, to
finally make K-12 education what the state
constitution and Virginia law demands: the top
priority, numero uno above all others, and in so
doing, develop a specific timetable to correct the
state's documented failure on this very obligation.
This
law will achieve this first principle and end the
failure of the state to keep its K-12 promise, a
failure acknowledged a year ago by the Joint
Legislative and Audit Review Committee (JLARC), the
powerful investigative arm of the General Assembly.
As I will show, without this new law, K-12 education
will continue to be badly shortchanged in Virginia,
as JLARC conceded.
Leadership,
therefore, at this stage, consists of providing the
catalyst for getting people to challenge current
thinking by offering new, practical, bold ideas that
work -- ideas to build a unity of purpose among
those who want positive, accountability in K-12.
Back
in 2001, in a Washington Post column entitled
"Behind Virginia's Budget Woes, a Deficit of
Candor," I warned about this developing
budget/educational situation. At the time,
Gov.-elect Mark R. Warner, like Gov. George Allen
before him, was saying that former Gov. L. Douglas
Wilder's award-winning budget stewardship was the
fiscal model for governing in difficult times. So,
as Wilder's chief budget consultant, I was asked to
discuss the fiscal situation that Warner was
inheriting from Gov. "Deficit Jim"
Gilmore. In part, this column said the following:
"Virginians need straight talk [to] explain the
true causes of Virginia's not one, but two,
ballooning deficit problems: the first, immediate by
still manageable, the second structural and spinning
out of control."
The
twin deficit problem, a subject seldom discussed in
the press, is key to understanding the current
situation. Right now, we are hearing almost
exclusively about only one of these two deficits,
the one involving the current, two-year state
budget. A law initiated during the Wilder
Administration was intended to require a balanced
budget.
But
the second RED INK problem -- the more important,
increasingly intractable and most related to K-12
education -- is the structural deficit. We
hear almost nothing about this deficit from the
folks in Richmond. Why? Because to talk about it
honestly means admitting that the
"balanced" budget is only possible by
using the public-sector equivalent to the
off-the-books fiscal gimmickry that Enron and other
2002 corporate debacles have come to symbolize.
In
explaining the "structural deficit"
concept, I wrote the following in that Washington
Post article:
"Another
budgetary practice adds to the structural deficit..:
For several years, the state has failed to provide
local governments with the amount of education funds
it is required to give them by state law. A recent
legislative report says the overdue amount now tops
$1 billion. Eventually, this will have to be
corrected: At some point, localities may sue and the
courts may order the state to pay up the money
owed."
As
indicated, the JLARC report confirmed the bottom
line of the structural deficit: Virginia's school
children were being shortchanged, and local property
tax payers were being asked to pay extra because the
state was reneging on its lawful and constitutional
duties.
Like
Enron, the state soon will announce that the budget
has been "miraculously" balanced sometime
during the 2003 General Assembly session. But the
books will "balance" occur only because
legislators will refuse to acknowledge their failure
to live up to the state's K-12 constitutional
requirements. If they did, the budget would be at
least $1 billion out of whack.
To
repeat: The proof of this shameful situation is not
based on anything that Paul Goldman, or the Virginia
Education Association, or any number of concerned
parents, concocted out of whole cloth. It is based
in the official findings of JLARC, the General
Assembly's own entity, chaired by none other than
Vincent F. Callahan, Jr., R-Fairfax, chairman of the
House Appropriations Committee. Moreover, the
membership of JLARC includes John Chichester,
R-Fredericksburg, chairman of the Senate Finance
Committee, plus the acting Speaker of the House of
Delegates, the state Auditor of Public Accounts, not
to mention a host of other powerful Democratic and
Republican legislators from each branch of the
legislature.
The
JLARC report specifies which children and families
are most hurt by this constitutional failure:
"Since most State funding for education is
provided based on local ability to pay, a lesser
role by the State in meeting costs tends to most
negatively impact education funding levels in poorer
localities." (Emphasis added.)
In
other words, the areas of Virginia, rural and urban
and suburban, that traditionally have been at the
core of Democratic concerns, are the most hurt.
So,
I say again, the time has come for Virginia
Democrats to fight -- right now, in 2003 - for
passage of a law, with teeth, that can go into
effect this year, and that will make meeting the
state's constitutional obligation to fund K-12
education the top priority for state government.
Again, not one of many "top priorities."
But the top, numero uno priority.
Why
is this my first priority?
Because
I live in the real world, and know what
inevitability will happen if we wait for a couple of
years to achieve this goal.
Let
me give you an example. If one takes time to read
state law, there are several traps in our statutes
which, if not fixed, make it all but impossible to
make K-12 education the first priority.
For
example, one such trap -- there are others but this
is the best known -- is the law controlling the
repeal of the car tax. I believe the car tax should
be repealed. Unfortunately, the law controlling this
repeal contains what I will call a
"loophole" which makes 100 percent repeal
-- that is, the next move from the current 70
percent to 100 percent -- a far higher priority than
K-12 education.
According
to the car tax statutes, 100 percent repeal
"shall" happen if certain conditions are
met, irrespective of whether the state has met it's
constitutional and legal obligations on K-12
education.
These
car tax conditions may be met as early as 2004.
Indeed, the Governor's press secretary and newly
elected Speaker of the General Assembly are on
record saying the 100 percent phase-in step will
happen in the next budget cycle irrespective of what
happens with education.
Accordingly,
Virginia needs to make a choice. What shall we
commit ourselves, as a people, to do first: Meet the
constitutional and statutory K-12 obligations of the
state as voted by the people in approving the new
Constitution more than 30 years ago? Or do we
continue to violate our promise while putting other
priorities first, such as the 100 percent provisions
of the Gilmore car tax loophole?
Virginia's
statutes
need to clearly state that correcting the K-12
constitutional failure takes precedence over such
worthy goals 100 percent repeal of the car
tax, eliminating the sales tax on food (something I
have championed for 20 years), or other such goals
that I support.
If
Republicans want to make this the car tax vs.
education, so be it. That is not what I propose, but
if this is the political risk that must be taken,
bring it on.
But,
Paul, you say, there are legitimate disagreements
about the state education funding formula and the
adequacy of the Standards of Quality, which are the
basis of this constitutional under-funding. Some say
that a fair and nonpartisan analysis of the
Constitutional mandate, as interpreted by several
Attorney General opinions, indicate the state's
failure is far greater than JLARC admitted.
I
agree: Such differences do exist and, yes,
respected, objective analysts believe the size of
the structural, K-12 deficit is considerably larger,
thus driving up property taxes even further. They
make a good case, in my judgment.
But
as the old Chinese proverb wisely points out, even
the longest journey begins with a first step.
-- January 6, 2002
(c) Copyright. All rights reserved. Paul Goldman.
2002.
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