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The
people have spoken. Tim Kaine will be our next
governor because the voters liked what they had
under Mark Warner and would have re-elected him by
a wide margin had two-term governors been allowed.
Tim Kaine was the next best thing in the mind of
the majority. Besides, the Republicans offered no
dramatic program or policy initiatives that caught
the imagination of the voters.
In
a move that sent sighs of relief throughout much
of the business community and also to those who
have supported the moves by Gov. Warner to bring
better business practices to state government,
Kaine’s first major decision was the appointment
of Bill Leighty, Warner’s chief of staff, as his
own.
This,
combined with Kaine’s “listening tour”
around Virginia on the issue of transportation,
sent a settling sign that maybe, just maybe, this
“liberal Democrat” will govern more like his
business-minded predecessor than as a liberal
crusader. This may have been reinforced by the
election of Bill Bolling as Lieutenant Governor
and, it looks like, Bob McDonnell as Attorney
General. Republicans picked up two out of three
statewide offices and maintained solid control of
the House of Delegates. Kaine’s election was a
call for steady continuation of the past four
years.
So,
where does the new administration, and the
generally conservative state legislature, move to
make a lasting mark on state government?
One
major area should be the careful management and
firm control of state spending. Thanks to the
booming economy and a tax increase two years ago,
our state’s coffers are currently running a
large surplus. Since the original two-year
budget was passed in May of 2004, almost $2
billion of extra money came into the state. More
than $1.4 was spent through “budget
amendments” in the last session of the General
Assembly and $540 million remain as “surplus.”
On top of these monies, this second year of the
two-year budget will bring in another $1 billion
or more in surplus. And the next state budget will
likely be in the range of $68 or $69 billion – a
large increase from the $48 billion two-year
budget when Mark Warner hit town four years ago.
Money
isn’t a headache right now. But it will be if
spending is not significantly slowed and strong
management isn't brought to the execution of
government programs. Current budget surpluses
won’t last if government sops up all the revenue
to fund new programs and increase current programs
with no concern about the future. We’ve gone
through too many “boom and bust” cycles in
state government not to understand that government
should not recklessly increase spending in good
times only to create “crisis management” when
the economy hick-ups and slows down.
The
in-coming General Assembly, in cooperation with
the new governor, needs to prioritize spending:
sitting down and differentiating between core and
non-core spending. Other states have done this
without regard to the party sitting in the
Governor’s mansion: California,
Washington, Indiana, South Carolina and Florida
have undertaken this effort and done so
successfully. Virginia needs to do it now in order
to avoid problems down the line.
Once
government spending is prioritized, then the least
important should be severed from government
spending and the remainder needs to be made just
as efficient as possible. Our leaders need to ask,
which programs work, and which do not? Which
programs can be made more efficient and if they
can’t, should they be ended?
Legislators
also should adopt some fundamental principles for
allocating resources. When more than one program
exists (job training, drug rehabilitation, etc.),
keep the successful ones, and fold the less
efficient ones into the efficient ones. If the
private sector can provide services better than
government, then turn programs over to the private
sector, just as the state is doing with its
Information Technology functions.
The
state needs to move aggressively into its main
budget areas with an eye on making them more
efficient and achieving higher quality results.
Quality education requires adequate funding but it
also requires strict business practices and
outcome based analysis. We certainly don’t need
a new pre-K education program when our k-12 public
school system is not educating our children as
well as many think it should or could. Requiring
phonics-based reading for all state-funded
remedial reading programs would be a start.
Bringing real parental choice to public education
can be provided through an emphasis on charter
schools and the use of tuition tax credits to fund
scholarships for “at risk” kids in our current
public school system.
College
students should be provided the current subsidized
undergraduate education but only for a specific
number of credit hours – enough to get an
undergraduate degree but not an unlimited
undergraduate subsidy that, in too many cases,
provides a cocoon for students to remain in
undergraduate courses. All our higher education
institutions should be required to sell or
contract out book stores, dormitories, ground
maintenance and equipment maintenance or explain
why they do not.
And
where the private sector can add benefits to our
transportation system, it should be encouraged.
This includes buying state assets such as current
toll roads (making sure those funds are used for
transportation projects), using HOT lanes, toll
roads and toll bridges, and expanding the current
private sector road maintenance contract that has
proven so cost effective.
People
expect effective and efficient government. Tim
Kaine should join forces with the Cost Cutting
Caucus and the leaders of the General Assembly in
making the next four years a partnership to make
Virginia’s state government more efficient, more
effective, more transparent and more
user-friendly.
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November 28, 2005
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