|
Baliles
Gets It Wrong Again
Virginians
distrust government, the former governor says,
because agencies have been starved of funds -- in
other words because Virginians aren't taxed enough.
Delivering the
keynote speech at a recent conference on regional
issues in Hampton Roads, former Gov. Gerald L.
Baliles recently offered a remarkable
explanation for the resounding defeat of the 2002
ballot measure he supported to raise the sales tax
rate in Hampton Roads. He argued that the voters’
distrust of government contributed to their
rejection of the tax hike and that their distrust
had developed because government agencies had been
“starved” of tax funds.
Now
Baliles, who left office in 1990, is a serious man,
and he didn’t make that statement in jest. But
it’s hard not to laugh. Did he really mean that
voters didn’t trust government enough to give it
more of their tax dollars because it hadn’t
already been getting enough of their tax dollars?
Public
opinion surveys last year clearly contradict the
former governor’s conclusion. Voters
overwhelmingly believed that elected officials could
not be trusted to do what they had promised with tax
revenues. Voters certainly weren’t distrustful of
government because it had taken too little of their
money. State spending has not declined, but actually
increased, in each of the last 10 years.
Baliles
believes passionately that state and local programs
haven’t been given enough money. That’s a
different issue. Funding below what liberals want is
hardly a starvation diet.
The
former governor had some other things to say at the
conference. He repeated his argument of 20 years
that differences between cities and counties
frustrate progress and must be eliminated. If that
were ever a major problem, it isn’t a burning
issue today. The few remaining advantages cities
have over counties can be addressed through minor
statutory amendments or the grant of charters to
those counties that want to be treated like cities.
The
real problem is the lack of satisfactory
institutions to deal with regional problems. Baliles
seems to think that the answer is even more
consolidation of local governments. Hampton Roads
has already experienced more city-county mergers in
the last half century than any other region in the
nation. Further consolidation isn’t the solution.
Innovation is.
Finally,
Baliles proposed a reduction in the Virginia House
of Delegates from 100 members to 80. Perhaps the
former governor can persuade racial minorities and
the U.S. Justice Department to ignore the Voting
Rights Act, which is a considerable obstacle to any
such change. And maybe Baliles can convince his
fellow Democrats that Republicans won’t use their
majority to reduce the number of Democrats in that
body by 20 members.
Virginia’s
economy, society and politics are constantly
changing. Baliles assumes that the Commonwealth’s
metropolitan areas are essentially static and that
political boundaries can be fixed to fit the profile
of metropolitan problems for the indefinite future.
The suggestion, for example, that senatorial and
legislative districts can be rationalized based upon
current socio-economic information is hopelessly naïve.
What existed 10 or 29 years ago bears little
resemblance to what exists now.
Baliles’
allusion to the old practice of leaving a bucket of
water for the next person to prime the pump also
seems quaint and not very apt. Old moral lessons and
platitudes don’t always provide an answer to
modern problems. Most of us don’t use hand pumps
any more, and most of us no longer assume, as
Baliles does, that pouring another bucket of tax
dollars into a well is ipso facto a sound
investment.
--
October 20, 2003
|
