Earmarks are Back
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11 responses to “Earmarks are Back”
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Good catch, Dick. State funding for CHKD should be a controversial proposition. Virginia does need to invest in new mental health facilities — the state is under-served. But it’s got to do so in a way that is consistent with the Constitution!
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Hmmm… Where did Northam practice?
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Yep. Good catch. But the state has had shortfalls in mental health care so I wonder if we’ve got the whole picture.
re: ” Article IV, Section 16 of the Virginia Constitution prohibits an appropriation of public funds to “any charitable institution which is not owned or controlled by the Commonwealth.””
That’s interesting. How would that work with school vouchers?
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For school vouchers, as long as they were limited to public schools, there probably would not be a problem. For private schools, it would depend on how they were structured.
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There are no private school vouchers here, except the TAG grants for higher ed. And those technically are grants to the students, simply aggregated and remitted to the schools for convenience. A bit of sleight of hand, perhaps, but they are to the student’s benefit. This is not the first instance where that line has been crossed, Dick. It’s been fuzzy for a while.
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It was crossed all the time in the past. There was a section in the budget bill providing funding to a whole list of private, nonprofit agencies. Sometimes the list went on for pages, including every little local preservation group you could imagine. That practice stopped when the AG’s opinion came out. Now, it is done by having agencies contract with the groups or make grants tied to certain conditions (usually to do what the group is set up to do). This issue with CHKD stands out, first of all, due to the amount of money involved, and, secondly, because of its brazenness.
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………. am reminded of the adage: money is fungible
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Locally, every year at budget time , a parade of 501(c)(3) organizations show up to plead for funds pointing out that they serve the local community and perhaps save taxpayers from other entitlements.
My main complaint is similar to others and that is I don’t like to see duplicative services and multiple qualification vetting processes.
Folks say they don’t like top-down centralized govt but if you have multiple silo orgs – it breeds waste and duplication of services as well as administrative support functions.
This is inherent in our current system which is a rabbit warren maze of Federal, State and NGOs. Everyone has their silo.
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CHKD made over $62 million in profits in 2018 (vhi.org) and of course is tax exempt. Not sure they meet anyone’s definition of a struggling charity in need of state funding. This represents but a very small example of the corruption of the 501c3 designation because of lack of federal or state oversight and the corruption of politicians who receive millions in campaign funding from them through the quite legal 501c4 “cutouts” such as the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association.
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Well put. The Leona Helmsley’s of our General Assembly understand that laws are for the little people … not for the intellectual titans of our state legislature.
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