Love him or hate him, you’ve got to credit former Gov. Jim Gilmore with being a fighter. He relishes the rough and tumble of politics, and doesn’t shy away from controversy. Speaking to the press at the annual gathering of GOP luminaries at the Homestead, Gilmore faulted the party for not being critical enough of Gov. Mark R. Warner’s tax and budgetary policies, according to Tyler Whitley, a reporter.
Gilmore questioned the validity of polls that showed Warner with a favorable rating of more than 70 percent. Poll questions were not directed, he noted, to Warner’s broken promise to raise taxes, nor, as Whitley paraphrased it, his “lack of attention” to transportation and education. Also, Gilmore accused Warner of creating a “false crisis” in 2004 to justify a $1.4 billion tax increase.
Some one needs to counter the Warner administration spin on the 2004 tax hike. Thanks in part to a compliant press corps, Warner successfully blamed all of the earlier state’s budget woes on Gilmore, his predecessor. Gilmore deserves much of the criticism, particularly for the shambles his administration made of transportation spending. But the budgetary crisis brought on by the recession had passed by 2004. Despite warnings from bond-rating service Moodys that Virginia’s AAA bond rating was on “watch” status, revenues were pouring into the state Treasury appreciably faster than forecast in Warner’s budget — and the surpluses have been ballooning in size ever since.
Unwilling to offend Warner’s Republican allies in the state Senate, Jerry Kilgore did not make a major issue of the 2004 tax hike in his gubernatorial race. Gilmore, who told reporters that he is interested in seeking elected office again, would be well advised to keep the issue alive. But if he wants to have credibility when he speaks about the budget, he needs to acknowledge the mistakes that were made, particularly in transportation, on his watch.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.