The liberal Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis projects a $1.2 billion shortfall in the state budget in the upcoming 2008-2010 state budget. The problem, according to authors Michael Cassidy and Cory Kaufman in a Times-Dispatch column today, is not excessive spending but insufficient revenue. Despite Gov. Mark R. Warner’s 2004 tax increases, they write, “Virginia never fully replaced the resources consumed by the car-tax relief effort” of the Gilmore administration.
That’s one point of view. Then there’s the perspective laid out by Del. Chris Saxman, R-Staunton, in a counterpoint column: “Revenues to the commonwealth have increased by more than 50 percent in just three budget cycles — one of which included a recession where revenues were flat-lining to declining.”
Perhaps Virginians should be seeking ways to curtail spending, Saxman says — not by cutting programs but “challenging ourselves to find ways to improve efficiency, thus better serving Virginia’s citizens in a more cost-effective manner.”
Saxman suggests fully implementing the recommendations of the Wilder Commission from earlier in the decade, implementing findings of the Cost Cutting Caucus and the Kaine administration’s operational review teams, making the state budget more transparent to the public, and focusing on the drivers of state spending: Medicaid and K-12 education.
Concludes Saxman: “Virginia’s place in the world’s dynamic economy must not be set by two-year mindsets with statist, linear and short-term thinking.”
