DON'T JUST ROB PETER TO PAY PAUL

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, February 10, 1992                   TAG: 9202100171
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ANTHONY R. STAVOLA
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
DON'T JUST ROB PETER TO PAY PAUL
I FAIL TO see how a substantial tax increase in the middle of a recession is going to help the commonwealth. While your editorials stress the possible increases in employment, etc., as a result of increased state spending, you fail to say that you are really just robbing Peter to pay Paul.
In effect, you are saying the state is better able to spend our money than we taxpayers are. If so, why not have the state merely confiscate all income above a certain minimal level and decide how best to employ it?
As a former resident of a high-tax state, I need to stress that a higher taxes to "maintain essential service" seldom do that. Instead, they contribute to proliferating bureaucracy, greater state regulation and more waste. I wish you had devoted as much effort to analyzing large increases in various state programs and determining what results were achieved by this.
While education funds have increased dramatically over the past several years, I have yet to see any studies that have shown major improvements in test scores, etc. The whole Medicaid system needs to be re-examined and revamped, perhaps along the line of what Oregon is doing. We all know that the welfare system is not breaking the cycle of poverty or empowering the poor to manage their own lives.
I do not quarrel with the need of the state to provide essential services and to help the needy. However, rendering all citizens poorer during a recession does not seem to me the way to cope with this.
What is needed is a complete and systematic review of state programs and regulations. If increases are being mandated by the federal government without funding, then Virginia and other states should band together to pressure our elected representatives to reverse this process.
Certain limited tax increases, particularly on cigarettes, etc., may be necessary. But I feel your recommendations would serve to further slow economic growth and ultimately perpetuate the problems we are already facing.
Anthony R. Stavola is a Roanoke physician.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB