Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, December 31, 1993 TAG: 9402250006
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A14 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Will or can Gov.-elect George Allen and his fellow Republicans seize the opportunity provided by newfound political power and an apparently recovering economy? Will they get to work on a state agenda, too much of which has been deferred in recent years? Will or can they work to alleviate problems that, if not dealt with now, will only grow costlier as the years pass?
They should, at the least, resolve to try. Among the agenda's major items:
Crime reduction.
The rhetoric in Allen's campaign was no-parole; the footnotes also spoke of non-prison alternative punishments for non-violent offenders. There'd better be. Even pre-Allen, prisons (along with Medicaid, over which the state has relatively little control) were the fastest-growing item in the state budget. Virginia needs longer incarceration for the violent, but as part of a reform package.
Leaders of the state's new power structure must keep in mind that imprisonment isn't a goal in itself but a tool for reaching the goal: crime f+iprevention.o For many, prison remains a breeder of crime, especially when in-prison vocational-training and drug-treatment are as woefully lacking as they are in Virginia.
Economic development.
Economic development isn't only a matter of providing an atmosphere friendly to growth, important as that is. It is also the nuts-and-bolts work of selling the state to good prospects - of attracting their interest; of providing them with relevant, accurate and timely information; of coordinating state, regional and local economic-development efforts. In resources and results, Virginia's economic-development agencies lag behind those of competitor states. It's past time to catch up.
Education.
Disparities in school finance are, at bottom, an issue of inadequate state funding overall - it's just that bridging the gap between what the state should be spending and is spending is more difficult for poorer localities. The Virginia Education Association has proposed a three-tier plan: The state should insist on a high-quality basic education for all Virginia youngsters, regardless of where they live; encourage localities to go beyond the minimum; and permit localities to do even more than that if they wish. Estimated price tag: $500 million over two years.
In higher education, the state's system of colleges and universities - once regarded as among the best in the country - has been hit by cutbacks that have sent Virginia to near the bottom in state support per student. These cutbacks have been offset in part by higher tuition charges. Allen has pledged to cap increases in such costs to students, but he needs to be equally committed to maintaining and improving academic quality.
Government reinvention.
Outgoing Gov. Douglas Wilder mentioned this occasionally, but to little discernible effect. Allen also talked a version of reinventing government during the campaign, but tended to couch it in anti-bureaucrat rhetoric. As private-sector business is learning, however, improvements come most often from those closest to the work - the workers. For that, they need to be given reasons to embrace changes and efficiencies, not fear them.
The business world also is learning that improvements most often come incrementally, a bit at a time. But sometimes a major structural inefficiency is so obvious that it cries out for repair: In the world of Virginia government, such an inefficiency is the commonwealth's archaic system of local government. Counties are too many and too small; cities shouldn't be independent of the counties that surround them; the taxing, annexing and other powers of localities should be made uniform.
Privatizing some state activities, an idea noted approvingly by Allen during the campaign, also may hold promise.
Welfare reform.
The Clinton administration in Washington is allowing states greater leeway in experimenting with welfare rules, an idea presumably in ideological harmony with the Allen administration. Let Virginia's new leaders take up the challenge. But let them also keep in mind the strong possibility that workable reform, by ensuring the availability of jobs and access to child care and health care for people getting off welfare, could cost more in the short term than leaving the system as is. The potential gain is long-term: breaking a dependency cycle wanted by neither the poor nor the taxpayers.
Virtually all these agenda items are interrelated in some way or another. Education and economic development, for one example; crime reduction and welfare reform, for another.
Whether seriously tackling the agenda items would require a tax increase depends on how fast Virginia's economy recovers, on how much can be saved by working to reinvent state government, on how federal mandates affect the state's budget. But at most, only a modest increase would be required - and in a low-tax state like Virginia this should be a relatively minor consideration. Any short-term cost of addressing these items is dwarfed by the potential long-term cost of failing to.
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GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1994
by CNB