ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, February 23, 1996 TAG: 9602230098
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
WHAT GOV. George Allen and the Virginia Senate's budget-writing panel are recommending for Roanoke-based Virginia CARES is baffling. If the General Assembly goes along, it'll be a crime.
Un-conservative, too.
Any self-respecting conservative should want to (1) subject government spending to rigorous cost-benefit analysis, (2) remain skeptical in the face of assertions that a centralized bureaucracy can do a job better than can a private, entrepreneurial organization, and (3) keep up the fight against crime.
Allen betrayed all three conservative missions in proposing to scrap funding for one of the state's most effective crime-prevention efforts. The Senate Finance Committee blithely went along.
To be sure, the clients of Virginia CARES evoke no warm and fuzzy feelings to pull at heart strings or purse strings. They're ex-convicts. Virginia CARES works with offenders before and after they leave prison, helping them to readjust to society and to find nonsubsidized jobs.
In doing so, however, the program significantly and demonstrably reduces the odds that ex-cons will return to their previous line of work and end up in prison again - to be further subsidized by taxpayers.
The state spends about $17,000 a year to provide room and board and upkeep for one prison inmate. With about $650,000 in state funds, Virginia CARES last year served 1,600 ex-offenders. If you compare the (lower) recidivism rate of Virginia CARES clients with the (higher) rate for offenders not getting its services, then calculate the cost differential - including estimated costs of repeat offenders' crimes imposed on their victims and society - it is crystal clear that Virginia CARES is saving taxpayers' money.
Why isn't it clear to Gov. Allen?
He and the Senate would transfer $1.3 million from Virginia CARES to the state corrections department. Can they truly believe this state agency would do a better job with the money than the experienced, responsive, community-oriented nonprofit? Haven't they been listening to their own criticisms of central bureaucracies, of which corrections may be the worst?
And why would a tough-on-crime administration increase the crime risk for countless communities throughout Virginia - to which, like it or not, ex-cons and parolees will be released?
Such questions of costs and benefits, efficiency and risk, seem to have been taken into account by the House Appropriations Committee in its version of the biennial budget. The House budget would restore the $1.3 million and wisely add another $1 million for the statewide Virginia CARES.
The fate of this program, launched by Total Action Against Poverty some two decades ago, is now up to a House-Senate conference committee which will negotiate and resolve differences in the two chambers' spending plans.
Virginia CARES isn't pork barrel for Roanoke. It's worked for 20 years to reduce recidivism across the commonwealth. In crafting the final budget, lawmakers should adopt the House's recommendation to keep it working.
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1996by CNB