THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 29, 1994 TAG: 9412290422
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: MARTINSVILLE LENGTH: Short : 44 lines
Former crack addicts, students in 4-H and farmers were among the scores of people who took turns Wednesday protesting Gov. George F. Allen's proposed state budget amendments.
General Assembly money committees conducted the first in a series of hearings in Martinsville and Richlands to hear public comment on Allen's plan to slash $403 million in spending to help finance his tax cut and prison building programs.
Barbara Edwards works from dawn to dusk running a dairy and beef cattle farm in Carroll County. But she made time to collect signatures from about 200 local farmers opposed to cutting $7.3 million from the Virginia Cooperative Extension Service.
``I don't know what I would do without our Extension Service,'' Edwards, who took over the farm when her father died in 1975, said at the Martinsville hearing.
S.E. Moran, a farmer and businessman from Bassett, argued that the Extension Service cuts would ruin some farmers.
``I know we need money, but we can't do away with the few farmers we've got,'' said Moran, 71.
Most of the first 100 speakers represented agencies that help people who are poor.
Sylvia Smith, who chairs the Piedmont Regional Community Services Board, said Allen's proposed $6.6 million reduction for the state's 40 community services boards would dramatically affect the most vulnerable state residents.
She calculated that 12,186 people in Virginia would not receive direct services for mental illness, mental disability and drug and alcohol dependency if the General Assembly allows the reduction. And 7,148 people would not get preventive services that would avoid more costly future treatment, she said.
KEYWORDS: PROPOSED BUDGET by CNB