THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 2, 1995 TAG: 9508020011
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines
For three weeks George Allen traveled the commonwealth's byways in a Winnebago, pushing his good-ol'-boyish charm - and the governor is, if nothing else, charming - on small-town and rural Virginians.
According to his own spin, the tour was his way of bringing the governor's office to the governed. The way the Democrats spun it, he was out there campaigning early for this fall's Republican legislative candidates, who have a chance to gain control of the General Assembly for the first time in a century.
But arguments about motives aside, some people you'd expect to be in the Allen camp - Republican businessmen and Republican lawmakers in Northern Virginia - have been helping to shape a bipartisan Virginia First program that directly challenges the governor's.
It's an extension of these same people's call last week for $200 million in new money in each year of the 1996-98 budget for higher education.
The added items include eliminating financial disparities between poor and rich school districts; appropriating an extra $51.8 million for community colleges (to bring per-student spending up to the Southern states' average); supporting ports, airports and truck or rail transfer stations; borrowing $500 million to update college and university labs, libraries and technology; and - the big one - using tolls, sales or gasoline-tax hikes and special tax districts to fund highway construction.
Allen, of course, is committed to not raising taxes; the centerpiece of his 1993 gubernatorial campaign was a promise to shrink state government. And GOP Del. Vincent F. Callahan Jr. of McLean, though among those framing the program, said: ``We're not advocating a tax increase; we're talking about future growth in this state.''
Yet even as the Wilder administration slashed spending to avoid tax hikes in the early '90s recession, budget analysts were warning that the state's existing revenue structure, even assuming economic recovery, was inadequate in the face of growing public demands.
And Callahan notwithstanding, most of those committed to initiatives in education, technology, transportation and other areas of state concern apparently feel that those analysts are right, that 1996-98 revenues will be inadequate.
The state will face a dimmer future if it ignores the Virginia First agenda. And for the state to even begin to respond, Allen's priorities must be revised - drastically. by CNB