A century and a half ago, Otto Von Bismark called politics “the art of the possible,” and that philosophy certainly shaped the $72 billion biennial budget the General Assembly sent to Governor Kaine last week. While the budget represents a failure for Virginians on some key fronts – which I’ll get to in a moment – it also includes a number of critical investments in the future, and is about the best possible budget we could achieve considering the Republican majority’s extreme anti-tax theology.
The good news is that the final budget includes a four percent increase in teacher salaries, $42 million for early childhood education – including an increase in the Virginia Preschool Initiative – and funds to expand access to prenatal care for poor women. Other steps forward include more than $200 million for Chesapeake Bay cleanup, funds for a startup program for all-inclusive care for the elderly, and more money to provide services to Virginia’s military veterans.
The other good news is that we were able to stop money for education, public safety, and social services from being diverted to transportation. We also forced House Republicans to abandon their attempt to issue new debt to fund the budget – debt that my son’s generation would have to pay. Of course, both of these were only possible because we failed to do anything meaningful on transportation, which is brings us to the bad news.
Thanks to the budget’s failure to address transportation, Virginians will continue to be stuck in traffic, and our sclerotic transportation infrastructure will continue to strangle our economy, steal time from our families, and diminish quality of life. House Republicans are claiming “victory” over taxes, but their victory is a defeat for Virginians. The fact remains that if we do not come up with new revenue for transportation, by the year 2010 every transportation dollar in Virginia will go only toward maintenance, with nothing left to improve our roads or invest in public transit. This budget fails miserably on that front, even leaving on the table $50 million a year in federal matching funds for Metro.
Allegedly, we will return to Richmond in late summer or early fall for another special session focused on transportation. However, if the Republican majority in the General Assembly isn’t willing to find new revenue sources for transportation now, it’s not clear to me what will change over the coming months, especially with anti-tax ideologues threatening to run primary challengers against the few moderate Republicans who might otherwise support a real solution.
Separate from transportation, the other bad news is that House Republicans forced a $12 million cut to firefighters at a time when the Federal Government is cutting Northern Virginia’s homeland security funds. Our fire departments are our first line of defense during disasters and terrorist attacks. When I was on duty inside the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, and al Qaeda attacked, it was the Arlington Fire Department who first arrived on the scene to save lives. We should be stepping up to ensure that our firefighters have what they need to keep us safe, not cutting their resources and putting our families at risk.
Locally, there are some small bright spots in the budget. During the regular session, I requested several amendments to meet important needs within the 45th District. The final budget includes $37,500 towards a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system that will preserve Gadsby’s Tavern Museum in Old Town, $18,500 to pay for renovations at the Fort Ward Historic Site on Braddock Road, and $75,000 toward completing the new Signature Theater in Shirlington. These historic and cultural treasures are important to our community’s economic strength and are certainly worthy of these modest investments included in the state budget.
In addition to the budget, last week we voted on a bill to repeal Virginia’s estate tax in Virginia and to scale back the conservation tax credit program. The bill passed over my strong objection. The conservation tax credit program is a proven tool for saving pristine land in rural areas and for saving historic properties in urban areas. By repealing the estate tax, we will forgo more than $140 million per year to benefit 1,000 wealthy Virginians. I have appealed to the Governor to use his line-item amendment power to scale back the estate tax repeal. I urged him to use $12 million of the resulting revenue to restore funding to firefighters and $3 million to help 8,000 vulnerable children by bringing Virginia’s woefully inadequate foster care payments up to the national average. While I suspect my appeal will not succeed at this late stage, these two issues are common sense matters of social justice and public safety, and I will continue to fight for them in the future.
As the longest General Assembly session in Virginia’s 400-year history winds down, please remember that I’m here to serve you all year long. You can get in touch at 703-549-3203, DelDEnglin@house.state.va.us, or www.DavidEnglin.org.
