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News National Academy members speak in Danville on uranium02/06/12 - 7:53 am
Comets win Poetry Out Loud02/06/12 - 7:51 am
Looking back at 112 years of Virgilina history02/06/12 - 7:48 am
Happy birthday, Virgilina! Few people know it, but the town will be 83 years old this February. According to the first town council minute book, Virgilina was incorporated and its…
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Opinion Frozen outSoVaNow.com / February 10, 2010
Gov. Bob McDonnell, seemingly in violation of the cardinal rule of his young administration, finally weighed in on a pressing budget matter Monday. The Governor's Office announced that McDonnell would reverse the plan by his predecessor, Tim Kaine, to freeze the local composite index used to apportion funding for Virginia's 134 school divisions. McDonnell's decision has the practical effect of helping northern Virginia, whose schools stood to lose about $138 million under the index freeze, while cutting funds for 97 school systems in mostly poorer rural and urban communities. If this stands - and the early read from the General Assembly indicates it will - Halifax and many other counties will be required to ante up more money for schools in the coming year. Cash that is harder than ever to come by in these hardscrabble times. There are basically two ways to look at this move by our new governor. On the one hand, McDonnell can say - not without justification - that he has upheld a longstanding principle of governance in Virginia. For years the composite index has been used to determine the sharing of K-12 education costs among state and local governments, and changing the rules just because the numbers went south on the state (and its smaller communities) would be a huge disservice to northern Virginia. The index now tilts in northern Virginia's favor because the region has suffered the most harm from the housing market downturn. Property values are a major component of the index, which purports to measure a community's ability to pay for its schools - and in NoVA's case, pay for everyone else's schools, too. That's because the index, by design, has a redistributionist impact. By way of example, Greensville County taxpayers contribute 19 cents out of every state or local dollar spent on county schools. The figure is 80 cents in Arlington County - with most of state taxes that Arlington residents pay to Richmond channeled to poorer communities via the index. So to be charitable, one can say McDonnell's actions are dictated by circumstance. Less charitably, the new governor has yet to do anything much to curtail spending - lifting the freeze costs Virginia $29 million, another bill the governor can add to his plans to reopen highway rest stops, subsidize the wine, moviemaking and tourism industries, and extend other business subsidies - which means this latest move is basically par for the course. But the real story here has nothing to do with formulas, policies, principles or other budget arcana. School divisions in struggling Southside Virginia are in line to take a tremendous budget hit this year, worse than anything we've witnessed since the Depression, and McDonnell's stand on the composite index only makes matters worse. In Halifax County, schools now face a probable $5 million loss of state funds, and that's before the General Assembly is forced to layer on another $2 billion in cuts statewide as a consequence of rejecting Kaine's proposed tax increases. Halifax County, beset by 12 percent unemployment (the rate in Fairfax County is 4.6 percent, by the way) could be forced to shed 100 teaching positions this year. That's a plausible, not merely a worst-case, scenario. Given these facts, plus everything else we know about the McDonnell Administration agenda, it's hard to escape the conclusion that our new governor is perfectly willing to preside over the destruction of K-12 educational quality in Virginia while he and fellow Republicans worship at the altar of tax cuts and privatization of government services. Southside Virginia, whose economy has long been crippled by low levels of educational attainment, will suffer grievous harm under the course of action that the governor and General Assembly Republicans have chosen to take. All high-minded claims of principled action on an issue that rightly strikes most people as insider baseball doesn't change this ugly fact. Last week in this space I wrote that it was high time for Southside and Southwest Virginia's political leaders to step in with a short-term fix - they can help get rural school divisions past this fiscal crisis by tapping funds from two sources, municipal reserve accounts and the Virginia Tobacco Commission. The Tobacco Commission has set aside $100 million for energy research and development, a jazzy-sounding idea but also a clear case of the commission playing out of its league. Rather than pursue such a speculative venture, members could change course and offer K-12 challenge grants to localities willing to match the contributions dollar-for-dollar - thus saving hundreds of school division jobs that would take years to replace even if the Commission were successful in its other pursuits. We shall see if the legislators who control the Commission agree to consider the idea. But no one should be fooled into thinking that Southside and Southwest representatives and their allies in the local government leadership ranks are somehow powerless to respond to the school budget debacle. Hope springs eternal, but realism lands with a thud whenever one talks about Southside's legislative delegation. Last week our state senator, Frank Ruff of Clarksville, suggested in his weekly constituent column that teachers were "lucky" to have jobs. Given prevailing labor market conditions, I suppose they are. But Ruff, in arguing that any kind of tax increase to fix the state budget would be unthinkable, not only evinces an ignorance of economics but also shows an appalling callousness towards public sector employees who strive every day to build better communities. "There are ... reports that state wide [sic] school systems might have to lay off up to 10,000 employees," Ruff wrote. "And still there are thousands upon thousands left jobless in the private sector." What is Ruff saying here? That because factory workers and prison guards have lost their jobs, teachers should, too? With such Herbert Hoover wannabes representing Southside Virginia in the General Assembly, it's no wonder the region suffers from double-digit unemployment. One might think that the double whammy of more lost jobs and squandered educational opportunities would awaken Ruff from his misanthropic mindset, but in that one would probably be wrong. I can only hope against hope that Ruff and his ilk will finally surprise and take action to protect Southside's schools. If they do, I'll be more than happy to eat my words. *** Late news flash: regarding the Virginia Tobacco Commission, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that "McDonnell's allies in the Republican-controlled House are rallying around a budget plan that could include possibly tapping into the fund that manages nearly $1 billion that Virginia received under a national settlement between the states and tobacco companies. "One scenario under discussion: using about $100 million from the account to support the improvement of U.S. 58, a transportation project prized in tobacco-rich Southside." Let me prepare my keyboard properly in response to this. There, caps lock key deployed: YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING. Here we are, in the second decade of the General Assembly shirking its pledge to fund the Route 58 expansion project, and now members decide to act? At a time of clear and present danger to area school systems? This is the perfect match of misplaced timing and miserable priorities, courtesy of the world's oldest deliberative body. I can only imagine that House Republicans want to use $100 million to issue new bonds for Superhighway 58, because no ridiculous idea emanating from the legislature would ever be complete without additional debt to cap off the folly. It seems anything is on the table in Richmond these days - as long as the idea can't possibly be to sustain the system of public education in Virginia. Better legislators, please. |
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