Few good tradeoffs in budget slashing

It would be easy to second-guess $974 million in emergency budget cuts announced by Gov. Tim Kaine last week. In fact, the suggestion box is already overflowing.

Kaine slashed agency budgets by $279 million, laid off 570 employees, delayed pay hikes and made plans to pay for several construction projects with loans, instead of from normal revenues. Soon after Kaine announced the bad news, the reviews rolled in.

Newport News Del. Phil Hamilton, for one, wants to reduce spending even more to avoid a $400 million withdrawal from the state's rainy day fund that Kaine wants. Pushing in the other direction was the Commonwealth Institute, a nonprofit funded by religious groups, which called for tax increases to avoid reductions to mental health, safety and social services.

Public safety officials cringed over the elimination of drug treatment programs and funding for alternatives to imprisonment for non-violent offenders and probation violators.

Kaine's cuts were designed to tackle the immediate problem. Some reductions will roll forward, but lawmakers will likely need to pare another $1 billion when they gather in Richmond in January.

Some Republican legislators say this is an opportunity to scrub the budget of waste and feel-good programs. That's fair enough, but emergency reductions can also kill worthwhile programs with no track record even if they hold the promise of future cost-savings and better services.

A case in point is the elimination of day reporting centers that provide intensive supervision and rehabilitation to drug users who volunteer to participate in drug court initiatives. By keeping these non-violent offenders out of prison, the programs had the potential to save money and reduce recidivism.

Those types of reforms take time to show results and they must be paired with a restructuring of the corrections system and realignment of sentencing guidelines. There was no time for that this fall, and Kaine was forced to shutter the centers as well as prisons in Southampton and Pulaski counties and four smaller facilities. A new prison in Charlotte County has been delayed, and an expansion at St. Bride's Correctional Center in Chesapeake remains vacant because there is no money to staff it.

Taken as a whole, it's hard to understand the end game in those budget actions. That's because the only goal is to cut as much as possible as quickly as possible. A more rational long-term plan requires investment up front in order to achieve savings in the future. In other words, those policies must be adopted and implemented when revenues are strong.

Lawmakers may tweak Kaine's plan, but they'll end up making new cuts as imperfect as the ones the governor has announced. Sooner or later, Virginia's economy will recover. State leaders should make plans now for reforms that will look less like battlefield amputations and more like reconstructive surgery.