Budget woes mean pain for Virginians

Teachers with colorful tote bags, doctors in white coats and deputies in starched uniforms have all visited the state Capitol over the past three weeks, beseeching legislators to ease up on the cuts in former Gov. Tim Kaine's budget proposal.

If they could see into the future, they would be begging to escape with only the reductions they know about already. In a typical year, the worst-case financial scenario is presented early, and legislators labor to shave cuts down to a tolerable level.

This year is hardly typical.

Because the Virginia government relies on income taxes for two-thirds of its revenues, private-sector layoffs and widespread furloughs have opened up a vast chasm in the budget totaling $4 billion over the next two years. Kaine closed the gap halfway with spending cuts but asked legislators to protect core services by adopting an income tax increase to close it completely.

Gov. Bob McDonnell and Republican legislative leaders not only rejected that idea but vowed to defeat any and all tax increases. They have not revealed how they will close the budget gap, but in hushed hallway conversations, Capitol Square veterans acknowledge that they are steeling themselves for spending cuts twice those in Kaine's plan.

Columns of red numbers totaling billions of dollars don't begin to convey the enormity of the crisis. People outside of the process still assume things will get better. Instead, things are about to get much, much worse.

To put the task into perspective, legislators would need to cut off funding for every four-year public college except the University of Virginia to come up with the $2 billion necessary to balance the two-year budget. That's not an acceptable solution, of course. The cuts will instead be spread over dozens of programs, but that will not make them invisible. They will make a tangible imprint on every community, every classroom, every nursing home and every crime scene in the commonwealth.

Local public schools, which receive one out of every three state tax dollars, were shielded from cuts last year because federal stimulus funds substituted for state aid.

Those dollars are being exhausted, and jobs that were preserved will begin to disappear.

The Virginia Education Association estimates cuts will eliminate state funding for 33,000 teachers and school employees, leaving localities to pick up the cost or cut jobs. Even using a conservative estimate, the layoffs could reach 10,000 in Virginia's schools.

That will result in larger classes and the elimination of electives such as music and foreign languages. Schools will field fewer athletic teams. Textbooks won't be replaced or updated. Field trips will be canceled. The cuts will fall most heavily on poorer school divisions most dependent on state support. Preschool programs, remedial classes and after-school tutoring will be scaled back for children who need them most.

Educators aren't the only ones facing pink slips.

Public safety cuts will endanger 1,500 jobs in sheriffs' departments across Virginia, including at least 157 in the five cities of South Hampton Roads. An unknown number of police officers and state troopers also could be laid off. Those reductions translate into longer response times, understaffed jails and fewer officers at crime scenes. Virginia Beach Sheriff Ken Stolle put it bluntly recently when he said, "You cut public safety, and people die."

The calculus of life and death is even more poignant in the area of health care.

The majority of stimulus dollars have been used to reimburse doctors and hospitals caring for the growing number of poor Virginians who rely on Medicaid. More than a quarter of the $4 billion budget gap is needed simply so the state can resume responsibility for its own indigent children and nursing home residents.

The hospitals that shoulder the greatest share of that burden are now the most vulnerable.

The financial situation at Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters in Norfolk may become as fragile as the premature newborns and tiny cancer patients who fight for their lives inside its walls.

More than half of CHKD's patients are on Medicaid. The hospital in Virginia with the next largest share of Medicaid patients has just 28 percent.

Another 10 percent of

CHKD's patients are military dependants on Tricare. Because only a third of its patients have private insurance, it would be impossible to shift costs onto that group without losing them to cheaper alternatives, further destabilizing the hospital's economics.

Although their most expensive service is the neonatal intensive care unit, CHKD officials undoubtedly would protect it from budget cuts even if the rest of the hospital were reduced to rubble.

It's the only non-military hospital in the region capable of caring for the sickest newborns, who would otherwise face a harrowing transport to Richmond.

The NICU requires the hospital to maintain a full array of pediatric specialists, further limiting its cost-cutting options.

No decisions have been made, but the $3 million to $6 million in annual cuts faced by CHKD will force its officials to consider whether they can continue to offer outpatient services in satellite offices around Hampton Roads.

McDonnell and Republican leaders have condemned the federal government's expansion during the recession and scoffed at stimulus spending. But stimulus dollars have put paychecks in the hands of Virginia school teachers and police officers. Stimulus dollars have paid mortgages and grocery bills. Stimulus dollars have kept newborns on life support and provided nursing care for the elderly.

Those stimulus dollars are now fading into history. But the teachers, deputies and the sick will still be here, and they are still waiting for reassurance and direction from their leaders in Richmond.