Misguided priorities target Virginia's most vulnerable

Confronted with a lingering recession and a $4 billion budget gap, state lawmakers this week chose less government over more taxes, categorically rejecting any compromise that would solve the problem with a blend of both.

Leaders in both the House of Delegates and the state Senate declared the car tax and all other levies sacrosanct. House Republicans went a step further and swore off even the most minor fee increases for property insurance, telephones, real estate transactions and inspections on boilers and gas pumps.

Lawmakers thus encaged themselves within such narrow parameters that even the most ghastly service cuts were unavoidable. Yet if one accepts the premise that all taxes are untouchable, the priorities announced this week still contain indefensible and avoidable choices that must be rethought before a final state budget is adopted next month.

While legislators insisted their decisions reflect their constituents' demand to protect core services, the evidence weighs against them.

Would most Virginians choose to continue pay supplements for football coaches while reducing remedial support for low-income students?

Would they cancel health insurance for low-income children rather than mothball a state park?

Would they increase financial incentives to create temporary jobs with film crews while cutting money needed to help preserve a military base that employs 12,000 people?

Would they increase funding for wine industry promotion but cut contributions to a foundation promoting early childhood education?

Some of these choices are due to fatigue and tight deadlines; others are the product of deliberate mischief and back-scratching. But a troubling theme persists throughout. Many of the poorest Virginians are being smothered by budget cuts when they are most in need.

Bull's-eye on the needy

The pattern is prominent in recommendations for public schools offered by the House, where some Republican leaders have maneuvered for years to erase supplemental aid for low-income urban students.

The House budget would rewrite the rules for funding at-risk programs, early reading support, pre-kindergarten and special assistance for inner city schools with declining enrollment. State aid is currently targeted to schools with the largest concentrations of children who qualify for free lunches - the poorest of the poor. Most of the aid from that program, however, would be redirected to large suburban schools in more prosperous communities under the House plan.

For example, Norfolk would lose $17 million in funding for disadvantaged students while Virginia Beach would gain $4.8 million and Fairfax County would collect an extra $5.9 million. The fact that lawmakers have meticulously preserved bonuses for football coaches in the same year they are diverting dropout-prevention funds away from the communities with the highest dropout rates adds insult to the injury.

The at-risk funding was created by former Gov. Doug Wilder to reduce disparity between the state's richest and poorest school systems.

If lawmakers dismantle the program now, they are inviting a lawsuit.

Senators were kinder to low-income students in their plan, but their knife cut more deeply into health care programs. Hospitals, doctors and nursing homes that care for indigent patients would lose millions in reimbursements, increasing the chances that poor families will lose access to medical care.

House budget leaders make a greater effort to shield the most vulnerable institutions from new cuts, although they would still face some reductions.

Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters and Lake Taylor Transitional Care Hospital would receive relief because a majority of their patients are insured through Medicaid, a government program for the indigent.

Coverage denied

It's harder to justify the House budget's proposal to tighten eligibility for a health insurance program for children of low-income working families.

House leaders say their method is preferable to Gov. Bob McDonnell's plan that would freeze enrollment. The House proposal would allow extremely poor newborns and children to sign up, but only by canceling insurance for at least 22,400 youngsters now receiving medical care.

Under the House plan, a family of four making $38,600 a year would no longer qualify. Only North Dakota's program sets more stringent limits.

The choice posed by House members is a false one. This is the wrong time to cut medical care for struggling families. By eliminating $38 million in state funding, Virginia will lose federal matching dollars, draining a total of $108 million from this vital safety net.

Other jewels of illogic are scattered throughout the budget proposals. House members restore some cuts made to sheriffs, but not to police departments, even though the latter provide protection for 60 percent of the state.

The House offers lucrative incentives to movie directors filming in Virginia, but delegates and senators also cut Virginia Beach's program to reduce encroachment around Oceana Naval Air Station, an initiative designed to prevent the base from being relocated.

Of all the trade-offs, the largest by far is a plan by both the House and Senate to reduce the state's contribution to its pension fund for the next two years.

The action will save the jobs of thousands of state workers and schoolteachers but will force taxpayers to pay back more than $500 million over the next three decades to restore the fund.

Lawmakers are praying that a reduction in retirement benefits for future state workers will help them save Virginia's coveted triple-A credit rating.

It's jolting to see such widespread support for the pension raid, but a blood oath against tax increases has replaced the Old Dominion's past reverence for fiscal sanity. Bad choices are followed by still more bad choices in this mad swirling carousel of self-denial. Repentance and regret wait just beyond the carnival lights.