State budget still headed for rocks

Legislative budget negotiators deserve credit for plugging the most dangerous holes in austerity proposals that would have drained too much from education and health care programs for the neediest Virginians.

The final budget deal approved Sunday evening preserves funding for dropout prevention and other programs in schools with large numbers of low-income students. It offers hospitals and doctors some relief from cuts if the state receives additional health care funding from Congress, which is considering a new aid package.

But the budget negotiators are not miracle-workers.

The spending plan they crafted pushes many pressing obligations into future years, and it dumps still more state responsibilities onto local governments struggling with their own revenue losses. The final product may keep Virginia afloat for a few months, but it can't make the state seaworthy over the long term.

Many of the stopgap measures are products of necessity. The new two-year budget cuts $645 million from public schools and $1 billion from health care programs over the next two years. Thousands of school and hospital employees will lose their jobs.

If lawmakers had resolved to close the full $4 billion budget gap with cuts, many more families would have faced financial crisis, and they would inevitably have turned to the same safety net programs that are being downsized.

But the stall tactics legislators instead employed cannot be sustained. They delayed $620 million in payments into the state pension plan, promising to pay it off plus 7.5 percent interest by 2023. They adopted reforms that will generate savings in future years, but they must still come up with extra cash in the near term.

Lawmakers required retailers to pay sales taxes early to balance the budget, a gimmick that will be costly to reverse. Health care programs were made more heavily dependant on temporary federal aid that will vanish next year. Retiring judges will not be replaced for two years, leaving their colleagues to shoulder more cases. Money to reduce encroachment around Oceana Naval Air Station expires after one year.

It's even more difficult to justify state budget cuts that shove costs onto cash-starved local governments. Although negotiators backed away from some school cuts, they simultaneously added $120 million in across-the-board reductions for cities and counties. State prisons will only accept jail inmates sentenced to two years or more. State officials routinely violate the current policy, which calls for them to take responsibility for inmates incarcerated for one year.

Gov. Bob McDonnell now turns his attention to building support for a possible special session later this year intended to generate new money for transportation projects.

While traffic congestion has faded from headlines in recent months, in part because of the recession, the problem is far from resolved.

McDonnell is right to stay focused on transporation, but his plan relies heavily on existing taxes and other sources now propping up the state's operating budget. If McDonnell needs evidence that his plan is unworkable, he should spend a few minutes leafing through the new state spending plan.

"We've created some additional liabilities for the future," he acknowledged Sunday evening.

Those liabilities are the result of an insistence by the governor and House leaders that the budget must be balanced without even modest tax increases. If he remains adamant on that point, a special session on transportation would be a waste of time. McDonnell would be better off figuring out how he'll make the ship of state permanently seaworthy.