Sunday, November 01, 2009
Voters have only themselves to blame
Christian Trejbal
Recent columns
- Montgomery schools' $6.2 million deficit
- This column does not compute
- Make political parties pay for their primaries
- Tough times ahead for schools
From the RoundTable blog
New River Valley governments recently experimented with two types of parenting. In Radford, the city council prefers tough love; in Montgomery County, supervisors shelter their charges.
The constitutional officers in both localities have fallen on hard financial times thanks to revenue shortfalls in Richmond.
Commonwealth's attorneys, sheriffs, circuit court clerks, commissioners of revenue and treasurers get most of their money from the state, and four rounds of state budget cuts in two years have taken a toll.
The most recent cuts, to help make up a $1.35 billion statewide shortfall, could break them.
These offices ran lean operations before the state started slashing. Now they must provide essential services without adequate resources.
The constitutional officers in both communities -- and others -- therefore asked local government to lend a hand by closing the funding gap with local tax dollars.
In Radford, the council so far has said no. The city has its own fiscal challenges, council members correctly point out. The constitutional officers will have to get by with less, just like everyone else during these tough economic times.
The city is not responsible for back-filling state budget holes.
It probably did not help the officers' case when four of them announced they would support any candidates who run against incumbent council members in the spring. Nothing builds good working relationships between elected officials like targeting each other months ahead of an election. Only Sheriff Mark Armentrout had the good sense to leave the politics out of it.
The Montgomery County Board of Supervisors is more amenable to assisting fellow elected officials.
The county will scrape together $250,000 to offset some cuts. Supervisors will dip into the rainy day fund, which might leave things even tighter next year, but they decided it is more important to keep local departments running smoothly now.
The county's constitutional officers need not cut their services as drastically as their Radford counterparts. No one will have to dump the entire burden onto a long-time administrative assistant, which was Radford Commonwealth's Attorney Chris Rehak's heartless solution to the budget mess.
Yet there is something troubling about insulating citizens from the pain of budget cuts. The old saying that you get what you pay for is nowhere more true than in government.
When voters elect representatives who refuse under any circumstances to raise taxes, even if it means slashing services, they receive the government they deserve.
Radford's tough love means cuts have real consequences. Prosecutors might drop cases against some criminals, sheriffs might not hold everyone they should, and so on. Residents will see that their electoral choices mean something.
Your thoughts
- Should local governments fill state funding gaps? Post to the RoundTable.
Maybe they are content to watch services cut as long as it means keeping more money in their pockets. If so, they can still return representatives to Richmond more interested in ideology than the good of the commonwealth. At least they will do it with their eyes open.
As long as they realize they have only themselves to blame when not only do constitutional officers lose funding but so do Radford University, public schools, state police, highway rest areas and everything else burdensome state government pays for with tax dollars.
