Virginia FREE! At last! At last!

Barnie Day was a Democratic delegate from Patrick County from his election in 1997 through the 2001 session. A former county administrator and business owner, he is now a banker.

Despite Republican protestations to the contrary, the Virginia FREE analysis of this past session of the General Assembly provides a clear picture of what some of us have known for a long time: Business people can connect the dots between transportation, education, health care and good business.

And, no matter what you read, the business ratings are not some collective fluke. Not only did the Democratic leadership in the House outperform the Republican leadership on individual scores, Democrats in the House outperformed Republicans ON AVERAGE! (Note: this fact first reported here. Not hard to verify. Get yourself a calculator and a pencil. Do the math.)

So what’s the Republican reaction? You would have thought someone had turned the lights on at a roach convention. They ran for their lives. They huffed and puffed. They issued indignant, scantily veiled, threats to the business community. They slunk into denial.

Here’s the thing, my friends. This is a distress call, this report. It is an emergency flare, already lit, and arcing downward. This is not punitive. It is a summons to better thinking. It beckons us all out of slumber.

Says Virginia FREE, in its preamble to the ratings: “While business leaders appreciate political realities, the fact remains that current legislative efforts are insufficient to address core missions of government. Business location, expansion and retention depend heavily on our transportation, education and health care systems. Companies need fluid highways, rail systems, and airports to conduct business in an efficient manner. Business needs well qualified, highly trained workers. Advancing the quality of both our K-12 and higher education systems is critical to meeting this need. Training is a cost of doing business and the amount of re-training or skills development needed is a major factor in economic development decisions.”

Okay. Fair enough. So what are we getting, according to Virginia FREE?

“The mantra of ‘no new taxes’ has created an environment in which no policy maker wants to directly raise revenues at the state level by conventional means. Instead, we have resorted to a series of backdoor maneuvers to accomplish the same goals by indirect means.

“For example, the general assembly raised ‘fees’ this budget cycle by more than $275 million,” Virginia FREE said. “Tuition is climbing by double digits annually at state institutions of higher learning. State government has forced cuts on local governments who have had to substantially increase property tax assessments in many areas to cover their budget shortfalls. Myriad one-time budget fixes have been used to make the numbers balance. Anti-growth initiatives that threaten the state’s economy are advanced as a quick-fix approach to pressing long-term infrastructure needs.”

Remember, this is the state’s business community on the Republican-dominated general assembly. I know it sounds like some Democratic rejoinder. But it is not. This is Republican on Republicans. No wonder Speaker Bill Howell (who rated a modest 70) and his troops are running for the high timber. Virginia FREE confronts them with a stark reality:

“What Virginia sorely lacks is a long-term strategic vision for a state that will lead us boldly into the future. We have neither debated nor resolved the central question of what we want our state government to do for us over the next twenty years.”

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