Va. legislators react to Kaine’s budget cuts

By JEFF E. SCHAPIRO Times-Dispatch Staff Writer
Published: October 10, 2008

Virginia legislators won’t get a whack at the cash-depleted budget until January, but that’s not stopping them from weighing in today on how to balance it.

Del. Phillip A. Hamilton, R-Newport News, vice-chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, doesn’t like Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s grab of $400 million from the rainy-day fund.

Hamilton says a raid on the state’s emergency cash account should be a last resort. He wants Kaine and General Assembly to first go through the budget line by line, deciding what to cut or drop altogether.

Sen. Charles Colgan, D-Prince William, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, generally supports the cuts that Kaine is ordering to begin closing the latest hole in the $77 billion budget.

Now, there’s a $2.5 billion shortfall, largely a consequence of the chaos on Wall Street, the credit crisis and the collapse of the housing market.

Colgan, like Hamilton, says the budget problem is going to get worse, and that perhaps—as some Republicans contend—it will leak $3 billion or more. Earlier this year, Kaine and lawmakers agreed to $2 billion in cuts.

“We’re going to have to cut deeper into programs,“ Colgan said. “We’re just going to have to fine-tooth the budget and see what we drop. Everybody’s going to give something up.“

Colgan also hopes the crisis becomes an opportunity to restore in the Virginia Senate the bipartisan coalition that helped push through a sweeping overhaul of the budget in 2004 that included a $1.4 billion tax increase.

No one is talking about higher taxes as a solution to the current budget crisis. But some legislators say the state might look at delaying or reducing tax breaks.

Colgan says estate-tax repeal and the car-tax rollback are too popular; that tampering with them would anger voters.

Colgan says he’d consider further scaling back land-preservation tax credits—a pet program of Kaine and House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford.