Bacon's
Rebellion
Pamela
Currey
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Notes from Pamela
Currey, deputy secretary of finance, accompanying
Virginia state budget figures.
I have separated the general
funds and non-general funds because they are so different
-- general funds come from the general taxes and
revenues of the Commonwealth. Non-general funds come from
very specific and generally dedicated sources such as
Higher Education tuition and fees, federal funds for
highways and Medicaid and such, unemployment trust fund
monies, the collection of support payments for children,
and the like. The analysis that you did in your prior
article combined those two funds, and I don't really
think that is the way I would look at it. We don't
control how much we get from the unemployment trust
fund, and I doubt that anyone would argue that the
almost 30 percent increase in those funds should be
defined as "bloat in state government" nor
would one suggest that it is a bad thing that our
collections from non-custodial parents ... have increased
almost 65 percent during this time period. Those funds
are collected and then go directly for the benefit of
individual Virginia citizens.
So, take a look at these two
spreadsheets. On the general fund side, in particular,
you might be interested to see the extremely low growth
(actually the decline in one year) in appropriations --
-2.2 percent, 0.8 percent, 1.3 percent. These are the
years that we are talking about when we discuss the
actions that had to be taken to meet the budget
shortfall. I know that you already have heard the
statistics that go with these numbers, but consider the
following:
General fund revenue for FY 2004
is 10.5 percent higher than general fund revenue for FY
2000. Over the same period, however, demands for those
funding have increased dramatically. For example, there
are:
- 47,400 more children enrolled
in public schools;
- more than 7,500 more children
in Special Education;
- 5,367 more state-responsible
inmates;
- 17,550 more Virginians
enrolled in state colleges;
- 39,086 more children enrolled
in the state-federal child health insurance
programs;
- 62,106 more Medicaid
recipients;
- $522.6 million more in car
tax reimbursement payments by the state.
Editor's note: I
have produced Currey's comments verbatim except for
changes in punctuation and in one
instance where she asked to stay off the record.
-- April 12, 2004
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