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Partisan
Blather
Blaming
Republicans for the run-up in state and local
indebtedness smacks of Democratic demagoguery.
There's plenty of blame to go around.
Columnist
Barnie Day, who served in the Virginia House of
Delegates as a Democrat for two terms (1997-2001),
has undermined those of us who for years have been
fighting the trend in government to borrow more and
to relax the constitutional restrictions on state
and local borrowing. In his blindly partisan effort
to blame Republicans for the debt load borne by
Virginians, he has turned the debate into a partisan
shouting match and blunted his central point that
debt is relied on far too much.
By
attempting to score political points, Day has made
it far more difficult to reverse the trend. To his
credit, the leading Democrat in the Commonwealth,
Gov. Mark R. Warner, has not indulged in this
scorekeeping.
At
the inception of his term, Warner said that
Virginia’s fiscal situation is “not a Democratic
problem or a Republican problem,” but a Virginia
one. He was not only correct, but politically wise
to put it in those terms.
After
all, Virginia Democrats were in control of the
General Assembly a quarter century ago when the
pay-as-you-go policy was officially abandoned. They
supported general obligation bonds for state
projects and established dozens of public
authorities with borrowing power since used to put
additional, deferred burdens on Virginia taxpayers.
Former
Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, Lt. Gov. Donald Beyer and
Attorney General Mary Sue Terry — all Democrats
— led an unsuccessful effort in 1990 to persuade
Virginians to loosen constitutional borrowing
restrictions on state and local governments. The
voters rejected their proposal four to one.
Undeterred
by that clear message from the voters, these same
Democrats accomplished what they wanted through
another route. They allied with “the business
community” in a successful 1991 move to reverse a
Virginia Supreme Court ruling declaring a local
authority’s bond issue unconstitutional. In its
reversal, the Court ruled that “subject-to-
appropriation”
bonds are not really debt at all. That ruling opened
the door in Virginia to an explosion of bond issues
Day doesn’t even address.
“Subject-to-appropriation”
bonds were used to finance massive highway projects
supported by Democrats and Republicans alike — the
U.S. Route 58 project and the Coalfields Expressway.
Route 58 cuts through Day’s Patrick County.
The
“business community” also has convinced many
Republican and Democratic politicians that borrowing
even more heavily for transportation and sports
facilities is sound policy. In 2002, business elites
vigorously but unsuccessfully pushed for voter
approval of ballot measures in Northern Virginia and
Hampton Roads to authorize massive borrowing for
transportation. They were active and successful in
last year’s campaign to win voter approval for
$1.1 billion in general obligation bonds.
I
don’t recall hearing Day’s voice when many of us
spoke out against those 2002 initiatives. I do
recall that the most prominent advocate of those
measures was Democrat Mark Warner, who also granted
the Virginia Housing Development Authority the
prerogative in 2002 to issue an additional $90
million in debt.
Local
debt is likewise the shared responsibility of
politicians of both parties and no party at all.
Republicans don’t control local governments across
Virginia.
I
welcome Brother Day’s embrace of fiscal
conservatism, but he needs to contain his fervid
partisanship. This dependence on debt, which is
abetted by “the business community” Day
mistakenly assumes is worried about debt, is not the
failing of one party alone. Both parties are at
fault. Let’s
take off the partisan blinders and get Virginia back
on track.
--
October 6, 2003
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