Del. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, is still slamming the Kaine administration for the $137 million error in the state education budget. Michael Sluss with the Roanoke Times reports him as saying, “It’s outrageous that we in Virginia have to accept that kind of governing from our Democratic governor.”
Griffith said Kaine should take action against officials who knew about the error, and left the governor and lawmakers in the dark.
Griffith singled out Richard Brown, the director of the Department of Planning and Budget under Warner and Kaine. Griffith stopped short of calling for Brown’s dismissal. But, in an interview, Griffith said, “I’d like to hear something other than, ‘I have full confidence in the people who were responsible for the error.’ “
House Republicans are absolutely right in wanting to get to the bottom of the mistake. How did it happen? Who made it? Should an individual or individuals be held responsible? Or is there a structural flaw in the budgeting process that needs to be fixed?
From a P.R. standpoint, though, Republicans need to dial down the rhetoric. If they want broad-based public support for digging into the fiscal fiasco, they need to sound non-partisan. They need to sound more interested in preventing future errors than in shooting Democrats.
House leaders are right to inquire into root causes of the error to ensure that similar mistakes are not repeated. They are wrong to politicize the episode.