Comments on: Kaine announces cuts, layoffs

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 18:10:47 +0000

anonymous,

You may wish to look up the definition of “beg the question” (pardon the formulation). It does mean what you think it means.

As for cuts, how about no funds for horse farms, museums, theaters, wildflower planting, mandatory pre-k education , various state supported welfare programs, and so on. Heck, we might even be able to get by with just state appointed board to deal with potatoes, rather than the three we have now.

We should also remember that this budget shortfall is occurring only because revenue growth is about half of what the Gov’s office predicted. I suspect that we are talking about cuts in the growth of spending at least as much we are taking about actual cuts in spending.

How’s that? By the way, got a name?

By: anonymous

anonymous — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 13:39:53 +0000

Brian, that begs an important question: “where?” The Governor made 5% cuts across the board with a few critical exceptions: public safety (EMTs, firefighters, police), non-discretionary healthcare, and K-12 public education. He’s leaving hundreds of empty jobs vacant so as not to take on new expenditures that were budgetted into the Commonwealth’s expenses for the fiscal year. He made cuts to his own office’s operating budget. His finance team even figured out that they can generate millions of extra dollars in interest revenues if they disburse funds for transportation out of the general fund gradually as they become needed, rather than transferring the total balance up front to DOT.

And he still had to fire a bunch of people just to get half way to a $600m budget shortfall.

So I’m really curious, since you’re of the educated opinion that another $300+ million can be cut from the budget: where, precisely?

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 19:50:59 +0000

This is a good starting point. I am of the opinion that another $300+ million could be cut from the budget. That said, some money is going to come out of the “Rainy Day Fund,” it’s just a matter of how much. We’ll have batter idea of that number in just a few weeks.