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Kaine proposes cuts in budget Date published: 12/18/2008
RICHMOND --Gov. Tim Kaine yesterday unveiled his proposals to cut nearly $3 billion out of the state budget, but Republicans say they won't support many of them, though they believe the state needs to prepare for a greater financial shortfall.Kaine, who already made a round of budget cuts in October as the economy worsened, is proposing to cover the rest of the shortfall by raising the cigarette tax, cutting $400 million each out of education and health care, eliminating more than 2,000 state jobs, letting non-violent prisoners out of overcrowded jails earlier, and eliminating pay raises for state employees. Republicans think the budget hole will worsen and that Kaine should have proposed deeper cuts now rather than waiting for the next revenue forecast in February. "I wish the governor had gone ahead and taken that leadership," Majority Leader Morgan Griffith said. The job cuts include layoffs but also retirements, attrition and not filling vacancies. About half of the job cuts are in the Virginia Department of Transportation. Additionally, state employees won't get a promised pay raise. Kaine's cuts to education involve across-the-board reductions of 15 percent to state colleges and 10 percent for community colleges. He also suggests adding $26 million for need-based financial aid. SCHOOLS LOSING AIDES Kaine proposes capping state funding for support positions in schools--i.e. administrators and other non-teaching personnel. He said the number of support positions have increased faster than the number of teachers and capping the state funding for those positions (at one support job for every 4.03 instructional positions) would save $340 million in fiscal 2010. Sen. Edd Houck, D-Spotsylvania, who chairs the Senate Education and Health committee, said he would like to look at other ways of cutting the education budget, such as freezing teacher salaries, postponing the purchase of new textbooks, and re-calibrating the amount the state puts into educators' health insurance to reflect how many of them actually use that health insurance. "I would prefer to find those chunks of savings," Houck said. "We need a lot of ideas. The more proposals on K-12, the better." Kaine also plans to eliminate state money for school construction, and take $55 million from lottery funding--currently used for school construction--to put toward instructional expenses.
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