The Republican candidates for Virginia governor and lieutenant governor proposed Monday to overhaul the state’s budget making by tying agency spending to performance, expanding “rainy day” reserves and enacting a series of audits, among other measures.
The package of reforms “shows our commitment to restoring fiscal integrity to the budget process,” Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, who is seeking re-election, told reporters in a conference call with Republican gubernatorial nominee Bob McDonnell.
Similar proposals are being championed by McDonnell’s Democratic opponent, Creigh Deeds. The parallels, however, didn’t prevent the two camps from sniping at each other.
“Virginians have no reason to trust Bob McDonnell on fiscal responsibility,” the Deeds campaign said, a reference to McDonnell’s opposition to a bipartisan tax increase passed in 2004.
McDonnell prefaced his remarks by arguing that both Deeds and Bolling’s opponent — former Virginia Finance Secretary Jody Wagner — have shown a “significant embrace” of greater government spending and higher taxes.
The Republican plan would subject agencies to a set of performance measures that would determine how much money they receive during the next budget cycle.
It would allow lawmakers to squirrel away a greater share of tax revenues in the “rainy day” reserve fund, a pool of money used to blunt the damage wreaked by economic downturns on state services. The change, which would require a constitutional amendment, would allow the size of the fund to increase from 10 to 15 percent of the state’s average annual sales and income tax revenues.
Also in the GOP proposal, the two candidates said they would shift the year in which the General Assembly crafts its two-year budget from even years to odd years.
Under the current system, an incoming governor inherits his predecessor’s biennial budget proposal and doesn’t propose his own until the third year of his term. The change would grant a governor “two meaningful budgets” in his term, Bolling said.
