Budget Bunko

On December 19, Governor McDonnell released his proposed biennial budget for fiscal years 2013 and 2014.  Like any great wordsmith, an initial reading of the Governor’s remarks can make you think all’s well in the Old Dominion.  A careful reading tells you otherwise.  Governor McDonnell’s budget is – like most political rhetoric these days – long on platitudes and self-promotion and short on concrete proposals with realistic economic projections.  Unfortunately, the Governor continues the process his predecessors did.  He’ll tell Virginians what they want to hear, not the truth.

Before turning specifically to DOC’s budget and the continuing lack of will on the part of this state’s elected officials to address the crime that is this state’s criminal justice system, I give you one example of Governor McDonnell’s bunko budget.

Governor McDonnell lists, as core principle number four of his budget proposal, that “we must solve specific problems, like a near broken pension system…”  He then notes “we will make the tough decisions and set priorities in state spending”.  Why, you may ask, have the state retirement system funding ratios decreased so dramatically?  Great question and the Governor knows the answer.  He deferred contributions to the fund to report fiscal year-end surpluses.  Now, the Governor announces, “we will pay back, in full, deferred compensation to VRS…”

Like Lloyd and Harry in “Dumb and Dumber”, Governor McDonnell put a paper “IOU” in the VRS suitcase.  And his “payback plan”?  Pay it back over ten years and make state employees contribute 5% of their salary to the retirement plan (which, ironically, is the amount of raise state employees were given last year).

No, the Governor’s budget is heavy on smoke and mirrors.  People don’t have to make tough decisions when they aren’t given the facts.  And Bob McDonnell, like George Allen, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, want Virginians to think all is well when in fact, it isn’t.

Now to DOC.  Senator Jim Webb has championed the cause of criminal justice reform.   He described the criminal justice system as “being in a profound, deeply corrosive crisis that we have largely been ignoring at our peril”.  As commentator Mansfield Frazier noted, “We choose to ignore the crisis in criminal justice chiefly because of the embarrassment factor”.
Something is terribly wrong with Virginia’s prison system.  In 1994, then candidate George Allen lied to the voters of the Commonwealth.  He told them – as a means of getting elected Governor – that Virginia could abolish parole, “lock em up and throw away the key” and solve the crime problem.  Virginia went from a system where 9,600 individuals were incarcerated to almost 40,000 in 15 years.

For fiscal year 2012, DOC’s budget was set at $1,107,000,000 of which $925 million came from the general fund.  McDonnell’s 2013 proposed budget calls for $1,133,000,000 in DOC spending.  How then, I wonder, does the Governor say with a straight face that things are being done in a fiscally responsible way?

DOC’s mission statement states the department:

“Enhances public safety by providing effective programs, re-entry services, and supervision of sentenced offenders in a humane, cost-efficient manner, consistent with sound correctional principles and constitutional standards.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire!  DOC does none of those things.  Programs are sacrificed.  Offenders are not kept in humane conditions, nor is the system cost efficient.  The major portion of the budget – your tax dollars – is used to maintain a staff of 13,000 to watch over 40,000 offenders, the majority of whom are low-custody.  The “George Allen” model followed by Governor McDonnell has done nothing but increase expenditures on a deplorable inhumane system which has created close to 400,000 convicted felons in the Commonwealth.  That’s 5% of the state’s population.

It is time for real change in Virginia’s criminal justice system.  It is time for alternatives to prison, enhanced sentence good-time earning and real programs to stop recidivism.
As ProPublica (an independent, non-profit organization that produces investigative journalism in the public interest - www.propublica.org) so eloquently noted, “the problem with fixing the system lies, in large part, in a lack of political will and the fact most Americans think a broken criminal justice system doesn’t affect them or their lives since they have no intention of breaking the law.  But that’s where they’re wrong.  A criminal justice system fixated on [treating every crime harshly] fails to focus on much larger crimes that impact all of our lives in profound ways.”

It’s time for Bob McDonnell and Virginia General Assembly to get real.  Quit playing word games.  Do something!