Amazing Insanity: Montpelier's non-response to the Budget crisis

With hard budget times ahead, Montpelier continues to amaze me with its almost unhinged attitude toward the fiscal state of our beloved Green Mountains. Last year, after receiving warning after warning about the huge shortfall in revenues the state was facing, our Governor and Legislature spent a vast majority of the 2009 session duking it out over gay marriage and other bills of substantially lesser importance. Cuts, the few there were, were hardly sufficient to provide for the danger ahead. Not surprisingly, the decrease in tax revenues were worst than projected and the budget had to be adjusted accordingly.
Now here we are entering the 2010 session and our troubles continue to mount. As many of you know, we are facing a $158 million dollar projected shortfall for this coming year. And we expect a similar amount, if not more in 2011. So what is the response from our fearless leaders?
Well, the Democrats feel that a massive budgetary crisis is the prime opportunity to expand the size of government by instituting a universal health insurance program. Yes, with the success of Medicare/Medicaid (bankrupt) and Catamount Health Care (bankrupt) in mind, the leadership in the legislature thought that it was high time to try yet another governmental scheme for health care. Unfortunately, it appears that few, if any, of these bills now under consideration serious contemplate how to pay for the program. But since magical thinking is the latest political craze, one can understand their somewhat twisted logic in doing so.
However, the Governor was not to be out done. Despite ample evidence that a top heavy bureaucracy is not sustainable in such a small and aging state, our Governor has decided that nothing can be eliminated. That all agencies currently existing are vital and necessary to the good functioning of government. As a result, he proposed across the board cuts in funding against all departments. While that sounds fair and just, the truth is these cuts will hurt our law enforcement agencies, judiciary, and infrastructure while maintaining redundant and wasteful agencies. In the end, even if his proposals were adopted, they will not provide for a sustainable future for Vermont’s fiscal house and will undermine those areas of state action which have traditionally been at the core of its function.
The honest and clear answer to this budgetary crisis is not the expansion of government, or raising tax rates. Nor is it the short-term whittling of agency budgets. In order to create a sustainable budget for both good times and bad, Montpelier needs to take a hard look at its spending and determine which involve the essential functions of government and which are beyond their office. Those functions that are essential should be fully funded. Those that are not must be eliminated. Courts, polices, jails, roads, and other infrastructure are essential to our state and its economy. Art councils, film boards, legislative studies, corporate welfare agencies, and the like are not. They are nice to have, but we can’t afford it.
Until Montpelier has a serious discussion as to what State government should and shouldn’t involve itself in, we will continue to face one budget crisis after another for the foreseeable future. Such a discussion will be a hard one to have, but it is obviously necessary if we are to have any shot at reaching a sustainable budget that is good for our economy and provides for effective, limited government.