Richmond Times-Dispatch
By BOB MCDONNELL
By BOB MCDONNELL
Times-Dispatch Guest Columnist
www.inrich.com
With the General Assembly's 2008 session now under way, Virginians and their elected leaders are again focusing on policy and budget priorities. Education, mental health, public safety, immigration, and sound fiscal management are at the top of this year's issues.
With the General Assembly's 2008 session now under way, Virginians and their elected leaders are again focusing on policy and budget priorities. Education, mental health, public safety, immigration, and sound fiscal management are at the top of this year's issues.
With a divided General Assembly for only the second time in history, Virginians expect leaders to work across party lines to solve problems and get things done. In recent years bipartisan cooperation has produced advances in many areas, particularly in higher education.
Every capable young Virginian should have access to an affordable, high-quality college education. And our commonwealth's ongoing national leadership in economic development and technological innovation is directly tied to the quality of our higher education system.
Republicans understand this. In the 1990s, Govs. George Allen and Jim Gilmore reversed the devastating cycle of double-digit college tuition hikes, provided increased operating support for higher education, and made vital capital investments in our colleges and universities.
Virginia then moved to the forefront in attracting new job-creating businesses, many of them in the technology sector. Today, computer memory chips have replaced cigarettes as the state's leading manufactured export. The state's semiconductor chip fabrication plants never would have come to Virginia had it not been for Allen's commitment to invest in new engineering school facilities and programs.
Last fall, Gov. Tim Kaine ordered cuts in higher-education operating funds already approved by the General Assembly -- reductions he has carried forward into his new proposed budget. At the same time, his budget also contains substantial money for untested new government programs. While spending cuts and elimination of ineffective programs are absolutely necessary in Virginia government, the potential effect of these college cuts will be additional tuition increases on middle-income Virginia families who can least afford them.
IF KAINE gets mediocre marks on the issue of tuition affordability, he deserves a good grade for proposing continued capital investment that will ensure space at our colleges and universities for additional qualified Virginia students.
Most elected officials hear regularly from parents whose sons and daughters have finished near the top of their high school class, only to be turned down or wait-listed by Virginia colleges. With tens of thousands more talented, young Virginians seeking enrollment, the competition will get only more intense and the disappointments more frequent.
For that reason -- and because it will help produce valuable research, entrepreneurship, and sustained job growth in our knowledge-based economy -- I support adoption this year of a major, long-term, bond-financed plan for new capital investment in our public colleges and universities.
The case for prompt and prudent capital investment is strong: Virginia is among America's lowest-debt states. Interest rates are low. And our Triple-A bond rating gives us a unique opportunity to make sensible capital investments that will pay educational and economic dividends well into the future. Each year of delay means increased expense to Virginia taxpayers, since the annual inflation in construction costs actually is greater than the annual interest on the bonds.
TO BE PRUDENT, a bond package must be part of a responsible budget blueprint, the new debt-service burden must be affordable in the context of other spending obligations, strong protections against cost overruns must be crafted, and the bonds must be issued on a schedule that stays well within the state's debt-capacity model. It is on some of these grounds that the governor's overall budget and bond recommendations rightly will be closely scrutinized by the General Assembly in the weeks ahead.
But the case for making higher education capital improvements a bipartisan priority is strong indeed. Virginians are measuring leaders of both parties according to their ability to forge practical solutions, and we Republicans will continue to lead on producing new ideas, getting results, and solving problems.
When it comes to higher education, we will agree with the governor when we can and disagree when we must. But we will continue to stand squarely for:
· Holding the line against pressures for higher tuition;
· Creating room for additional, talented students in our state higher education system; and
· Promoting job-creating research and economic development in partnership with our colleges and universities.
If recent history is a guide, it will be Republicans -- crafting responsible solutions that generate bipartisan support -- who will do the hard work necessary to ensure that Virginia has a well-designed, fiscally prudent plan to make higher education more affordable, accessible, and effective in creating education and job opportunities for Virginians.
We have done it before, and we will do it again this year.
Bob McDonnell is the attorney general of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Bob McDonnell is the attorney general of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
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