Virginia Sen-elect takes aim at pre-k programs

Virginia Sen.-elect Bill Carrico, R-Independence, said Monday that spending cuts are the way to stop Virginia’s budget woes, and he’s not afraid to take aim at a sacred cow: education.

“I’m all supportive of the K-12 program, but I have a problem with pre-K,” said Carrico, speaking at the annual Southwest Virginia Legislative Forum, which brought the region’s legislative delegation together to discuss the upcoming General Assembly session.

“I think it’s time that parents who want to have children raise those children and the government don’t stand and create a babysitting operation for a 4-year-old to get a pre-K program,” Carrico said, speaking of a program that’s long enjoyed bipartisan support.

Without public pre-kindergarten programs, he said, the state could save $44 million a year.

Carrico said Virginia, in prioritizing education spending, should also consider that it cannot afford to educate illegal immigrants or send so many kids to college.

“A lot of times our children that are leaving high school who want to go on to get a four-year degree are in overcrowded dormitories at the four-year colleges because they don’t know what their career path is going to be at that point,” Carrico said, suggesting that school systems should direct some high-school freshmen onto vocational paths instead. “I’ve been working with and talking to the manufacturing and coal industry and so forth. Manufacturing jobs that we see today are not like the manufacturing jobs of the past. They are highly technical jobs, and our community colleges can do a great job of training those individuals that are going to be on that [career] path anyway.”

U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, said automatic cuts to federal spending that may come as the result of Democrats’ and Republicans’ failure to reach a deal on budget cuts could have a disproportionate effect on Virginia.

“The automatic cuts that will be made … will be a huge hit on domestic spending and a huge hit on military spending,” Griffith said. “Virginia’s the No. 1 state per capita for military spending, so … it won’t affect us near as much as it affects the eastern part of the state and the northern part of the state, but that affects the tax revenue that these gentlemen are going to have to deal with in Richmond.”

Sen. Phillip Puckett, D-Lebanon, said cuts to military spending would be a hit not only to the state budget but also to employment in Virginia. He said the unemployment rate would go up significantly, causing harm to the economy.

State Delegate-elect Israel O’Quinn, R-Bristol, said the state shouldn’t count on any funding from Washington.

“I think Virginia has to make sure its finances are shored up and operate under the assumption that there’s not a whole lot of assistance going to be coming down from Washington in the near future,” O’Quinn said. “If you get something from the federal government that’s great, but I don’t think we can really rely on it a whole lot in the foreseeable future.”

Delegate Terry Kilgore, R-Gate City, said the budget will be a big issue as always during the upcoming legislative session, and there won’t be much new money this year.

“Don’t believe all that you see about all these [state budget] surpluses,” Kilgore said. “A lot of that money’s already spent, so there are not going to be a lot of new monies out there.”

He said anther big issue will be the major federal health-care legislation that passed last year, and steps the state must take to implement it. Costs associated with that, he said, could force the state to run even leaner than it has in the last few years.

Recent years in Southwest Virginia have been marked by layoffs of state workers, stagnant salaries and painful cuts to local governments and school systems, which in this part of the state rely heavily on state funding.

Puckett said another issue will be the potential lifting of a moratorium on uranium mining in Virginia that’s been in effect since the 1980s.

Despite rising revenue reports coming out of Richmond, Delegate Joe Johnson, D-Abingdon, said it looks like 2012 will be another budget crunch year.

“They say that we have between a $500 million and $1 billion hole in our budget. Now, how can that be when our revenues continue to increase?” Johnson said. “More money is coming in, but the big problem is we’re losing the stimulus money, and also Medicaid and Medicare expenses are going up, and for that reason they are predicting there may be a hole in the budget. … I just hope we can do things to protect the Southwest Virginia area.”