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Tuesday, December 18, 2007 LIKE OTHER states sapped by a sluggish housing market and sharp slowdowns in revenue growth, Virginia is facing tighter budgets and tougher choices than it has in several years. Mindful of that, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine started ordering cuts and savings last summer, both to cover a projected shortfall in the current budget and to give himself some wiggle room to propose initiatives in the two-year spending plan he presented in Richmond yesterday. What the governor has produced is a budget that is at once lean and ambitious, given the economic uncertainties of the times; whether it is also politically realistic is another question. Set against recent history, the governor's proposal looks austere. His 2008-10 general fund budget of $36.1 billion represents an increase of slightly over 5 percent from the blueprint presented two years ago by outgoing Gov. Mark R. Warner -- well below the 13 percent increases that were the average for budgets going back to 1990. Despite that, Mr. Kaine said yesterday he wanted to go beyond what he called a "stand in place" budget. That's understandable, given that the spending plan he unveiled yesterday is the only one of his four-year term in office that Mr. Kaine will both propose and fully administer. Mr. Kaine unveiled smart and in some cases innovative proposals -- to strengthen and fix the state's mental health system; to provide health insurance for a few thousand of the 1 million Virginians who lack it; and to expand access to preschool programs for thousands of 4-year-olds. Facing a House of Delegates controlled by fiscally conservative Republicans, he did so without suggesting any tax increases. The proposals on mental health care, triggered by the horrific attack by a deranged student who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech last spring, are important. The governor would add nearly 150 psychiatrists and case managers and beef up emergency services so that troubled individuals could not slip through the cracks of the state's mental health system as easily as did the Virginia Tech gunman. The state's mental health workers are badly overburdened; while experts say they should handle no more than 25 cases at a time, on average they deal with 40, and in some instances as many as 70. Mr. Kaine's initiative would ease that crunch while tightening procedures, oversight and accountability. In addition, the governor has sensibly supported proposals to relax the standard required for involuntarily committing psychiatric patients to care. By shifting the standard from posing an "imminent danger" to "a substantial risk," Virginia would join 18 states that have made similar changes in the past decade. Nonetheless, some Republicans believe that Mr. Kaine's economic projections are too sunny. They charged that by proposing billions of dollars in borrowing through new bond issues, the governor was departing from the state's history of prudent management. That debate will unfold amid a credit crunch, rumors of recession and an anemic housing market -- none of it favorable for the governor.
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