Talking Tough

... we will be required to make some very difficult choices among many important priorities. Some programs will be put on hold, others will be reshaped, and everyone will be asked to share in the sacrifice.
    Governor Douglas in his budget message

Tough choices ahead in Vt. budget
    Rutland Herald headline

    We can confidently expect to hear much more talk from Montpelier, in the next few weeks,  about how "tough" things are and about the need to make "hard choices."  To which, anyone with a little seasoning will say:

    a) Tell me something I don't already know.

and

    b) So ... shuddup and choose.  Didn't you campaign on how you had the virtues needed for the the job?  Time to walk the walk.

 

  What experience also teaches is that the notion of "shared sacrifice" is chimerical and that we can be certain that the  logrolling skills of the usual suspects will be on full display until sometime in Spring when the legislature decides it has done enough damage and goes home. 

Consider:

For instance the University of Vermont, the Vermont State Colleges and the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation had asked for an 8 percent increase in their budget. Douglas offered 2.5 percent.
     Herald

One wonders where the 8% came from?  Do the educators think the economy grew that much?  If so, they need to go back to school.  Still, one looks forward to the spectacle -- the wailing and the rending of garments --  from the higher-ed establishment.  The cost of a college degree has increased at an astonishing clip over the last several years; just ask anyone who has had to pay tuition.  But the educators' appetite for more is not likely to be appeased by a triffling 2.5% raise.  Expect them to be horrified, even insulted, by the figure and to insist that there is no earthly way they can expand that crucial gender-studies program on that kind of chicken fee money.

And there is this:

Douglas also proposed taking $4.6 million from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board — roughly the amount of its budget expected to be dedicated to preserving land — and use it instead to support Medicaid.

To which, this response was predictable:

Conservation advocates said that was short-sighted ...
 
"You can't just take a one-year rest. People have been planning and working on (these conservation projects) for a long time," said Gil Livingston of the Vermont Land Trust.

Didn't we hear something about "tough choices?"  Might it not be possible that we have preserved enough land for the moment (at public expense, anyway) and need to think about the people -- taxpayers, incidentally -- who are presently defiling some of Vermont's land by actually living on it?

And, of course:

The new contract with state employees is not complete, but nobody expects it will be without an increase in salaries and benefits.

Somehow, one suspects, the "choice" Montpelier makes will favor those raises and increased benefits for the state workers.  The "tough" part will fall on the rest of us. 

Comments

[Mister Guy]

"One wonders where the 8% came from?"

Ever hear of health care and energy costs? They're going thru the roof BTW.

The choices are it seems...the state of VT gives more money to them, they raise tution, or they start begging to every Tom, Dick, and Harry for money. What would you like them to cut from their budgets?