In today’s Herald, Louis Porter goes deftly into the details of the adjustments to the state budget that economic conditions have forced upon Montpelier. These adjustments are called “spending cuts” but they are often:
a) A reduction in planned increases. As in ...
The program will receive $1.5 million more than it got in its last budget, but will lose $500,000 from the budget approved earlier this year.
If you are expecting a 5% raise but only receive one of 3%, your pay still went up.
b) Trivial in the larger scheme of things.
Highway information centers run by the state will open later and close earlier to save about $239,000.
We can probably suck it up and survive that.
As Art Woolf has pointed out, we are talking about a relatively small cut of about 2% in this round of “belt tightening." There will be some attrition on the personnel side. Some trimming around the ragged edges of government and some of the creative bookkeeping that characterizes the way government spends and moves money:
losses of about $5.7 million in federal money as well … will likely be regained next year, since it is Medicaid money and the state's global commitment allows flexibility in when the money is used.
But this sort of thing only gets you so far. Very soon, Montpelier will face much bigger numbers and much tougher choices. The current austerity measures have resulted in a predictable chorus of objections, even from those who are experiencing only a smaller budget increase than they were expecting or are being level funded:
The project will also lose about $25,000 in federal matching money in its expected budget for this year. As a result, Legal Aid will essentially receive the same amount of funding it did last fiscal year.
"It saved them $25,000. It cost us $50,000," said Eric Avildsen, executive director of Vermont Legal Aid.
So imagine the howls of protest when programs are subjected to the real and deep funding cuts that are necessary and inevitable. At that point, we will be talking about something of a different order and it will require the kind of long-range, strategic, realistic thinking that is alien to the Montpelier mind. There is no plan for how to make the necessary cuts or to close the gap through economic growth. And nobody is even willing to acknowledge the existence of (much less a plan for slaying) the great insatiable beast in this tale – funding for K-12 education which consumes over half of state and local tax revenues.
So, we wait for something to happen. For the Feds to give us the money to help low income families heat their homes this winter, for instance. And we look for the occasional windfall such as carbon credits or settlement money from a lawsuit that would have gone to the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. And we hope that the revenue producing – and tax paying – enterprises that are here (think IBM) don’t close down or leave. And we tinker.
Due to a $6,000 cut that's part of the budget rescission, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, will have one fewer musician on its summer tour next year.
It no doubt marks one as a philistine to wonder if, at a time when we are talking about poor people going cold and hungry during the winter, we can afford to subsidize symphonies or spend the budgeting time and energy necessary to decide just how many musicians we can afford to cut from the string section without causing an insupportable decline in the quality of its music. We are a small state with a feeble economy that hasn’t added any private sector jobs in several years. If we don’t do something soon about promoting some job growth and economic activity, we may have to take up a collection and hire some musicians to play a funeral march.
Meanwhile, let patrons support the symphony. Worked in Mozart’s time.
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