Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Bluefield, WV

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March 15, 2010

Virginia General Assembly passes ‘worse than barebones’ budget

By BILL ARCHER Bluefield Daily Telegraph

BLUEFIELD, Va. — Dusting off a term from mid-17th Century English Commonwealth lore, members of the Virginia General Assembly are calling the state’s $70 billion biennial budget a “barebones budget.” However, State Senator Phillip P. Puckett, D-Russell called the budget, “worse than barebones,” and noted that the full impact of some of the cuts in the budget remain to be seen. “I voted for it,” Puckett said during a telephone interview Sunday night. “I had expressed concerns that the House version of the budget included about $100 million in funds from the Tobacco Commission and I couldn’t have supported that. “I spoke with Senator (William C.) Wampler (Jr., R-Bristol) Saturday evening, and he told me there may be a way to work it out and save those funds,” Puckett said. “We put those funds into a mega-site fund before the start of the session, and Gov. (Bob) McDonnell is supportive of that fund. The budget conferees substituted some fees to accomplish what the House wanted to do and preserve the tobacco funds.” As a student of political history, Puckett is well aware that the political term, “barebones,” was the label that political pundits of the 1650s placed on the hand-picked group of “godly men” assembled on July 4, 1653, after the Puritans’ victory over the loyalists in the English Civil Wars. England’s brief experiment with a commonwealth form of government followed with limited success. Oliver Cromwell, later lord protector of the Commonwealth, expelled the so-called “Rump Parliament” in the spring of 1653, and replaced that group with a new group of 140 members that he selected from a larger group of candidates nominated by the independent churches of England. Political pundits of the time dubbed the new parliament “barebones,” after one of the group’s most outspoken and radical members, Praise-God Barebone. In the 350 years that have passed since the barebone parliament had its six-month run, the term has frequently come to be associated with governmental budgets stripped of any excessive spending. Even at $70 billion, Puckett said Virginia’s new two-year budget may not be the final act in terms of taking draconian measures to keep state government balanced. “We don’t have a transportation package, and some have suggested we may be back up here later this year to address that,” Puckett said. He termed the final version of the educational component of the budget “real good,” because localities will have an opportunity to determine the best way to spend limited resources. “We’re saying to them: ‘Put it where you need it.’ There may be layoffs and cuts, but those will be determined by the localities.” Puckett said that the public service components of the budget including constitutional officers and sheriff’s deputies worked out along the lines the senate thought would best benefit localities. “It’s still a bad budget because it’s been such a bad year,” Puckett said. “When the rules of the game are laid out before we got here that there would not be any new tax revenues to address some of these cuts, our hands were pretty-much tied,” Puckett said. — Contact Bill Archer at barcher@bdtonline.com

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