Kaine: K-12 to be spared

State aid to localities for K-12 public education will be spared the budget shears when Gov. Tim Kaine details the latest round of cuts to the state budget Tuesday afternoon.

“I will give you guys a sneak preview. K-12 will escape. Because the school year has started. There’s some things inside the Department of Education stuff that was cut. But in terms of aid to schools, aid to localities, it escaped,” Kaine told me yesterday after taking part in the Labor Day Parade in Buena Vista.

The governor has asked department and agency heads to compile lists of recommended internal cuts in the face of another state-budget shortfall. The projected $1.5 billion shortfall in the budget for the fiscal biennium ending June 30, 2010, comes on the heels of a $3.7 billion shortfall for the 2008-2010 biennium that Kaine and state lawmakers had already accounted for during the General Assembly session earlier this year.

Published reports have Kaine preparing to announce an unpaid day off of work for most state workers as part of the budget-reduction strategy.
“K-12 is the only thing we held completely harmless. Everything else ends up being on the chopping block, to some degree. But anything on the safety-net side, we really went soft,” Kaine said.

– Story by Chris Graham