The governor's budget speech

Our governor gave his yearly budget speech today.  While he outlined many of the problems here in VT he didn't really address the most serious ones: taxes and the budget deficit.  Despite agreeing that taxes are too high he proposed an increase to the payroll tax to fund 
medicaid.  He agreed that school spending per pupil is out of control (4.6 pupils per staff) but didn't propose anything that would clearly reduce spending e.g. setting minimum class sizes to receive state funding, capping the amount that may be spent on a single student, or capping the percentage of non-teaching and administrative personnel in a school district that receives state funding.  

The school finding problem is exacerbated by the 'prebate' formula which subsidizes low and middle income taxpayers based on a percentage of their income.  The prebate allows them to vote to raise school funding that increases property taxes without bearing the additional burden themselves.

This is a symptom of a view in VT that anyone who makes over $100,000 per year is rich and should pay extra taxes to help the so called poor and downtrodden.  We saw an outcome of this thinking last week after the governor shelved his 'single payer' health care initiative because of the $2 billion + it would have required in new taxes (about time he admitted it was unaffordable). There was a large noisy demonstration inside the statehouse as the governor was giving his reelection speech, ending in a sit-in and arrests. The demonstrators were demanding single payer now!!  They believe they have a right to have someone else pay for their healthcare.  Entitlements are out of control here.

Some other ideas about closing the budget gap without raising taxes:
Stop subsidizing renewable power.
Stop giving out grants for unnecessary projects
Reduce the subsidies for the tourist industry, if it's so wonderful they    can pay for their own advertising

On a more positive note, the governor proposed tightening up on water pollution caused by farm runoff.  There's federal $$ available to help the farmers address this. He even  said that the state should take action against farmers who don't follow the law. Farms have been pretty much given a free pass in the past.