Former attorney general Jerry Kilgore recently proposed that any budget increases should have to be approved by voters, a plan that sounds frighteningly like California’s direct-democracy that’s such a financial nightmare. Lt. Governor Tim Kaine rightly pointed out that the one job of elected officials, above all other jobs, is the budget, and if they’re going to abdicate that job to the voters, they may as well pack up and go home.
In response to this, Kilgore’s campaign issued a press release rattling off a list of all of the things that appeared on ballots in the last 15 years that the Kilgore campaign feels it’s OK to point to. One really stuck out for me:
Was it a gimmick to allow the people of Virginia to approve the creation of the Virginia Lottery in 1987, which has resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in direct support for public education?
At the end of the press release comes the following rhetorical question:
If Referenda Are Gimmicks, WHICH OF THE ABOVE SHOULD BE UNDONE?
Well, Jerry Kilgore thinks that one of the above should be undone. From the June 20, 1997 Richmond Times-Dispatch:
[T]he Christian Coalition…put out a voter guide during the recent attorney general’s campaign.
The guide, based on candidate’s responses to a questionnaire, listed Kilgore as opposed to riverboat casino gambling and to off-track pari-mutuel betting. The guide also said Kilgore supports repealing the state lottery.
In his campaign, Kilgore touted the guide as evidence that he had backing from the Christian Coalition. The Coalition does not endorse, and many of its members helped give Sen. Mark L. Earley of Chesapeake the attorney general’s nomination.
Kilgore was in Washington yesterday being interviewed by commission members and was unavailable for comment.
Mark White, his campaign manager, said Kilgore’s objection is to state-sponsored organized gambling. He believes that states should not make budget estimates based on revenue from a game of chance, White said.
Now, it just so happens that I agree with Kilgore — the state shouldn’t be in the business of gambling. (Or, as I think of it, the math tax.) But since Kilgore has linked the lottery to “hundreds of millions of dollars in direct support for public education,” and demanded to know which should be undone, I can only conclude that Jerry Kilgore is in favor of removing hundreds of millions of dollars from public education funding. (Hey, he said it, not me.)
What a terrible thing for him to do!