We received information today that Delegate Scott is avoiding coming to Orange County to host a town hall meeting. I also emailed him inquiring into his positions on a number of education and budget issues. Here is my email to him followed by his response.
Dear Delegate Scott:
Thank you for meeting with our Orange County Teachers yesterday and speaking with me briefly on Facebook today. I wish to follow up with you a little bit more. I have some questions
1) Do you support a balanced approach of cutting budgets while increasing revenues as Gov. Kaine did, or do you support cutting all $4+ Billion from the current budget? If you want to cut funding without increasing revenue, what research have you conducted on the real impact this will have on our communities?
2) What do you think should happen if schools are unable to maintain staff levels that are compliant with the Standards of Quality?
3) In your opinion, at what point will the Commonwealth be violation of it’s own constitutional obligation to ensure that an educational program of high quality is established and continually maintained?
4) Do you support Charter Schools? If so, how do propose that they be funded?
5) Do you support suspending the unfunded mandates that are coming over the next two years? Do you support cutting the SOL testing budget which is currently unaffected by the budget cuts?
6) You have told me, and I agree, that we face some challenging decisions to make. Current estimates state that if there is no new state revenue, then 34,000 teachers will be laid off. This will have a profound impact on the economy, particularly in rural Virginia, such as the areas you represent. What ideas do you have to lessen the impact of this on our small communities where school tend to be one of the largest employers?
I ask all of theses questions with sincerity. I think this is a time when all Virginians need to come together. We need pragmatic solutions that keep folks from loosing their homes and jeopardizing the future success of our children, and by extension, Virginia businesses.
Here is a link to Orange County’s propsed 2010-2011 budget. Please read starting on page 23 to see what we are facing. It is already likely that we will see Groups 1-3 and 4 is looking more likely every day. This will decimate our schools and begin to tear our communities apart. When you add the likely increased drop out rate to the more limited capacities of law enforcement due to their cuts, then I would expect to see a sharp rise in crime.
Thank you for giving my questions and thoughts careful consideration before responding. I look forward to reading your ideas on how we can best address these issues.
Sincerely,
Kyle Wormuth
Here is Delegate Scott’s response:
Kyle,
Please excuse an abbreviated, but personal response to your e-mail. Our budget work is preliminary, but detailed and ongoing. I expect that at the end of the day, the General Assembly will pass a balanced and constitutional budget. This will involve reductions in funding and the revenues coming into the Commonwealth are less than in the previous year for the second year in a row—something that has not happened before in modern Virginia history.
I am watching both legislation and the budget for unfunded mandates and am supporting efforts to provide as much flexibility as possible for local education funding decisions. I welcome your suggestions for where we can effectively reduce spending and focus resources on the core functions of state government.
Ed Scott
Delegate, 30th District
Delegate Scott cannot be allowed to ignore the plight of Orange county by merely balancing Virginia’s budget and “watching for unfunded mandates.” We also cannot trust that all will be well at “the end of the day.” Write to Delegate Scott today and ask him to come to Orange for a town hall meeting.
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