Since the massacre of 32 Virginia Tech students and faculty at the hands of a deranged student gunman eight months ago, Blacksburg has been the unavoidable crux of any discussion of gun control and the state’s “broken” mental health system.
The Virginia General Assembly next year is almost certain to confront how to refine rules of involuntary commitment, further restrict the mentally ill’s access to firearms, and balance the competing demands of privacy and public safety — a host of probable legislation all spurred by the April 16 rampage and designed, in large part, to avoid another.
But to talk of preventing another Tech through any set of reforms would be “taking a mantle of pride on ourselves,” Gov. Tim Kaine said in an interview last week with The Examiner in his Richmond office.
“If there were zero guns in the country, you couldn’t prevent something like this,” he said. “Human beings aren’t God, we can’t prevent anything. We can significantly reduces risks, that’s all we can do.”
The best way the achieve that risk reduction, according to the governor, is to improve the state’s underfunded system of mental health services.
Earlier this month, the Democrat rolled out his set of fixes alongside top Republicans Attorney General Bob McDonnell and Newport News Del. Phil Hamilton, chairman of the Health, Welfare and Institutions Committee — signaling a large degree of alignment between both parties’ proposals.
“This will be an area I predict a great deal of bipartisanship, and we’ll find some significant improvements we can all celebrate together,” he said.
“It’s been enormously important to the Virginia Tech families and for the broader community that they don’t see this issue as one where we’re carving each other up but where we’re really trying to sit down together and fix a problem that we all acknowledge.”
That’s not to say Kaine and General Assembly Democrats, emboldened by taking a narrow state Senate majority and picking up seats in the House in November’s election, won’t cross swords with the Republicans when the 2008 session begins in January — especially on illegal immigration and the budget.
Sparring over illegal immigration
Republicans have sought to chisel at Kaine’s popularity by calling him soft and languid on enforcing immigration law. Conservative leaders in Northern Virginia counties, for example, have tried to tether what they call the federal government’s absence on the issue with Kaine’s.
The governor bristles at the accusations, though it’s clear illegal immigration is a topic he doesn’t relish talking about, and one that wasn’t at the forefront of his talking points until his opponents took it up as a political cudgel.
In defending his record, he pointed to his decision to send the Virginia National Guard to the Mexico-Arizona border, law enforcement agencies’ cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the legislature’s creation of a commission to formulate a statewide plan on immigration.
“I worry a little bit about the kind of patchwork of localities doing this and that, although I understand their frustration,” Kaine said, referring to the crackdowns on illegal aliens in a handful of localities this year. “Who wouldn’t be frustrated with a federal government that isn’t enforcing immigration laws?”
Closing the budget gap
Kaine is now embroiled in a dispute with the legislature’s Republican leadership over how to close a budget shortfall — and neither side has yet to agree even on the size of that shortfall. Along with spending cuts, the governor has proposed to tap $260 million in a “rainy day” reserve fund to close the rest of a $641 million gap. Republicans accuse the governor of overstating the size of the shortfall to justify drawing from that fund. Regardless of the details, budget woes have struck state and local governments alike, and modest revenue growth is expected to stifle governments across the state. Kaine’s administration, which rolled out a $78 billion, two-year budget proposal earlier this month, predicts only 3.2 percent revenue growth in the next fiscal year.
“We do predict a return to a kind of normal growth rate in fiscal year 2010,” he said. “If the national economy goes into a recession or something, then we will have to revisit that.”
