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Local school divisions in the Richmond region are feeling like a rattlesnake bit them twice.

First, Tim Kaine cut state money for K-12 education by $83.3 mllion for eight Richmond area localities in the budget year that begins on July 1. Ouch!  Then, Bob McDonnell discarded his predecessor’s one-year shield from changes in the state formula for distributing school money—another $17.6 million bite for seven of the localities. Double-ouch!

Local government leaders were rubbing their shins yesterday at the Richmond Regional Planning District Commission, where they were seeing exactly how bad the swelling is around their state budget wound. The biggest bite came from a chart prepared by fiscal consultant Jim Regimbal, a former state budget analyst who’s been doing some work for the Virginia First Cities Coalition. Regimal’s chart adds up the double education cuts, as well as decreases in funding for police and sheriff’s departments, and other constitutional officers.

And then he let local leaders know exactly what it would mean to their local real estate tax rates.

“I tried to dramatize to people what the local governments are facing from the state,” said Regimbal, who didn’t attend the commission meeting himself.

In Richmond, which led yesterday’s regional insurrection, the cuts add up to $32.6 million, or 17.3 cents on the local tax rate, For education alone, the cuts add up to about $24.9 million, or about 13 cents on the tax rate. “That is something we cannot do to our residents,” Mayor Dwight C. Jones said in a two-page press release yesterday.

The city has a particular bone to pick with the Local Composite Index, which changes every two years to reflect a locality’s ability to pay for education. Normally, Northern Virginia doesn’t get much help from the state because its wealth puts its local school divisions high on the index. This time, the recession and real estate collapse brought the Northern Virginia localities down in the index, meaning they would get more than $128 million in additional state money for K-12.

Except Kaine, a former Richmond mayor and councilman, proposed to freeze the formula change for a year instead of trying to make it up elsewhere for the localities that would lose money. Northern Virginia erupted as a regional force that no good politician can ignore. So McDonnell torched the freeze, leaving both the Richmond region and his home turf, Hampton Roads, feeling snakebit. It’s true that the state has been using the index to divide education money for 40 years, but Richmond has been complaining almost as long that it is portrayed as affluent while its school system is overwhelmed by the effects of poverty. The latest change shows Richmond as second only to Goochland County in affluence in the region.

“I love our surrounding counties, but I don’t believe we’re more affluent than them,” said Suzette Denslow, the mayor’s chief of staff and a former state deputy secretary of education.

Not everybody in the region hates the Composite Index, but nobody likes losing more money, especially with other state cuts hanging in the balance.

Here’s what Jim Regimbal’s chart shows for the rest of the region in terms of cuts to education, aid to police, and state money for constitutional officers (ie.,sheriffs, treasurers, commissioners of revenue, and commonwealth’s attorneys):

Chesterfield: $37.7 millon, or 12.3 cents on the tax rate;

Henrico: $32.5 million, or 9.7 cents;

Hanover: $12.3 million, or 10.6 cents;

Powhatan: $3.1 million, or 9.1 cents;

New Kent: $1.9 million, or 9.6 cents;

Goochland: $1 million, or 2.4 cents;

Charles City: $781,244, or 13.4 cents.

The formula should be revised and updated to allow more state funding to go to the poorer and less populated counties. Henrico, Chesterfield are wealthy enough to fund more of their school budgets. Instead they use their local money to build empires of administrative staff and non-essential personnel in the schools themselves.

It’s true that the state has been using the index to divide education money for 40 years, but Richmond has been complaining almost as long that it is portrayed as affluent while its school system is overwhelmed by the effects of poverty. The latest change shows Richmond as second only to Goochland County in affluence in the region.

That is a real drama

I think it is ridiculous for any american to allow a reduction in our kids education.