Virginia Gov. McDonnell walks tightrope in first year on job

Washington Post ^ | March 1, 2011 | Anita Kumar

[Hawk720]

RICHMOND - Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell has spent his first year in office on a political tightrope of sorts, trying to satisfy his conservative base while appealing to the moderate swing voters who helped elect him in a landslide victory.

For conservatives, he points to cutting $4 billion from the state budget in his first legislative session last year, paring back spending to 2006 levels and not raising taxes. And he directs moderates to the billions of dollars he secured in transportation and education funding during his second legislative session, which ended Sunday.

"The electorate is more than ever demanding results," McDonnell said in an interview. "You're only as good as your last session, your last major issue."

With the legislative session behind him and General Assembly contests looming in November, McDonnell can boast about a pair of major accomplishments - $2.9 billion in bonds for perennially clogged roads and $100 million for under-funded colleges. But the state's first Republican governor in eight years also suffered two significant defeats - a proposal to privatize the state's liquor stores and reforming the state's pension system did not get far.

[Moose4]

I can’t for the life of me figure out why the General Assembly would be against privatizing the state ABC stores. I grew up in VA and the state-run liquor stores are about like you’d expect a state-run store to be. The service is crap, the selection is marginal, the prices are high, and the hours are inconvenient. Why not privatize and open up competition, and save money in the process? I can’t even understand why liberals would want to keep the liquor stores run by the state ABC.

}:-)4

[MadIsh32]

It still brings the state a significant amount of revenue. On top of that, nobody in the commonwealth wants this place to turn into MD which has crap looking liquor stores all over the place

[org.whodat]

Bootleggers would be put out of business.

[Seruzawa]

Moving liquor sales to private hands would net the State more money. The State would collect the liquor and sales taxes while eliminating millions of dollars in payroll costs to lazy worthless bureaucrats.

[Interesting Times]

I knew this was the ComPost just from the headline.

[for-q-clinton]

I believe there was a study that the Gov couldn’t refute and even agreed with the verdict.

It basically said the state would lose money in the long run if they implement his privatization plan. It had something to do with the fact that it would be a one-time license sale and no recurring fees to those that bought the liquor store. His privatization plan needed to be revamped.