By DEL. ANDY GUEST

By DEL. ANDY GUEST

Rappahannock News Contributing Writer

RICHMOND — The 1989 Session of the Virginia General Assembly was jump-started into action last Wednesday, and for the next six weeks I will be reporting to you on the actions and missfires that will be occuring throughout.

The Governor delivered his last State of the Commonwealth speech and while it was certainly a far-reaching document, taking over an hour to tell us what he has in mind for the coming year, the House and Senate budget tinkerers are already beginning to break ranks in some important areas.

Virginia has amassed a record revenue surplus of $508 million. While much of this is due to the healthy economy here in the Commonwealth, we cannot overlook the special circumstances created by the lottery revenues since the start-up of the games last fall.

Another reason for the surplus is the windfall produced by the 1986 Federal Tax reforms passed by Congress. Some states, Virginia among them, are still trying to figure out if it’s real money or tax dollars rightfully belonging to the taxpayers, since no action was taken by the state to take the extra money. Many of us believe it is the latter and have been fighting for three years to return this money, in full, to the taxpaying citizens of Virginia.

The General Assembly in 1987 passed a law to this effect, but it has taken the Governor nearly two years to come up with a plan — a plan that falls far short, in my opinion, of the intent of the law.

The Governor is proposing a form of tax relief with a one year, one, time tax credit amounting to about $100 million which gives a rebate or tax credit that returns at most $35 to each member of a taxpaying family. He says that he is helping lower and middle income families, but in fact he is leavihg out the very people who created this windfall with their tax dollars.

According to his critera, a family of four liv