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that much of Gov. Baliles’ surplus is an illusion.
Responding immediately to this situation two years ago, the Republican Caucus, through our designated hitter Republican Del. Walter Stoch (an accounting expert who has earned strong bipartisan respect from his colleagues over the years), devised a plan after the federal reforms were adopted for a fair and equitable tax relief program that would have returned the windfall tax money to its rightful owner —the taxpayers of Virginia.
Gov. Baliles, father of the largest budget increases in our history, as well as the overseer of a burgeoning state bureaucracy, sat back and engineered the death of this proposal. Lt. Gov. Doug Wilder, not one to fall into lock step with his fellow Democrat, at least in the early years of the Baliles administration, picked up a Republican initiative from the 1960s: removing the sales tax from food and non-prescription drugs — and supported tax repeal.
The governor stopped his lieutenant in his tracks this time also.
But this is a state-wide election year and politics appears to be fueling this administration’s speeding train. Gov. Baliles would have us believe that his $100 million tax credit proposal is a fair distribution of the tax windfall. He thinks that the maximum credit of $35 is an ad
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