Salary rates

Salary rates

for teachers

face more cuts

By MARY K. BLEWITT

Arundel Newspapers Richmond Bureau

RICHMOND — Salary increases for teachers and college faculty would be reduced and a change in funding policy for the state’s pension system would be deferred under Gov. Doug Wilder’s proposed budget amendments released Friday, Jan. 19.

In a move to tighten the reins further on the $26.8 billion budget for the next biennium, Wilder elbowed state teachers and college faculties’ pay raises to provide for a $200 million revenue reserve fund. To raise additional revenue, he recommended a two-year delay in the “add-back” for accelerated cost recovery taken by corporations. He also proposed increasing tax collection efforts and the ABC mark-up.

If approved, Wilder’s amendments for the proposed revenue reserve fund would amount to about $224 million. Although the reserve would be the largest in the history of the Commonwealth, according to the Laura Dillard, the governor’s press secretary, it represents less than two percent of the proposed general fund budget for the next biennium.

The governor’s amendment that would require additional appropriations totals about $1.3 million in general funds and $362,000 in non-general funds. Former Gov. Gerald L. Babies had recommended a 5.6 percent pay raise for teachers in the first year of the biennium, but did not provide for a salary increase in 1991-92. Wilder, seeking further budget savings, reduced the teachers’ raise to 4.5 percent, netting $40.7 million.

The governor also held the line on college faculty salaries at 4.5 percent. Original appropriations for faculty pay hikes reached as high as seven percent. Faculty at George Mason University would have received a 6.8 percent increase under Babies’ proposal. Though Wilder makes no recommendations for salary increases for the second year, he did suggest during his State of the State address that such monies could be derived from the revenue reserve fund next year.