More on the GACRE: Speaker Bill Howell and Delegate Lacey Putney corrected both Gov. Kaine and Jody Wagner on GACRE’s purpose back in 2007.

I previously posted on Jody Wagner’s dishonest attack on Bill Bolling’s lack of attendance of meetings of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Revenue Estimates (GACRE). Riley also covered it here as well.

While I was gathering information on the GACRE through Google Search and other sources, I came across this letter (PDF) dated December 20, 2007, signed by Speaker Bill Howell and Delegate Lacey Putney, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, which was sent to Governor Tim Kaine. I found this particular paragraph to be interesting:

In your [Governor Tim Kaine's] address this past Monday, you referenced the inclusion of members of the General Assembly in meetings of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Revenue Estimates (GACRE). This is a point Secretary of Finance Wagner has repeatedly noted when appearing before the House Appropriations and Senate Finance Committees. As we all know, however, the GACRE meetings have never involved the actual approval by legislators or business leaders of the revenue forecast by specific source, the prerogative of which resides solely with the Executive Branch. The long standing purpose of the GACRE meeting is for the Administration to seek input from business leaders on the overall economic and business conditions of the Commonwealth, and to ensure that legislative leaders are appropriately informed about these matters.

In the same letter, Speaker Howell and Delegate Putney asked that a meeting of the GACRE be held no later than January 18, 2008, so that data from the Christmas sales season could be assessed so the best possible revenue estimates would be available at the beginning of the General Assembly’s regular session. Instead of doing that, Governor Kaine refused to hold a meeting of the GACRE until February 11th.

The more and more I read and find out about this whole situation, the more it looks like Kaine and Wagner have a plaque on their desks that reads: “The buck stops at the Governor’s Advisory Council on Revenue Estimates, not here.”