Deserving Credit

You wouldn't expect former Virginia Democratic Party chairman Paul Goldman and former GOP governor and senator George Allen to team up on too many projects. But then few might have expected Goldman and former GOP Rep. Tom Bliley to make common cause, either. Yet the Bliley-Goldman combo (with a big assist from Doug Wilder) helped shepherd Richmond's new mayoral system to passage.

Now Goldman and Allen have teamed up to promote expanding a federal tax credit so it can be applied to the rehabilitation of older school buildings -- a notion Goldman has been advocating for some time. The gubernatorial candidates have given the idea bipartisan praise.

It's hard to think of a downside. Restoring old school buildings is a conservative idea in the non-ideological sense: It promotes the conservation -- one might even call it the recycling -- of existing resources. It encourages careful husbandry of public dollars. And it would help preserve structures of historic and architectural worth.

The idea merits passage, and probably will get it. To paraphrase a maxim often attributed to Ronald Reagan: There is no limit to what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the tax credit.