The online newsletter for Senator Scott Surovell. The Dixie Pig was my grandmother's favorite restaurant on U.S. 1 located across from Beacon Mall where a Rite Aid used to stand.
The following is my column that will appear in the Mt. Vernon Gazette, Springfield Gazette, and The Mt. Vernon Voicein the week of October 20, 2016.
Vote “Yes” for FCPS Teachers' Salaries
When you vote on Tuesday, November 8, Fairfax County voters can vote for our schools by voting to allow a four percent tax on prepared restaurant meals. Of the revenue generated by the tax, 70 percent is required to be dedicated to public schools and 30 percent to other county services, capital improvements and property tax relief.
I support a meals tax because we need to strengthen our schools. Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) are suffering from underfunding. While state funds have increased by over 50 percent since the 2009 Great Recession, local funds, which represent 80 percent of our school system's budget, have risen only 20 percent and lagged investments made in Arlington and Alexandria.
Today, we took up a very controversial bill in Cities, Counties & Towns - the regulation of the height of grass and mowing of weeds. No, I'm not kidding.
Virginia is a Dillon Rule state. That means that a locality cannot exercise any power unless the state has expressly authorized it. Each year, we get a ton of bills that come through from localities asking the state for authority to do different things.
For example, in my first term, I introduced legislation that would add Fairfax County to the list of counties that could adopt a meals tax by a unanimous vote of the Board of Supervisors instead of referendum. I also introduced a bill to allow Fairfax County to add a $4 fee to each traffic ticket to pay for an electronic ticket processing system that would eliminate the need for about 10 full-time employees and save the police thousands of man hours. An Arlington County delegate told me that he had to introduce legislation to allow his locality to issue paychecks twice per month instead of every two weeks.
Today, I introduced a proposed Constitutional Amendment that would permit localities representing 2/3rd of the population of Virginia to repeal a provision of state law upon passing identical resolutions within a twenty-four month period. You can read the bill here.
Virginia adheres to the Dillon Rule - the idea that localities can only exercise the powers that are granted to them by State Government. This bill would result in a very small modification of that concept.
When the budget heads south, state government frequently passes the buck on budget decisions to local governments instead of making difficult choices themselves. For example, last session the State reduced the per diem that it transfers to localities for housing state prisoners. This alone cost Fairfax County $5 million per year. Last year's budget actions transferred $20 million per year of responsibilities to Fairfax County. Spread that across the entire state and real money is in play.
Pursuant to this proposed amendment localities representing 5.3 million Virginians could repeal a provision of state law. If Virginia's largest localities were to unanimously agree, a repeal could not be effective without dozens of small localities or nearly all of Virginia's mid-tier population jurisdictions consent - a tall burden. Inversely, it is impossible to get over 5.3 million Virginians without one of the six largest jurisdictions in Virginia (Fairfax, Virginia Beach, Prince William, Chesterfield, Loudoun or Henrico). In other words, an issue would have to garner broard urban-suburban-rural or Democratic and Republican support.
This proposed authority would not be successfully invoked unless the legislature were to seriously overstep the public's will. It would improve fiscal responsibility, transparency, and accountability and empower localities like Fairfax County that are frequently forced to fund mandates from the state.
Also, this amendment would promote the discussion of state policy throughout the Commonwealth. The General Assembly does not have a monopoly on ideas. If localities could play a small role in revising state law, more people would have an opportunity to generate ideas and be heard. It is a minor change to state-locality relations and I hope it receives a robust discussion.
You can watch my interview yesterday on the NBC12 below or read my press release on the bill below that.
Fairfax County sends a huge amount of money to Richmond and gets about 20% of it back. At my Town Meeting with Senator Puller and in my weekly columns (here, here, here) I have continued to reiterate the total unfairness of the General Assembly continuing to reduce the amount of money it sends back to Fairfax County while at the same time telling us how to spend it and not broadening our local taxing authority. This year's budget proposal is among the worst yet by gutting education and social services funding.
Part of this is because of the long-hated Dillon Rule named for Judge John Forrest Dillon - that cities and counties only have the powers and authority granted to them by the General Assembly. One delegate told me he once had to get a bill through so his county could pay employees every other week instead of twice per month.
The consequence of this trend is that our residential real estate taxes in Fairfax County are much higher than Alexandria, the City of Fairfax or Falls Church because they have the authority to tax something other than their residents to help pay for services.
This week, The Mount Vernon Gazette seconded my argument with this great editorial:
Increasing Burden, But No Tools In Virginia, localities like Fairfax County, Arlington or the City of Alexandria, have only the exact powers that the Virginia General Assembly has bestowed upon them.
The right to extend protection from discrimination to particular groups? No.
The right to decide when school will open in the Fall? No.
The authority to tax income? No, only the state can tax Northern Virginia residents’ income, and then the state spends that income everywhere but here. Northern Virginia gets back less than 20 cents on the dollar it sends to Richmond. No "piggyback" income tax allowed.
The authority for local elected officials to consider a variety of broad based sources of revenue to fund schools and other services? No.
And let’s be clear, voters could evict representatives who overstepped tolerances.
So now as the state budgets is shaping up, or shaping down would be more accurate, without knowing the exact details or numbers, it’s clear that hundreds of millions of dollars in non-optional social services and education expenses (K-12 and higher education) will shift to localities.
Localities are already grappling with decreases in revenue because of the decline in real estate values. And taxing real estate, commercial and residential, makes up the vast majority of most localities’ revenue base.
Arlington has proposed increasing the property tax rate by more than 11 percent, or 9 cents.
Fairfax’s real estate property tax rate would increase from $1.04 to $1.09, though the drop in home values would mean that Fairfax residents would pay approximately $48.55 less on their property tax bill than they did last year.
Home values in Fairfax declined between 3 percent and nearly 8 percent, depending on location (see chart at http://connectionnewspapers.com/photoview.asp?id=218615). But consider the drop in value since the top of the market. In McLean, the jurisdiction that held up the best, assessments are down 12.5 percent from the top a few years ago. In Lorton, assessments are down 28.7 percent from the top of the market.
So while in Richmond, the General Assembly slashes and burns its way to a budget with no revenue increases, here where the rubber meets the road, there are few options, because the General Assembly won’t allow them. They’re passing the bill, but refusing to allow any reasonable method of making up the difference.
Thank you to the Mount Vernon Gazette for stepping up to broaden awareness of this problem.
One of my fellow delegates here describes Northern Virginia as a boiling pot that is going to explode if they don't let out some of the steam pretty soon. We'll see....
