"We
have to do something about Northern
Virginia.”
In
the wake of a third election loss in Northern
Virginia, that seems to be the mantra of
Republicans and conservatives around the
Commonwealth. But short of the old joke about
sawing the region off and letting it float into
the Chesapeake, there have been few policy ideas
for making Northern Virginia a competitive
two-party region again.
Part
of the challenge is the party’s emphasis on
“turning out the base.” The strategy follows
national polls showing that, until this most
recent election, the percentage of swing voters
had shrunk to a miniscule fraction of the
electorate. Between 1980 and 2000, the percentage
of swing voters (those who truly voted for
candidates of different parties) fell from 24
percent to just 6 percent of the electorate.
But
in Northern Virginia, “turning out the base”
is rarely enough. Even after combining all of the
“anti-tax,” “pro-life,” and “second
amendment” voters it’s hard to come up with 51
percent of the electorate. Candidates running on
nothing more than bumper sticker slogans found
that independent voters hungering for more
substance – even those who may agree with them
– turned elsewhere for solutions.
After
all, Northern Virginians pay more in local real
and personal property taxes than anywhere else in
the state. They are taxed more heavily – and
their taxes are sent elsewhere to the rest of the
Commonwealth. They are stuck in traffic, yet
probably receive less state transportation money
per car on the road than anywhere else in the
state. Immigration, growth and development – all
of these are challenges for which voters want
answers – not a rote repetition of the latest
sound bite.
So
what would a sound platform look like in Northern
Virginia? Here are four ideas:
Link
Land Use and Transportation: Counties decide
where developments are placed, but responsibility
for the road building is up to the state. The
result: More traffic jams. Del. Bob Marshall
proposed allowing impact fees, dedicated to
transportation, on new development. This isn’t
“new taxes.” It’s a recognition that the
taxes on new development rarely pay for the new
infrastructure it requires in transportation, and
imposes the cost for that new transportation
infrastructure on the entity creating the demand.
Take
the Roads Back: Virginia is one of only four
states where the responsibility for secondary
roads rests with a state bureaucracy – a
75-year-old system long outdated for population
centers like Northern Virginia. The result:
Decreased quality. That’s why the City of
Suffolk took over responsibility for maintaining
its own secondary roadways this year, and in
return they’ll get VDOT’s budget for those
roads and an opportunity to do it cheaper and
better. There would be start-up costs to consider,
but Virginia's counties should get the same right
and the same funding formulas.
Stop
Giving Away Money: Everyone knows Northern
Virginia is the economic powerhouse that funds the
state. Not everyone knows how other localities use
that money. Answer: To cut their own budgets. When
the General Assembly raised the sales tax in 2004,
half the funds were sent back to localities for
education purposes. But legislators changed the
formula in 2004 so that Northern Virginia received
even less than they would have under the old
formula. Fairfax County taxpayers, for example,
paid nearly $70 million in new taxes. Under the
old formula, they would have received $53 million
back. Under the revised formula, they got back
only $32 million.
Adding
insult to injury, 40 percent of state localities
used the extra money they received from NOVA
taxpayers to cut their own per pupil support.
It’s not the first time that’s happened, which
is why legislators started insisting on a
“Maintenance of Effort” clause a few years ago
to prevent localities from doing that. There was
no such insistence this time. There should be.
End
the NOVA Tax: Gubernatorial candidate Jim
Gilmore was smart when he proposed to “end the
car tax.” Not only does it affect everyone; not
only is it the most painful tax to pay (all at
once); but it affects Northern Virginians more
than most and gave him an issue to ride hard in
building a GOP majority. The “fix” was to have
state government reimburse local governments for
part of the tax car owners paid. But when the
reimbursement reached 70 percent of the bill, the
General Assembly “froze” the state’s
reimbursement.
Except
they didn’t freeze it at 70 percent – they
froze it at whatever dollars each locality was
receiving at the time. That means that, two years
later, growth areas like Prince William, Fairfax
and Loudoun Counties have the same amount of
money, but spread it out over more cars. The more
cars that come in (and the more those cars cost),
the less relief taxpayers see.
At
the very least, the General Assembly should
“unfreeze” the dollars and keep the “real
cap” at 70 percent – and stop penalizing
economic growth in Northern Virginia.
Northern
Virginians may be the “wealthy cousins” in
Virginia, but that doesn’t mean they don’t
feel it when gas prices go up, the housing market
goes down, taxes go up, and transportation grinds
to a standstill. A platform for Northern Virginia
doesn’t have to be “liberal.” But it does
have to offer more than just platitudes, and it
does have to address the challenges that touch
voters every day of their lives.
--
November 20, 2006
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