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Federal Court challenging the congressional
ban on a non-resident income tax for DC.
The
Washington
Post and its stable of columnists and
commentators are full-throttle in favor of the tax. James
M. Banner, Jr. and Walter Smith, the plaintiffs
in the suit, got prominent op-ed space to explain
the “sadness” that led them to the courthouse. Post
columnist Marc
Fisher wondered if suing for the commuter tax is
the right strategy and agreed with a questioner that
D.C. Councilman Jack Evans hurt the cause by calling
Virginians “narrow-minded.” Another Post
columnist, Bob
Levey, said the commuter tax was misunderstood
because “the taxes of Virginians and Marylanders
would not rise one cent, because they'd get credits
on their state taxes.”
Levey’s
analysis of the “misunderstanding” was more than
a little misleading. Commuter
tax credits on Virginia
state tax returns would deprive the Commonwealth of
tax revenue. A
former commuter, Jeffrey
Henig, used a Post
op-ed to develop a commuter tax plan addressing the
problem. Henig,
a
Columbia
University
professor,
wrote:
There's
no guarantee that
Maryland
and
Virginia
would follow the
lead of states that let their residents deduct taxes
paid on income earned elsewhere, but good sense and
political pressure from the states' D.C. suburbs
make it likely.
Congress
should then protect Maryland
and
Virginia
from bearing the
cost of such a tax on their own. It should replenish
whatever revenues those states would forgo if they
made D.C. income taxes deductible on their
residents' returns.
Henig
calculates that the cost to each U.S.
taxpayer to subsidize Virginia
and Maryland
“would be about what I paid last week for a
plastic cup of beer at the Yankees-Orioles game.”
And
Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming...
Barney
Day and A. Barton Hinkle brought some honesty to the
Virginia
tax reform debate.
Day, writing
in the Daily
Press, noted that tax reform is about possible
tax increases: “Aside from perhaps 10 editorial
writers scattered across the state, very few are
advocating
reform for reform's sake.”
Hinkle,
in the Richmond
Times-Dispatch, exploded some of the tax reform
rhetoric:
Mostly
the public has been treated by both sides to a lot
of cliches ("the devil is in the details")
and airy chin-wagging.
The
tax code has been studied ad nauseam, yet state
leaders are still acting as if they were confronting
a great mystery. "One of the challenges is to
educate ourselves," said State Senator John Chichester
when lawmakers had a sit-down with Warner at the Executive
Mansion. "We need your
views or we're wandering in the dark," Delegate
Leo Wardrup told the Governor.
NO,
THEY aren't. Everyone who follows the issue knows
what the problems are and has at least a general
idea about how to fix them.
Hinkle
sides with revenue neutrality, saying “Virginia
doesn't need higher taxes, it needs only better
taxes.” Surprisingly,
he favors tax bracket adjustments, taxes on
services, and a
possible income tax for
localities. Joining
Hinkle on some of these recommendations was his
former colleague, Melanie
Scarborough, writing in the Washington
Post.
Wilder
Appropriating
The
University
of Virginia’s
Center for Politics, as part of its continuing Governors
Project, examined the legacy of former Gov. L.
Douglas Wilder at a
Charlottesville
conference.
Two
pundits who wrote on Wilder had vastly different
approaches. Daily
Progress political writer Bob Gibson, calling
Wilder “a charming and churlish fellow,” saw the
former governor’s legacy as a lesson to
both
parties. Michael
Paul Williams of the Times-Dispatch,
a panelist at the conference, wondered why Wilder
was not more of a national figure and suggested that
if Wilder had embraced Williams’ issues, he could
be:
Couldn't
the fiscally prudent chief executive have assailed
the Bush administration's profligate spending? Why
didn't the decorated Korean War veteran speak on our
questionable invasion of Iraq?
Couldn't the man who conducted trade missions on the
continent of his ancestors say something about Liberia?
Where
We Live
Patrick
Lackey of the Virginian-Pilot
bemoaned the economic disparity that segregates
housing in
Virginia
—“
Teachers
over here. Bankers over there.” Meanwhile, in the Roanoke
Times, Liza
Field of Wytheville touted land trusts to
protect rural areas from “cheap development” and
“sprawling subdivisions.”
Slam
of the Week
Bob
Gibson of the Daily
Progress on FCC Chairman Michael Powell, often
mentioned as a possible future candidate in Virginia:
“Powell, 40, is the lawyer son of Secretary
of State Colin L. Powell and an acorn still rolling
from
the trunk of his father’s oak.”
Coulda
Been a Contender
The
Lieutenant Governor boomlet for former Senator and
current Christopher Newport University President
Paul Trible is over. Jeff
Schapiro of the Times-Dispatch
has a useful history of Trible’s political career
and informed speculation as to why he withdrew.
The
Economic Developer’s Safety Net
Christine
Chmura, in her Richmond
Times-Dispatch column, “Virginia’s
Economy,” wondered if money spent on economic
development pays off.
While citing anecdotal evidence that it does,
she noted, “The cost-effectiveness of programs is
not assessed because it is difficult to separate
general economic growth from the growth prompted by
economic development efforts.”
--
July 28, 2003
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