Vote for the meals tax — or you’ll wreck this child’s future.
by James A. Bacon
The Times-Dispatch reports more puke-inducing rhetoric from the pro-meals tax forces in Henrico County. This time, the intelligence-insulting blather comes from Yes 4 Henrico’s Kids, a group that has solicited $145,000 from business groups to tout the tax.
“I think we’re going to win” the referendum in November, said Laura Lafayette, CEO of the Richmond Association of Realtors. “I think the kids in Henrico are going to win.”
The it’s-all-for-the-kids cynicism is nauseating. Of the vast sum the group has raised to promote the tax, $57,500 comes from Lafayette’s group, another $17,500 from the National Association of Realtors, and $16,666 more from Highw00ds-Markel LLC and Highwoods Realty Limited Partnership — all of which stand to benefit from deflecting an increase in the property tax to the general citizenry. Oh, yes, it’s all for the kids — but we’ll stick it to the kids’ parents, who will pay the meals tax.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with people pursuing their raw self interest in the political arena, although the practice does become nauseating when people cloak that self interest with puffery about the sweet little children. What’s less forgivable is the fraudulent way in which tax advocates have framed the debate: as a false choice between enacting a meals tax to raise $18 million, hiking the real estate property-tax rate by six cents on the dollar, or running the Henrico County Public Schools budget through the wood chipper.
When I describe the choice as “fraudulent,” I use it as a milder term for “dirty, low-down lying.”
The choice is not between raising taxes and cutting the school budget, it’s between raising taxes and cutting spending across the entire county budget, which is split roughly in half between schools and general governmental expenditures. If it chose, the Board of Supervisors could elect to absorb the entire sum from general government expenditures and transfer $18 million to schools.
Here’s what Yes 4 Henrico’s Kids is saying when it rules out the option of general governmental expenditure savings:
- Don’t charge insurance companies for ambulance services, a measure that could save $7 million.
- Don’t pursue smart-cities strategies that could achieve efficiency gains in government utilities and services.
- Don’t use smart-growth strategies to foster development that pays for itself.
- Don’t privatize operation or ownership of the Henrico County golf course.
- Don’t pare extravagances like county-produced programming for the public access channel.
The Yes 4 Henrico Kids website also never mentions how the technological tsunami of online and computerized learning can be harnessed to get more bang for the buck in Henrico’s school system. The website is backed by a group of people who want to raise taxes in order to protect the status quo. They don’t want to change a thing … except your taxes. (Just don’t touch their’s). They, like the board of supervisors, lack the vision to see how Henrico might transform itself into a model for 21st-century governance.
Anyone who wants to see Henrico thrive should vote down the meals tax and demand that its supervisors and county administrators seek out best practices from around the world to create a more efficient, cost-effective and responsive government.
