The House and Senate budgets won’t be officially unveiled until Sunday.
But the war between the Locals and the Capitals appears to have already been declared.
And the first shot seems to have come out of Chesterfield County.
The locality that, in terms of absolute votes, provided Bob McDonnell with the largest victory margin of any single jurisdiction in Virginia.
Dan Gecker, Chair of the Chesterfield Board of Supervisors, aimed his rhetorical fire at the state (and apparently at Chesterfield’s General Assembly delegation) with the following quote in a RTD article.
It somewhat amazes me the complete lack of responsibility the General Assembly delegation seems to be taking for the position we find ourselves in,” said Gecker at a budget and audit committee meeting.
County Administrator Jay Stegmaier phrased the argument in a less personal and more academic manner, suggesting that the Assembly is essentially simply shifting the burden of government from the state to local jurisdictions.
The state has effectively, by their decisions, shifted a huge portion of the burden of the cost of public services from taxes that the state generates — such as sales tax and income tax — to the local property tax, and homeowners.”
The growing tensions between the Locals and the Capitals may be the most significant story line in Virginia politics today.
After the House and Senate present their budgets on Sunday, don’t be surprised if skirmishes open up on a number of fronts.
The Virginia Organizing Project has been pointing out for years that when Richmond refuses to fund things like jails and mental health, thereby shifting the burden back onto local governments, the effect is that we keep income taxes lower but force local governments to raise property taxes.
In 2007, Connie Brennan, in her House of Delegates campaign, pointed this out and noted that if Richmond did what it is already supposed to be doing, most of the counties in the 59th House District could cut their property taxes by up to 20%. I was standing at a polling place in Cumberland County on that election day trying to talk with another Democrat there about why some rejiggering of the taxes would help him, and he was just focused on the fact that his income taxes would rise, even though the rise would be less than his property taxes would go down.
You can’t talk fiscal sense in the current climate, and both Democrats and Republicans are to blame.