Governor Kaine's Budget: No Good For Fairfax City

Well,today was the day that Governor Kaine unveiled his budget that the next General Assembly and Governor-elect McDonnell will have to wrestle with.

I'll cut to the chase: It's dead on arrival and bad for the City of Fairfax. I hope it gets shot down.

With all due respect to the Governor whom I like, getting rid of the car tax relief program and having the General Assembly authorize a 1 percent local income tax is just not smart. It's not the Virginia way. We will be taxing middle class families at a time when we shouldn't be adding tax burdens such as this.

What troubles me most is that there was no creative thinking in the budget. Not even a discussion of offsetting revenues from a local income tax by decreasing the state income tax. Nope, just tax em. That won't fly with me.

Furthermore, the Governor wants to mess around with the composite index (which funds education)by freezing it. This would negatively effect Fairfax schools. So, no, I'm not happy with this and I hope the next Governor and General Assembly start with a clean slate.

While I'm on the point of budgets. Here's an idea: Why don't we restructure VDOT and give localities more control over roads while not raising taxes. Here's one way:

This could seem like a far-fetched idea, but as a way to fix transportation in Virginia we go back to the 1930s. More precisely, let's return Virginia's transportation system to pre-Byrd Act days when localities had control over the roads.

Until the Byrd Act, which gave the state authority and responsibility for almost all roads in the state, localities had to maintain them. Keep in mind, the "grand compromise" eliminated localities ability to tax income in exchange for getting funding from the state. That worked backed then because localities across the Commonwealth needed roads, period. Now there are more regional and local-specific needs.

So here's how it could work and be revenue neutral (this is key and needs work on the numbers side of the proposal) and cut a lot of red tape:

- Scale VDOT down to a size of 1,000 to 1,500 employees (now 7,500), only responsible for highway safety and maintenance on interstates
- Provide localities the ability to tax income with a cap, but the rate would have to be voted on by each local jurisdiction.
- Reduce the state income tax by 1-2 percent (or whatever percentage equals the amount now going to transportation and to offset the local income tax)
- Distribute federal/state gas tax revenues to localities by a formula that measures lane miles in a locality
- Provide a certain amount of seed money over a 5 year period for the transition
- Give localities the authority to build and maintain its own roads
- Require MOUs between adjoining localities on regional road projects so that there couldn't be a situation where only part of a road gets built

Clearly there are a ton of specifics that would need to be worked out, but I think that something radical needs to be done to really change the transportation dynamics in Virginia. I certainly support some of what the Governor-elect is looking to do, but it may only patch some of the long-standing issues we have with transportation as they are more structural.