Monday, March 08, 2010
Editorial: Breaking faith with hometowns
House budget writers would take money from one pocket to put in another.
From the RoundTable blog
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Virginia's Republican power brokers would hold fast to their "no tax increase" principles at the shameful cost of dealing in bad faith with governing bodies back home.
House budget writers propose using found money to restore some of the state funding former Gov. Tim Kaine cut from local constitutional offices in his biennial budget plan. That'd be great -- found money is the best kind -- except that lawmakers found this stash in the pockets of localities.
It is more than $41 million that would be taken over two years from the Communications Sales and Use Tax Fund, revenue the state collects and returns to localities.
Returns, not gives, is the correct term here, because the General Assembly passed the communications tax in 2006 not to add a state revenue stream but to replace a clunky local tax without stripping the localities of the money they collected.
The idea was to simplify billing for phone companies that do business across the state.
Virginia eliminated multiple and varied local phone taxes, and replaced them with a statewide 5 percent levy that the commonwealth is to apportion to localities according to an agreed-upon formula.
To be fair to the state GOP, Senate Republicans seem to understand the treachery in seeking to set aside that carefully wrought deal, redirect the money for localities to use as Richmond dictates, then present such perfidy as added aid.
Senate Finance Committee member John Watkins, RPowhatan, says the maneuver will undermine the agreement struck with localities. "Now," he told the Richmond newspaper, "it just seems like another pot of money."
Yet, with state general fund revenue at a historic low, the House Appropriations Committee insists the levy is a state, not a local, tax.
Committee staff director Robert Vaughn says the state constitution requires the General Assembly to appropriate the money.
Honest dealing requires the assembly to appropriate it as agreed.
