The further importance of the Augusta County War

As I have chronicled the fight for the Augusta County GOP Chair, I have generally held to the opinion that the question of who was actually chair was not as important as the strength of the low-tax Republican activists, which had only been enhanced by this debacle and would certainly send tax-hiking cipher Emmett Hanger packing in 2011.  Of course, as someone who is a good two hours from Augusta by car, I would think of the statewide implications first.

There is, however, one local consequence of the Augusta County War that I hadn’t considered until SWAC Girl posted the list of Republican elected officials who backed Hanger’s choice (Larry Roller) – a local consequence that actually makes it imperative that Roller and Hanger lose.

If one looks at the list SWAC Girl provided, one will find four local Supervisors.  Since Augusta has a seven-member Board, that means a Board majority has aligned itself with the tax-hiking Hanger.  At first, this may sound largely immaterial from a policy perspective, but that could all change come next year’s budget.

Augusta, as I understand it, does its tax reassessment every four years; the next one is due in 2009.  Therefore, next year’s budget will be the first one with a new assessment.  Assuming property values rise (and that’s not an entirely safe assumption – what with two “up” years preceding two “down” years statewide), the local Supervisors could be in the position to pass a de facto tax increase that doesn’t look like a tax increase.  Here in Spotsylvania, Supervisors had been pulling that off for years until the turn of the century, when a new batch of more tax-conscious members began putting the public’s focus on the equalized tax rate, not the previous rate.  Thus the maintaining of the 62 cent tax rate here was seen as the tax increase it really was (the equalization rate was 56 cents).

Now, I don’t know the political culture of Augusta County that well, but I do know that local officials would prefer not to make difficult budget decisions if they don’t have to do so.  That’s where the GOP Chair is of utmost importance.

See, if assessments go up (or even if they don’t), the Augusta Board will face tremendous pressure to increase taxes.  As we learned here in Spotsylvania, most Democrats and “independents” will fold like cheap suits under that kind of pressure.  The question for Augusta is this: what will the Republicans do?

Unless I seriously miss my guess, odds are that under Kurt Michael (or his political heir), the local GOP will do everything it can to hold the Supervisors’ feet to the fire come next spring.  Roller and his backers are another matter; after all, their factional “leader,” if you will, has backed four different tax increases in the last five years.

In other words, the resolution of the GOP Chairman issue will likely have a direct bearing on each and every Augustan’s tax bill next year.  With Roller in charge, Supervisors will have a green light to raise taxes; with Michael’s supporters in charge, they will know a tax increase puts their political future at risk.  I would suspect that at least a few of the elected officials who openly backed Roller are already planning for the tax increase to come.

For Augusta Republicans and taxpayers, this is of paramount importance, and it is why they should hope and pray Michael wins.  If he doesn’t, the grass-roots effort to prevent a tax increase must begin the moment Roller is installed as Chairman.  Either way, the choice is clear – the temperature around the four Republican Supervisors must rise, or the taxes of Augustan homeowners will rise.