Why HB6055 must be defeated: the tax arguments (Part I-UPDATED)

As I have mentioned in earlier posts, there are two main thrusts against HB6055: the tax argument and the lack of accountability argument.  Jim Bowden has been fantastic about the latter, but there hasn’t been much discussion on the former – and for that, I owe the blogosphere an apology.  While I was the first blogger to hit HB3202 and HB6055 from the right (albeit in both cases by the dumb luck of having stumbled on them hours before Jim did), I have been lax in explaining why raising taxes on Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads is such a terrible idea this year.

For the folks in the jurisdictions who have to pay the higher taxes, it’s something of an easier sell.  Still, I think it’s best to go through them.

The damage done by the taxes in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads: Both regions will face a commercial real estate tax (like last year).  While commercial real estate has not grabbed the headlines as residential real estate has, imposing a tax like this cripples the entire business sector in both regions.  While part of the tax will be passed on to consumers (as it increases cost), part of it will be absorbed by the business, including some who will not be able to handle it.  With the economy on the knife’s edge, imposing an extra cost on business is, well, unwise.

NoVa localities are “allowed” to impose a .4% grantor’s tax (I put that in quotes because localities that don’t impose the taxes lose out on road projects under the bill, so basically, local officials have a gun pointed at their heads on this one).  A grantor’s tax is basically a sales tax for a home.  That’s right, Northern Virginia, still reeling from the housing bubble burst, no has to suffer under a tax increase that is felt with every house sold.  It was so knuckle-headed that only Tim Kaine thought it a good idea until last Thursday - you read that right, Albo and Hamilton (and Bill Howell) borrowed one of Timmay‘s worst ideas and made it their own.

The other taxes (rental cars and, for NoVa, hotel stays) may look like tourist taxes in other places, but in these two regions, this is effectively a business-trip tax – yet another cost to be born by the business community that is heroically trying to stave off recession.

All of these taxes do damage to the local economies that would override any supposed benefits of the transportation funding (and as Jim B. has noted time and time again, such “benefits” are mythical at best).  Still, folks outside the two regions might wonder why they should be so concerned about tax increases that do not directly affect them.  I’ll have the answer to that in Part II.

Crystal Clear Conservative joins the tax revolt

The Triple-C takes aim at HB6055:

This whole transportation funding fiasco is starting to irritate the taxpayers in Virginia.   If appearances are considered deceiving, then HB 6055 is a dead ringer for the unconstitutional HB 3202.

. . .

The real wake up call will come when the Republicans will lose state races once again, and it will be only then when the Republican minority will elect true Conservative leadership and return to the principles of less taxation.  I smell another challenge to such a disdainful piece of legislation.

Hang on there, Triple-C!  If enough of us can make our views known, we can stop this thing before it ever gets to the courts!

Jon Bowerbank: Democrat? Democratic? Actually, he was neither.

So Jon Bowerbank is the Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor.  He’s been making the rounds, getting to know folks, and doing the usual spiel (Washington Post).

Funny thing, though; when you go to his campaign site, he makes no mention about the only political experience he has (his current term on the Russell County Board of Supervisors).  In fact, about the only mention of his race comes from an interview with the Roanoke Times:

He said he easily could have won election to a district-level seat on the board of supervisors based on community reaction to the Honaker field. But he chose instead to test himself by running countywide.  “I learned how the business of politics works,” Bowerbank said. “I found this was very invigorating.”

Even here, Bowerbank, leaves one thing out – something that would explain his reticence to discuss his first and only campaign – he didn’t run as a Democrat.  Now, here in Spotsylvania, that’s not such a big deal; Democrats hide as “Independents” all the time in these parts.  However, in Russell County, the Dems pretty much run the show.

This is where it gets more interesting: Bowerbank ran against a Democrat – Clarence “Butch” Ball – in his race for Supervisor - and Ball wasn’t too happy about it:

I am leaving it up to the knowledgeable people of Russell County to realize that money does not buy a supervisory position. I have far too much integrity to challenge Mr. Bowerbank with the same dirty tactics he has chosen to utilize during the last days of the race. My record and integrity stands for itself . . . In spite of what my opponent purports, ONE person cannot change ANYTHING…the Board is given a budget, and we abide by that budget. If Mr. Bowerbank thinks HE alone will change Russell County — he is in for a rude awakening. If he wins, I feel sorry for him when reality sets in, and our citizens bombard him with questions as to why cannot fulfill the promises he’s made.

Hmm, perhaps he decided to cope by running for Lieutenant Governor as a member of Mr. Ball’s party!  I can only imagine how Ball felt when Bowerbank announced himself as a Democrat one month after election day (Washington Post).

Seriously, if this kind of shiftless opportunist is the best the Democrats can do (and I know there is a certain cabinet member waiting in the wings, but she’s still in the wings so far), Bill Bolling might as well plan for 2013 right now.

From the Desk of Bob Marshall

The man who should be Speaker had this to say about the transportation session (including the abomination known as HB6055):

Can Virginia fix transportation without raising taxes? Yes, but unless you contact House of Delegates members before July 9 you may be facing higher taxes and fees, not just from Democrats who want higher auto, sales, real property and gas taxes, but from Republicans too!

 

Tax/fee increases are in the Republican Transportation Bill, H.B. 6055 pushed by Republican Speaker Bill Howell. 

 

The bill authorizes Northern Virginia counties and cities to increase the sales tax on home and commercial property sales (grantor’s tax) of an additional $0.40 cents per $100 of the sale price.  Last year the Assembly authorized No VA localities to impose an additional tax on commercial real estate of $0.25 per $100 for roads and transit.    

 

This tax can never be rescinded by the local governments as long as there is any outstanding debt for Northern Virginia projects funded by this tax!

 

While HB 6055 provides that funds raised in No. VA are to be spent only for No VA transportation projects, it may be diverted to other uses and areas of Virginia “as may be required by any other law.”   HB 6055 also adds $100 to the cost of a new driver’s license. 

 

Hampton Roads residents will pay $20 more for a registration fee and $20 more for inspection fees.  HB 6055 authorizes a real estate tax increase on all property of $0.10 cents per $100.   It diverts up to $250 million in yet to be collected taxes from business and individuals in the cargo container business to Hampton Roads transportation projects.

 

With Virginia families facing falling home prices, increased real property taxes, skyrocketing gas and food prices, an 18% electric rate hike for Dominion, a 6.4% monthly increase in natural gas prices, almost five decades of federal deficit spending, and a devalued dollar, the General Assembly should not raise taxes and fees. 

 

If we say yes to a tax increase again, what happens when the next “crisis” happens a few years from now?  Enough is enough.  Taxpayers are not bottomless ATM machines.

 

Rather than raise taxes, the legislature should support changing work schedules, use toll and fare supported transportation bonds, set up bio-fuel capture centers in Virginia, make state government more efficient and spend the savings on roads and transit.

 

Here are some practical non-tax transportation proposals:  

 

HJR 6007:  Lock up the Transportation Trust Fund so transportation dollars are not diverted for other means.  More than $1.2 Billion has been diverted has been diverted to non-transportation uses over the last 18 years. This must stop.

 

HB 6030:  Fund major transportation projects using bonds paid by tolls or rider fares, i.e., Hampton Roads Bridge tunnel expansion, I-81 truck improvements (trucks pay tolls),  Tri-County –Prince William-Fairfax-Loudoun– Connector, expand commuter rail in No VA to Haymarket, buy more Metro Subway rail cars, etc. 

 

HB 6049: Allow naming rights in exchange for corporations and individuals paying for building roads and other transportation projects, just as is done for stadiums and school buildings.

 

Implement the 2002 Wilder Commission efficiency recommendations that were projected to currently save $1.1 Billion annually without reducing services.

 

Allocate a greater portion of state revenue to transportation.  Out of a 2-year budget of roughly $79 Billion, surely a greater percent could be allocated for transportation.

 

HB 6031: Require all tractor trailers (VA and out of state) to pay for a per mile road maintenance and damage charge which is now passed on to other Virginia drivers.

 

HB 6032:  Set up a permanent state oversight Commission, similar to the federal cost cutting BRAC Commission, to evaluate whether state holdings should be sold, identify duplicate programs, and cut unnecessary overhead while maintaining the same level of services.

 

HJR 6011: Stop burning food!  Request a waiver from the federal ethanol mandate.  Ethanol results in less miles per gallon and increases food prices from diversion of food to fuel.  (Speaker Bill Howell publically announced I would have all of 30 seconds—literally–to present this measure to his Rules Committee!)

 

HJR 6008:  Assess methane resources now being wasted in Virginia which could be converted to fuel for cars/trucks.

 

Unfortunately, despite Rule 37 of the House of Delegates which provides that: “The Clerk shall, under the direction of the Speaker, refer all such original papers (i.e. bills) to the proper committee…”  Nearly all bills introduced into the special session that would reduce expenses and use the money saved for roads and transit have been referred to the House Rules Committee, Chaired by Speaker Bill Howell, so he can kill them. 

 

See http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?083+com+H20N01 for all bills referred to the House Rules committee for the special transportation session.  For Delegate Marshall’s bills see http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?083+mbr+H57C.

 

To find out how to contact your state delegate and senator (or learn who they are) go to:

http://conview.state.va.us/whosmy.nsf/main?openform

Cross-posted to Bloggers 4 Bob Marshall 4 Speaker

Riley and Jeff Frederick weigh in

The dean of Virginia Virtucon sums up the debacle that is HB6055 nicely:

So now we’re in a special session of the General Assembly to try and find a transportation “fix.”  For some, that simply means fixing what was unconstitutional about HB 3202, not what was wrong with it from a policy standpoint.  Hence we are now presented with HB 6055 that funnels the money through the Virginia treasury and replaces the regional authorities with Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs).  Constitutional?  I’d say probably yes.  Good policy?  Not by a long-shot. 

Well put, Riley.  Well put indeed.  The tax revolt gets lands another blogger!

Even better, the new chairman of the RPV issued a statement on the session (same link):

Of course, the debate is largely the same as it has been in recent years: should we keep doing the same thing over and over again and somehow expect a different result; and does Virginia have the money to dedicate to transportation if transportation was made a top spending priority? Or, do we take the easy way out by attempting to simply tax and pave our way out of our problems — by asking you to cut your family budgets (even in this time of explosive gas and food prices, and overall economic uncertainty), because government refuses to prioritize its budget?

Virginia’s transportation system is currently rooted in the 1932 Byrd Road Act. This law was good policy back in the depression, but it is completely out of date in the 21st Century. Virginia is only one of three states to continue to own and maintain all if its roads, and as we can see, it just doesn’t work (it’s no wonder why most states no longer do this).

. . .

Finally, Virginia government is not suffering from a lack of cash. Since I first took office in 2004, we were running a $53 billion, two year budget. This year, we passed a $78 billion budget. If you do the math, that’s a nearly 50% increase in just the last 4 years. Not only is that incredible budget growth (and yet, little of that growth was prioritized for transportation), but most people I talk to haven’t gotten increases in their household incomes over the last 4 years of nearly 50%. Thus, why in the world should government grow its budget faster than your family grows its budget?

Nice line there, but it’s Frederick’s concluding paragraph that brings it home (same link again, emphasis added):

I’ve filed two bills for this special session: one that devolves road maintenance responsibility back to the local governments (but also gives all the money the state currently gets for that maintenance to the localities); and legislation to take a portion of the existing state sales tax and hand it over to regional transportation projects. The first bill would eliminate the disconnect between land-use decisions and transportation decisions that currently exists; while the second bill would provide hundreds of millions of dollars dedicated to transportation — without raising your taxes.

Since Frederick is also a Prince William delegate, that last part reaffirms that he will not support regional tax increases.  Still, Frederick needs to be louder and more forceful on that last point, even to the point of publicly disagreeing with wayward Republican tax-hikers – including Bill Howell, if need be – in order to make clear to the voters that said tax-hikers are no longer the rule in the GOP, but the exception.

What the . . . ?!?!?!

I have always wondered why the folks at American Tax Reform – who were so good in lambasting Mark Warner and his Republican enablers for the 2004 tax increase – were so quiet during the battle over HB3202 last year.

Well, Norm Leahy (Tertium Quids) provides a hint at the answer.

Shudder.

I guess we’re own our own for HB6055, too.

Jim Bowden: En Fuego

As Chris Beer over at Mason Conservative noted over the weekend, the opposition to the monstrosity of HB6055 (a.k.a. HB3202 redux) centers on two issues fundamental to the principles of a republic - stopping unnecessary and damaging tax increases (my focus) and preventing the complete lack of accountability and transparency that comes with regional governments.  No one has been more detailed or determined in pounding the latter issue than Jim Bowden.  This morning, he did it again. 

More from the chronicles of the opposition to HB6055

Chris Beer (Mason Conservative) talks about accountability and listening to the voters, something the authors of HB6055 have simply refused to do.

Still Black Velvet Bruce Li had the better headline: “HB 6055: The Sharon Pandak Employment Act.”  Nicely done, BVBL.

Jeff Schapiro doesn’t get it

If I may be so bold, the Richmond Times-Dispatch needs to fire Jeff Schapiro.  I know he’s been at the RTD for more than two decades, but if this piece is any indication, he has completely missed what has happened in Virginia over the last eighteen months.

The part where Schapiro nukes the fridge is here:

Redistricting only makes it easier for Kaine’s opponents to resist him. Nowhere is this more evident than in the House, where a Republican majority, though reduced, endures because of the artful manner in which it drew districts in 2001.

Republicans created, in effect, minority districts wherein narrow bands of the electorate, often anti-tax conservatives, have disproportionate influence. The key to winning and holding such House seats: sucking up to the right. It’s not always a pretty sight, but survival compels it.

And it’s not just accommodating the grass roots to prevent nomination challenges. Republicans must kowtow to the House leadership, lest they risk such punishment as losing prized committee seats. Senate Republicans, many of them recovering tax-aholics, have become similarly sheepish.

These three paragraphs are littered with so many errors that they combine to become a “fire-able offense.”

We’ll start with the need for Republicans to “suck up to the right” for “survival.”  That would have made sense if, perhaps, Republicans actually did that sort of thing.  Instead, the Senate GOP has endorsed four tax increase in five years, while the supposedly conservative House GOP leadership allowed one and sponsored another in that time-frame.  That’s hardly “sucking up to the right” in any way, shape, or form.

The last paragrpah is even worse.  Does Shapiro really think Bill Howell is blocking tax increases?  He was the Speaker who let the Warner tax increase get through in 2004; he was the lead force behind the HB3202 debacle; and he is the lead force behind HB6055, the resurrection of HB3202.

In other words, the “anti-tax conservatives” and “the House leadership” are pulling the Delegates in different directions – and Schapiro should be smart enough to know that.

In fact, the behavior of the Senate GOP should have given Schapiro and his MSM buddies a clue. After all, why would a caucus that Schapiro himself called “tax-aholics” suddenly decide that no tax increase is acceptable after losing their majority to the Democrats?  Perhaps because they realized it was the tax increases that cost them the majority?

While Marty Williams may still whine about his primary loss, the Senators still in Richmond were likely more shocked by watching Jay O’Brien go down to a Democratic challenger so awful even Ben Tribbett hated him.  That Nick Rerras, an incumbent whose constituent service and social conservatism was impeccable, would go down in flames was probably another stunner.  Both had the same reason for their defeat – that Senate GOP tax increases of the last four years.

The House GOP felt similar damage (a loss of four seats in the two regions affected by HB3202), but because they had farther to fall, their majority was still intact – ensuring that Bill Howell did not learn the lessons the voters were trying to teach, which is why he’s back with HB6055.

Now, Howell - who actually considers the regional taxes his legacy to Virginia (be afraid; be very afraid) - is clearly to deluded to see what actually happened last year, but the “objective” Schapiro should know better.  The idea that HB3202 and HB6055 are not tax increases may fly in Richmond (where no one has to pay them), but in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads it is bunk.

A good political reporter would know this, but Schapiro is no good political reporter.  He has completely missed the point.  He has to go.

Write Side of My Brain “stepping in off the beach” to join the tax revolt

Wow.  Having a blogger step in to take a stand against Bill Howell et al on HB6055 is something in and of itself.  When he’s willing to interrupt his own vacation (and his celebration of the half-century mark) to make a point, you have to pay attention.

I present The Write Side of My Brain:

I’m stepping in off the beach to point you to a must read post.

The House Republican leadership continues to show us why they’re just not getting it.  Over at Deo Vindice jatticus tells us why the resurrection of HB 3202 is a bad thing.

HB 6055 is the son of Frankenstein (HB 3202) that was ruled Un-Constitutional by the Virginia Supreme Court. The arrogance of trying to stuff this bill and its Regional Government down the throats of voters – again – reveals much of what is wrong in the elected caucus of the Republican Party of Virginia. The Regional Government scam reveals the rot of political corruption like a surgeon cutting away the sores to show the cancer.

It’s sad that he even has to point it out.  But they’re not paying attention to the people that put them there.

Welcome to the tax revolt, my friend!