The Virginia Beach Taxpayers Alliance was born out of the effort to fight the 2002 sales tax referendum. Saturday, the VBTA hosted a candidate forum, which was covered here. The campaign to raises taxes was called the YES Campaign.
You would think someone in the VBTA would’ve asked Jeff McWaters why he gave $10,000 to the Yes Campaign for tax increases?
McWaters touts his Amerigroup ownership. It’s all over his website. He boasts about the political contributions that have helped Republicans.
Somehow, Jeff leaves out the “I donated $10,000 to the effort to raise your taxes” talking point. His website has a whole section entitled “Jeff McWaters will fight for low taxes.”
Maybe, but his record shows he’ll fight even harder to raise them, going as far as to chip in 10 grand for the effort.
“In the past 10 years, the Commonwealth’s budget has increased 100%” says McWaters website. Funny he should complain when only seven years ago, he gave $10,000 to the effort to impose a regional sales tax to raise billions of dollars in new taxes.
A lot of business owners supported raising taxes in 2002. So, to many of us, McWaters/Amerigroup check shouldn’t be surprising.
That he’s suddenly this anti-tax warrior denouncing growth in government spending when he was a top-tier donor to the effort to raise taxes for VDOT and the Planning District Commission should at least prompt a question, especially from the group that led the opposition to it.
